crazy busy

hey folks!

you know those people- who can run a successful business and also have fun, engaging blogs that are updated every day or so? yeah...I'm not one of them.

oh man, I can't begin to explain the amount of work that's been on my plate. all of the details involved in launching everbrite mercantile company have run well into the fall, leaving molliedash.com sorely neglected. when my assistant felecia left in the spring to have her baby, I left the position unfilled. things got pretty slow sales-wise and it didn't make sense at the time to hire someone to make more jewelry. so b and I plugged on through the spring and summer going to trade shows and weekend craft markets looking for vendors. I started ordering products, photographing and editing them, uploading the photos and descriptions to the database, and weighing and measuring them for shipping calculations. b spent many, many hours writing the code for the site, debugging it on various browsers and operating systems, and figuring out shipping formulas. together we designed the interface and consulted on many details and decisions. by august we had postcards printed and previewed the shop at the brooklyn flea. in october we launched the website.

some time in the spring I was contacted by a literary agent who had an idea for a book and was interested in having me write it. it seemed like a great opportunity and b was fully behind me doing it. I met with the agent a few times and put together a proposal with her help. but knowing that we were launching a new online shop and that fall and holiday would be coming soon enough (my busiest time for jewelry) made it hard to focus on writing the proposal. the process of submission and re-writes was starting to stretch out longer than appropriate, and the agent finally asked me if this was something I really wanted to work on. yes, maybe at another time, but no, not right now. (the agent did continue to look for another author, so I'll let you know the title if and when it gets published)

okay, so back to focusing on a fall line and getting the website updated. always ideas for how the site can look and function better. so as it's november and it's getting kinda late, I contacted felecia to see if she would like to do a bit of pick-up work. and thankfully, she did. now we are cranking through some new pieces with her amazing speed. I did hire an intern who started in early october, and she's been helping me with other aspects of the business. I was contacted in the summer by amy of brooklyn design lab about teaching a class there. each teacher is invited to do a window installation, and my intern has been much help in putting this project together. (I install it this friday, yo!) about a week ago, in the midst of my too-much-to-do freak out, I told b that I really, really, need to get the site updated. so he sat down and worked his magic on it for a few days, and it's almost ready to launch.

so yeah, not out of the woods yet. but getting close.