Birthday Wishes

Had a fabulous Birthday today and am feeling younger than ever.
Just been updating my Pinterest account.   All this Social media activity takes up a huge amount of time.  But I believe it necessary as my ribbon printing business is based on on-line customers.  It definitely is working for attracting new customers, I fine that Twitter is particularly good for spreading the word and generating new leads.

http://www.pinterest.com/RibbonandSashes/
I use 4 keywords to get traffic to the website and use them in all my on line media promoting.

Getting the Orders

For somebody who is normally fairly organised, I seem to be running round in circles.  As the business is so new, I find that I still haven't developed a regular routine with my work duties, everything seems to be chaotic at the moment.  Between running around setting up bank accounts, keeping appointments, ordering more stock, taking in and designing orders and trying to generate more customers, I find I need to get some form of structure in place.  I've discovered that I need to write everything down until I have a proper computer system in place.
The first sample I sent out, I never noted colours and size of ribbons delivered, so it was proving to be a bit of a struggle trying to recall the sizes, when the order came through. Another order was for  the colour ribbon, which I had used with my logo on the business card and not on their samples at all!  Lesson gained, so now I log all these details, until I can be sure I've covered everything.

Business card with the Purple Ribbon

My Twitter account is proving quite successful with plenty of retweets and favourites, so this is positive feedback for me.   Facebook page is gathering friends but is a slow mover, I find that this is not geared towards businesses anymore, unless you are prepared to pay.  I have over 200 likes now, but am very much aware that if people don't interact with your page it disappears from their feed. The website is linked to Pinterest so pictures can be tagged and lead back to the website, so all is going well so far. I need to get the website up onto more of these affiliated sites. The Google plus page is a bit strange, I need to work on that account.

The bank have given me a loan to replenish stock and have given me a showcase day in their branch next Thursday.  They've suddenly got overly generous!  So everything seems to be running to plan, I just need lots of orders to generate an income now.

I'm fairly focused on getting printed ribbon orders from shops that make hampers for the Christmas period, so I've been dropping in samples and flyers.  These are worth more to me as they would generally be in the wider ribbon.

Here's a lovely little business mantra that kind of says it all for me, that's what Ribbon Print is all about.

This You Tube video I came across offers a great lesson in Bow tying, I never realized there was such an art to making them and so many different types.  Double Bows, flat bows, flower bows the list goes on. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHYE3EZj3NQ

#newbie

#ribbonsoflove

http://ribbonprint.ie/ribbon-type/

https://www.facebook.com/ribbonandsashes

https://twitter.com/ribbonandsashes

Women's Network Yearly Showcase

Here I am, back again.  Sorry about the low profile for the past few weeks but the pressure was on to get the business "officially open".   I received approval for the Back to Work scheme, which is great and means I now have the support of a governing body behind me.

Following that, I then got an invite to the annual Women's Network Meeting 2014 which is where new businesses get an opportunity to showcase their business, and discuss what they have been doing throughout the year.  This was a huge advantage for me to meet fellow entrepreneurs and discuss business and promotional ideas.  Myself and several others Newbies, where given a stand each to showcase our products.  Therefore I have spent the past week designing and printing flyers and business cards while trying to get samples printed up and source items to display the ribbons on to. This entailed learning how to tie bows correctly, so to get the best effect from them, believe it or not there are You Tube videos and images showing you how to tie bows indifferent styles correctly.  You can have double to treble loops, pompoms, flower the list is endless. Anyway, I settled for the simpler and very elegant Double bow, which looked fabulous when stuck onto the miniature gift boxes.

As Christmas is approaching and to get people thinking, I produced samples of  ribbon with Christmas greetings and images on them.  I then provided printouts of 45mm wide ribbon,  so that I could target people who make up large Hampers and then smaller 15mm - 25mm ribbon for smaller packaging.  The ribbon colours I mostly choose to use where Ruby Red, Dark Green and Navy and the foil Prints used where Whites, Silver and Gold.  The display consisted of Jars, gift boxes, Voile favour bags and Hanging Heart ornaments.

This all sounds lovely but I was not too sure if the table ended up looking a bit too cluttered... It was the first time and extremely rushed but I think I will get it better next time.  I noticed all the other start ups who formed several months ago had turned into pros when setting up their displays. Just shows practise makes perfect.

These displays consisted of 2 stands displaying hats by Milliners, who both had completely different styles, yet equally fabulous, a crafter who deigns and sew large bags, A Yummy, Scrummy Chocolate biscuit Cake baker and supplier, (so much for my Diet) Ready to Juice drinks (to detox the CBC), some beauty and well being products, counselling services, teaching services, mushroom coffee, gluten free sauces and not forgetting about the person who comes to de-clutter your house. The rest of the attendees where relevantly new start ups that had displayed at earlier meetings. It was great to meet everyone and get the feedback and support from my Mentor and the Southside Partnership staff.  The speeches were terrific and consisted of Maxine Jones the Comedian, who gave us all good laugh and Senator Mary White (co-founder Lir Chocs).

It was a very successful night and was brilliant for me to showcase what I do and to be able to create awareness about my new business, whilst boosting my confidence.  Some people have showed their interest in purchasing the ribbon/ sew in labels for their products and others have mentioned they know people who would be very keen to avail of my services.

Sure Networking, that's what its all about...

http://ribbonprint.ie/news-blogs/
https://www.facebook.com/ribbonandsashes?ref=tn_tnmn

What's Disquis all about

I'm beginning to discover the draw back from use these hosting sites that supply a choice of website themes.  These are all very well until you try and link the site to other sites, for the past week I've been trying to connect this blog onto the site, which seems to be then going through a recommended social hosting site called Disquis.  Here lies the problem, I can import the blog into Disquis, which then in turn is meant to link it onto the website, but then the problems begin.  I'm starting to get confused about its use and find it frustrating that it's not working correctly for how I want it to work.  The blog is enjoyable to do but its not achieving all that I want it to do.  There are other issues using the web hosting site i.e verifying ownership of website, which is required for google+, google maps and other links.
Overall the website is looking and functioning well and these gripes I have just need fine tuning.  The difficulty I have is the amount of time wasting its taking me trying to get it correct.
having said all that my Twitter, Facebook, you tube & Pinterest followers is growing and I have received some enquires and positive feedback from potential customers..
so onwards and upwards
www.Ribbonprint.ie

ribbon set up

Custom Printed Ribbon

I'm Enjoying doing this

I find that I enjoy doing the blog, even though I can't seem to get it syncing correctly with my new website http://ribbonprint.ie/ and have entered very little so far.  But it's all going to happen very soon.  I actully feel its going to be a great way to chart my progress and see where the strengths and weakness will be in the business.
The last few days have been spent printing off some samples, whilst learning how to use the program to get the best value out of the printing ribbon, so that it avoids as much waste as possible.  Alongside this I have been working on the pricing and designing images for the website to display colours and fonts available to potential customers in the very near future.  The deign work is the fun bit, but can be a bit time consuming as everything need to be set up by the 10 October.  Because of the time restraint and the volume of work needed to be done still, I feel the logo and layouts can be improved upon at a later stage.
Tomorrow requires leaflet designing for differnt trades that I intend to target for the Christmas Market.  So therefore as much as I enjoy the Blog, this new venture is calling me to get a move on, so so long till our next update....

It's meant to be My Day Off

I've started to notice that setting up your own business, seems to constantly take over your mind and social life.   Today is Saturday, whilst I have the Tv on to watch 'The Professionals' I seem to still be  logging in to the website making ammendments and also working on this Blog.  Why do we sometimes find it very hard to just switch off and enjoy the little everyday things in life.  
I do know that once everything is up and running smoothly I'll be a hapy Bunnie.  Now, lets sit back and enjoy the Professionals, then head into the city centre and have some fun.   Go Girl Go it's your Day Off.

Hey Presto

I think I have finally resolved my issue with setting up the Blog.  One more final (fingers crossed) check then I can get down to business.  Yahoo :)

Just like starting Over

Here we go attempting this again :)
https://www.facebook.com/ribbonandsashes?ref=tn_tnmn

Go go

Here We go Again

I thought setting up the blog would be easy, but I'm still struggling to get it onto my Website.  I'm developing the site through a hosting company, which suggests the use of a blog. It asks you to insert the short code from Disqus, which does not seem to be working!  any way here goes another attempt.