You're killing me, Smalls.

So business is, um, interesting. There is still the girl who makes the crappiest purses imaginable, but that's old news. There's a new one who just arrived on the scene yesterday, who makes purses that LOOK great, but CAN'T be correctly made for the price she's charging. That leads me to believe she's cutting corners somewhere. Nobody works for free, and if she were making those purses correctly, she would be doing just that by charging those unfeasibly low prices.

It's getting interesting around here. This very thing happened at Ft. Hood in 2007. One girl, a Staff Sergeant's wife with mad design skills and a perfectionist streak half a mile wide, began making purses from old uniform tops. Her purses were impeccable. Her designs, original. Her customer service, outstanding. Her quality, unbeatable. Like me, she always sought to improve, by finding the best products she could to use in her bags, designing new styles to keep people interested, and always making sure she put out a top quality product that nobody would ever regret buying, and which would last forever. However, just as she was making a name for herself by doing the job right, no fewer than 50 other wives saw that she was making money sewing purses, and decided to go ahead and get themselves a piece of that market share. Their stuff was crap for the most part, and she was still the only one doing it right, but if that many competitors even take away ONE customer apiece each month, that's still a really significant amount of money.

It's happening here now. People see that I'm making good money at this (no surprise... I'm in my third year of making good money at this!) and they want a piece of that. "What she got that I don't got!! I have a sewing machine, and a stack of skanky old uniforms! I can do what she does!" By the end of the month, I expect there will be even more people who are doing this, and they'll probably be doing it incorrectly, turning out crap, and making business that much more difficult for me, because when people have a bad experience with this type of thing, they get skeptical, and I have to deal with being "guilty until I prove myself innocent" when they finally come to their senses, and come to me.

It doesn't annoy me that these people want to try to do what I do. It's a free country. People are more than welcome to go into business doing whatever they want. It's just annoying because they obviously don't get that it takes a long time to get to the level they're trying to just jump in at. I tested products, designs, and techniques for YEARS before I got to the point I am at now. You don't just jump right in where I am. You CAN'T. It's impossible. But these people seem to think that there's just nothing to it, and they just want to go ahead and take little nibbles out of my market share, and it's just plain annoying.

This never happened at Ft. Stewart. I was the only show in town for the entire time I was there. I watched from a distance as this very thing began happening at Ft. Hood, and the girl who was doing it right had to get very creative in order to rise above the "Hey, I've got a sewing machine and a stack of skanky old uniforms!" masses. She launched a website and went international. She's become a household name in the military community. She sells to military wives in many different countries (and NOT just Americans stationed there! Foreign nationals, too!) She was overrun with stupid annoying "competition", and rose above it the only way she could.

Something is going to have to change for me. I see what's happening here, and it's a direct replay of Ft. Hood in 2007. I spent yesterday on the phone with a friend who does web design, and another friend I asked to sniff out the newest addition for me. I am stepping up my advertising by about 300% in order to milk this local market for all it's worth while I figure out what my next course of action is. I'm definitely having a fall sale and design open house in a couple months, and I'm getting ready for that. I think if I let the people come in and SEE a lot of my stuff, 100 or more original pieces all at the same time, then they will see the difference, so that will help.

My job right now is to distinguish myself from these others as much as I can while deciding what the next step is. I don't want this to get unmanageably big. Been there, done that, everything sucked when it was TOO big. I want to stay at a nice manageable level, but with steady business, and on definitely a different level than these others. I'm going to be launching my website within the next couple weeks, as soon as it's ready. Then it's all in how I promote.

This is going to be one hell of a ride. I just can't stay down here with these others anymore when I'm doing something drastically different. I have to distinguish myself from all that, promote my brand, and hope for the best.

And now I'm off to buy more elastic, because I ran out right in the middle of like a dozen diaper bag orders. Gotta love that...