Wish Us Luck

I'm not sure whether this is a holiday gift or nightmare, but it certainly is interesting. As I may have mentioned to some of you at the Summit, one of my wife's businesses is the marketing and sales of her illustration work (www.calligraphypets.com). It has been growing steadily for the past several years, but is still a relativley small "cottage" industry for our family. Well, things appear to have taken a significant turn yesterday evening. For several months now shen has been courting select mail-order and online distributors to carry all or part of her line and one finally bit. Signals, a catalog house that specializes in artistic gifts, prints and such sent us a preliminary contract/product information sheet for inclusion in their spring 2005 catalog...only there is a catch, they need it filled out and returned within 48 hours. Suddenly we're having to go from a home based "cottage" business to a fairly substantial company in two days. We spent the morning lining up our suppliers and fulfillment services, are working on our pricing and identifying the best financing and financial services model for the business. The best part of it all is that we have the confidence to outsource almost all of it, in large part thanks to the vision that Tom talked about at the Summit. The two person, billion dollar a year corporation (ok, we're not that big, but you have to start somewhere) that uses technology and the Internet to manage their business. It's scary and exciting all at the same time.

And if the Signals opportunity doesn't come to fruition, for whatever reason, we still have everything lined up for our anticipated 2005 expansion. Woo Hoo!

Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season and I'll keep you posted on progress.