Pages

Opening letter

Back cover of catalog

Recycled Paper Necklace (from Kenya) layout

African Print Dress (from Kenya) layout

Beach Bag (from Kenya) layout

Bottle Openers from Kenya

Freshwater Pearl Necklaces from Thailand

Large Raffia Hat from Kenya

Front cover of catalog

Here are some examples of the pages from the catalog! I was responsible for designing the catalog cover and the overall design layout. Molly Longest was responsible for editing all of the photos. Anne and Emily supervised and edited the catalog. If you look close to the fabric swatches, you can see the color names that Kelsie and I came up with---they're cute! I created all the pages in Photoshop, then saved them as a JPG and placed them into InDesign. The entire catalog is 26 pages from front to back. The catalogs will be ready to be picked up on Monday the 9th. I can hardly wait. Being held responsible for such a huge project at TVE has truly been an amazing experience.

The Healthy Elephant

Tuesday's are typically my day off, except this Tuesday I decided to work from home. Anne and Kelly are coming back from Thailand this week and I wanted to make sure that I had all my projects in order to show them, especially all the customs and shipping information. I put together a binder for Anne to show her all the research that I had gathered. I put the information in order and labeled all sections to make it easier to refer back to.

I mentioned before that one of the jobs was to summarize the "Importing Basics" document. I spent the entire day reading the 211 page document and summarizing each section so Anne could understand the basis of importing internationally. I've read the document a couple times now, but if you asked me a question about importing I probably still wouldn't know (which is why I've been trying different memory exercises). Anyway, I've managed to summarize that entire into only 9 pages!! You can hold your applause=) Hopefully, Anne will find it quite useful as we start to develop and start importing for the wholesale line.

Meanwhile, as I was summarizing and putting the binder together, I thought I would try and make this coffee drink I like. It's called the, Healthy Elephant, and is from a local coffee shop here in Broad Ripple. The drink is my absolutely favorite, but….kind of pricey. I thought maybe if I could just make it at home, then I could save about 10 bones each week.

So, the other day and Trader Joe's I bought the only ingredient that I didn't have at the house to make the drink, almond milk. In the drink there is almond milk, espresso, cocoa powder, honey and peanut butter. I thought it would be pretty easy to make, but not being as savvy as a barista as I thought…. it didn't turn out so well. The milk to coffee to ice ratio was a little off. I'm bound to try and make it again--I know I'm close to the real thing! I'll keep you updated on the second trial.

Fall 2010 Trends

Today's agenda consisted of researching trends for the Fall 2010 season. When Anne returns from Thailand we will begin communicating with vendors about what merchandise we will want for the Fall. Trends for the fall were taken from the runway shows in Paris and New York. Key trends include layering up on rings, knee high socks, FUR, woodsy chic jewelry, edgy chic pearls and velvet. We will use these trends as inspiration in developing our products.

Oouiiii...CUSTOMS

Never have I dealt with customs or had any inkling as to what chaos they can provoke, however today I had that privilege. Anne, Co-Founder of The Village Experience, had recently been working with an organization called The Bombolulu Workshop (www.bombolulu.org).

The Bombolulu Workshop for the Handicapped, located in Mombasa, Kenya, works with some 150 disabled men and women artisans to help them overcome their physical limitations and empower them economically and socially to become fully integrated members of their communities. Bombolulu started in 1969 as a rehabilitation project sponsored by the Association for the Physically Disabled of Kenya.

In working with Bombolulu, Anne had helped them design and produce summer dresses, beach totes, summer hats, and bowls. The products were scheduled to arrive to the store before the party on Saturday. Fortunately, Anne had received a call from Tom who said the products had arrived to the US, but were being held by customs. Tom is basically a liaison between TVE and customs. FYI, it's just better to hire someone to deal with the customs then to try and do it yourself. The products are being held by customs because The Bombolulu Workshop failed to sew in the care label in each of the summer hats and beach totes. Apparently, all textile products that are imported into the US need to have a care label. Therefore, in order for TVE to receive the products we had to figure out a way to get a care label that could be sewn into the products.

So, we researched and contacted numerous companies that may correlate or relate to care labels, apparel tags, screen printing, pad printing, alternations, or fabric. After all our research and contacts we ended up with no possible way to buy a care label. Ending up with nothing, we decided we needed to be more creative. It appeared as if we were actually going to have to make our own label since there are no companies in greater Indianapolis that had the resources to do so (FYI--business opportunity in apparel care labels!).

Our idea: buy heat transfer paper and white fabric. In Microsoft Word, Molly created a set of care labels that we printed onto the heat transfer paper, which were then ironed onto the fabric. We then cut the labels out, which will be sewn into the products tomorrow morning at 8am. In order to gain access to the products that are being held by customs, Anne had to photocopy and send all of our passports to them. Before our arrival, customs will have inspected our passports and have run a background check on each of us. Who knew working with customs would be so difficult?



To sum it up, we had to actually create our own care label that will be sewn into the products tomorrow morning in front of the customs officials. If all goes well we should be able to bring the products back to TVE to be set up and merchandised. All I can say is..... ouiiiii vayyyyy customs!!!