Who and how to sell

It's getting more and more difficult to find enough time to do all the things that need to be done with the company. Lina is currently busy with a different project so I'm doing all the work with The Fair Tailor by my self. What we would need is someone who is great at selling on commission and who understands the values that The Fair Tailor is built on.

We are expecting our sample shirts to arrive any day now, it's going to be really interesting to see what they are like. Is the quality level high enough? Is the fabric good enough?

I hope you have checked out by blog in Swedish on Veckans Affärer http://blogg.va.se/entreprenor/

During summer I will update that blog more frequently.

If you can read Swedish and wants to know why we are working with Nepal you can for example learn that here

Sebastian Stjern
THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Catch 22

Today I’ve met with our business coach through IQube, Christian Zanders, the CEO of Jetshop.

Christian is there to push me and to give me good advice when I need to make tough decisions. We need to get our sales started and it is tough to get the time to make everything happen at once. I am currently investigating if it’s possible to employ someone to help with the sales part. Unfortunately we do not have much room in the budget to start paying salaries, but to make The Fair Tailor profitable we need to sell. Do I smell a little catch 22?

Yesterday I meet with representatives from the regional government. They have room in their budget to support projects in companies that are growing, but I feel they might think we are a little to trade oriented for them to support us. Generally they to not support trade business. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Sebastian Stjern
THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Fair Trade

After having spent the weekend at the parents in law in Värmland I am now ready to take on a new week with The Fair Tailor.

Last week I attended a coaching session with an accountant and he made a quick overlook of our budget and found some things that we should have wrote differently. There is no doubt that we need help from someone who knows more about business economics than we do. The coaching session was arranged by Göteborgs Nyföretagarcentrum and if you live in this region and are planning to start a business, I can really recommend going there.

When I was in Nepal in April I med with a group of Swedish students who were there to study Fair Trade. We met in Patan, just south of Kathmandu, to share our experiences of Nepal. Now they are back and one of them was interview by a local paper, NWT. You can read the whole article here link

By chance I came across an only newspaper article in Dagens Industri about Björn Söderberg who has helped us to get in touch with people in Nepal. The article is nothing extraordinary, it tells the story Björn has told tons of newspapers and magazines, but what struck me was the comments to the article. Many of them were really mean and ill-natured and I suppose it is easy to come across some people like that with an article in a business newspaper. In my blog at Veckans Affärer I have already came across comments about our Fair Trade focus. I know a lot of people don't understand the point of Fair Trade, I suppose I will have to get used to facing them more often... You can read the article about Björn and the comments here: link

Sebastian Stjern
THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Veckans Affärer, again

I have been invited to blog for a site called Veckans Affärer, you can see my post about it here: link

It feels really exciting to be blogging at their website, I hope it can make more people interested in both The Fair Tailor and entrepreneurship.

You can check out and bookmark the blog at blogg.va.se/entreprenor

Sebastian Stjern

The Fair Tailor

-Dress Responsibly

Results of the e-survey

We have got a great result on our e-survey. We sent the survey to 175 persons and 101 have responded. If you still haven't responded please check it out at http://ow.ly/ak2Z

I would like to share some of the results with you. Some of the answers were not really surprising, like the fact that an average man owns more shirts than an average woman does.

17% of the respondents owns clothes that have been produced under fair condition, and among the group that doesn't own any Fair Trade clothes 93% say that they want to. That seem promising =) 

47% answered that they have problems finding shirts that fit them well. According to a book I've read a standard size suit fits perfectly on just 1% of the population.

Sebastian Stjern

The Fair Tailor

-Dress Responsible

Hjärntillskott

Last Friday is was on a seminar called Hjärntillskott (The name is a Swedish play with words that does not really translate).

The seminar was about leadership and there were three speakers: 

*Sweden's former national coach for the bandy team Kent Hultqvist

*The CEO of SIBA, Fabian Bengtsson, who was kidnapped last year

*The former Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson.

Hultqvist spoke about how you need to adapt your leadership to the people you are leading, how he can't be the same coach for the national team as he is when he coaches 7-year old boys.

Bengtsson spoke about his kidnapping, how he managed to stay focused and how it has changed him and the way he leads SIBA.

Persson was the one I had the highest expectations on, he is one of the best public speakers in Sweden. But it was such a disappointment. He was arrogant and he seemed to dream about the good old days when things were so much better.

Good thing Hultquvist and Bengtsson were really good. And the compère, Kristin Kaspersen, was also really good.

It was me, Lina and two other IQube entrepreneurs who went together and we had a really good time there. Now we just have to employ people so that we can be great leaders for them. Lina said something about already having employed me in The Fair Tailor, but I don't know what she meant with that...

Sebastian Stjern

The Fair Tailor

-Dress Responsible

A new hope

After having talked to a person here at IQube today I have realized that The Fair Tailor offers much more that what we first thought.

Through out the work with the company we have had different tacks we have planned to follow, but we have not until now seen how well they fit together. I can't say exactly what I mean, but the pieces fit together much better now.

This will just be a short post, there's a social event here at IQube, IQlub, that I need to go to.

Sebastian Stjern

The Fair Tailor

-Dress Responsible

Yet another post about DEM Collective

Yesterday I med with Annika Axelsson from DEM Collective.

She had traveled for two days and almost missed her connecting flight in Amstedam so she was a bit tired and confused since she came straight from the flight to meet with me.

She told me about the factory they are building in India and the working conditions for people working in the factories that make clothes for the big brands like H&M and Zara. The storys make me very happy that we have chosen a different path with our project.

I am amazed by Annika, she had hardly slept for 2,5 days and lost her luggage and her passport but she was still full of energy when I met with her. She has worked with Fair Trade and organic materials for quite a long time and it must be frustrating to see how slow things are mowing forward. But she still manages to keep her spirits high. Amazing. 

Sebastian Stjern

The Fair Tailor

-Dress Responsible

Small steps forward

Today I've met with our business coach Christian Zanders from Jethsop.

Christian is a really good guy to work with and he has many good ideas. We met for three hours and I left the meeting with my head full of new thoughts about how we should do things.

I don't think we will pursuit ALMI until later in the project, so now we are trying to piece things together to see how we can set up our business without them. Right now I'm trying to set up a meeting with a representative from the regional government, they might be able to assist us.

People are answering the e-survey we've sent out. If you haven't received an invitation and you can read Swedish, please check out http://ow.ly/ak2Z

Sebastian Stjern

The Fair Tailor

-Dress Responsible