April Spring

house model Allie during a fit test -- holiday 2007.

In over 3 years of building FOXERS, I have learned ALOT about developing products.

Having your collections ready in time for trade shows (for me Curve) is critical. This is where I am today… market started this week and my factory promised the samples here and YES, you guessed it… no samples… no market. Although trade shows are VERY costly, we find it’s the fastest way to reach a large number of our customers. That said, most of our buyers like the one-on-one relationship if you have time to call them. I enjoy chatting with them briefly and hearing how they run their boutiques/departments/sites/parties, getting their feed back from their customers and on our product; as well as taking the order of course!

So, FOXERS’ new looks will be showing in August… but not at the shows.  They will be shown through email, pdf catalogs and lots of phone calls from yours truly and Sales team. If you want to see the new collections they will be in a boutique near you in the FALL and photos will be on our FOXERS.com site after they hit the stores. You won’t want to miss the new styles. As a designer, this is my favorite time, seeing my new designs come to reality and hit the racks… even better is seeing them walk down the street on a GREAT customer, YOU!

Lesson: stay in touch with your factory representatives or you’ll be the one falling through the crack. Never again!

One more note…
Don’t let the market get you carried away with their ideas if they are not your vision. Listening to your heart and your customers (i.e. buyers who know their customers is the KEY). When I say ‘the market’ I mean… trade shows, color trends, factories and rumors of what is in and what is out. Just make great looking, good quality, and nice fitting clothing and you’re there.

I wish you a great time wherever you are and whatever you love doing, I hope you’re doing it well and learning every day like me.
To our success,
April

Keeping the dream Alive is toughest part of an entrepreneur’s life; in my case a designer’s own brand. This means that every day you have to DREAM. What the business books call following a vision by writing a business plan (the worst part of my career but the necessary part).

Most of the time following your passion means after you have earned a living, continued to work on current projects or taken care of family. I was fortunate to have the perfect time in my life where I had to leave my career to follow my husband’s career. This break of up to 2.5 years in another country while my husband was working there could have been a time to relax but I took it as my ultimate opportunity to change careers. When I hit the new ground of our new home half way around the world I was dying to learn something new to help pursue a career in fashion design or running a fashion house something I wanted to do since I was ten years old.

So here I was in Malaysia half way around the world from Florida where I left my home behind and all of my friends. The first classes I embraced where Malay and Mandarin. Then one night while hosting a group of women for business in Malaysia, the former President of the club told me about the local Fashion Design School and that I could attend. I started immediately. The fact that the classes where held in Mandarin didn’t stop me from learning and loving the field, in fact I LOVE the Malaysians and they were so patient and kind. I had a GREAT time and cherish my friendships from the classes as much as I do my American university, FAU friendships. It took me weeks to make one illustration and I thought this is going to be tough but I knew I wanted to be able to illustrate my ideas and the only pressure was my own because this was for FUN! because I am retired . Mental games you might call them but life is all about perception so I told every one and I still do “I am retired!”  What I mean is I’m retired from working a job that I don’t love doing. Perception is everything.

Success following your passion starts with believing in yourself 100%. You are at your best when you love what you do, you beam excitement and enthusiasm. I see this in others all of the time. They are working all day and then on weekends they follow their passions and that is what they talk about. Different is good too, that’s why there is no end to number of passion followers on earth. We naturally look for new and different. So tell yourself you’re retired and then follow your passion with a vengeance! Now go! Make me proud and make something new and different. Be inspired by others but don’t copy them. I would love for my designs to inspire you to make something great that’s all you and I will help you if you ask. Are you retired yet? I hope to see an invitation to your celebration for your new idea.

If you know me now and most of family would say, April works a lot! But to me  “I am retired!” Because I love every day even if it’s a nightmare of a day and believe me I have days where things fall through and I am tested to a breaking point but somehow I just manage to think positive and keep going because I believe in what I am doing and I’m passionate about my business. I have learned that the only difference between success and failure is perseverance. I have been told by some of my successful mentors to just take a walk when things seem like they are over whelming. Then come back and start again. A dear friend once said  “When you return from traveling or a trade show or finish a long project, you think you’re never going to catch up on the projects that you left for a week or up to 8 weeks. The trick is to just start working on your list and  “much faster than you think” you realize “hey, I’m almost caught up and I’ve almost finished all of my projects.” This is a great feeling.

Another Movie I recommend that really depicts what a passionate person does in his life if he knows no boundry between “work” and “play” is “Meet Joe Black”.  Play close  attention to       ’s character. He never stops managing and growing his business from the moment he wakes to the moment he sleeps again. This is the life of a passionate business owner.

I am retried; I am a passionate business owner; I am a designer. I love what I do and wish this for you.

April

When we first started FOXERS, we met with a few guys from the local Small Business Administration (SBA) to have someone look over our plans.  We were walking through our business plan and showing them how our sales projections worked.  The entire model was based on how many panties we could sell.  Makes sense right?

Every time we said “panties”, the guys would squirm.  At some point one of them could not focus any more and blurted out a statement that we still laugh about to this day.  He said, “Lets call them units”.  We’ve been calling them units ever since.