Clearing customs

Hi there all you fans of The Fair Tailor.

We are currently moving forward towards the launch at a high pace. A luckey few have got the chance to design their own unique shirts at our beta site. Their respons has been very positive and helpful. We are now changing a few things after their tests and opinions.
The website looks great, the IT crew at Monator are doing a great job. I cant let you see the site yet, but you'll have to trust me.

When we launch the site we will have more products than tailor made shirts, we will also sell towels in ecological Egyptian cotton, cuff links made from recyckled circut boards and paper products made from in Nepal from recycled paper.

We are currently planning to move this blog, so that it will appear under our main website www.thefairtailor.com. But we will of course let you know all about that.

Right now the fabrics are clearing customs between India and Nepal. As soon as they get to Kathmandu we will start making the first shirts. Govinda, our employee in Nepal is doing a great job to get everything up to speed.

On Sunday you should try to get a hold of the newspaper Göteborgsposten. They interviewed me this Monday about social media. It's going to be interesting to read the article.

Sebastian Stjern

THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet

The beta site is released

Today we released our beta site, a few luckey fans of The Fair Tailor have been given the chance to become one of The Fair Tailors first customers.

It was great to see that so many were interested in becoming one of the first customers. The beta site looks works quite well, but there are some things that need to be fixed before the launch.

It's going to be really interesting to see what kind of shirts the customers will be interested in, what their response to the web site will be.

Yesteday we took part in Språngbrädan, a process to gain access to a group of investors. There were a panel of eight and they had been given our business plan to review. We made a 12 minutes presentation of the company and our business idea.
They had both good and not so good feedback. It is always good to get a new perspective on things. We are working with this project day and night and that sometimes makes it difficult to take a step back and look at things from the outside.

Sebastian Stjern

THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet

Friday night at the office

It's little before 7pm and I'm sitting at the office together with Lina. It's such a romantic setting, the white office walls with nothing but our post-it project plan on them, the buzzing of the laptop fans and the magical light from the fluorescent lamp. This is one part of the magical, mystical life of this married couple.

On Monday we give a very important presentation AND we are launching the beta version of the site. Later today we are contacting every one who have been interested in becoming on of our first customers. Some of them have been lucky and will be given the opportunity to be one of The Fair Tailors first customers. Unfortunatley some of them will have to wait for the official launch to buy their first shirts. But I can not reveal that everyone who has expressed a desire to be one of our first customers during our drive will get a little special something from us when they become customers later on.

Well, it's time for me to get back to work. My goal is to get home before 10pm, it as after all a Friday. Good thing my wife is in this company as well. Otherwise it would be really difficult to explain why I spend so much time on it.

Sebastian Stjern

THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet

Working on that business plan...

Today I have been workin from 7:30 and it's now 23:30, quite a long day...

I started of with some communication with Govinda in Nepal, continued with taking some temporary pictures for the beta website that we will release this week. Have you signed up to get a chance to be one of our first customers?

After that it was time for the business plan. We have a deadline and need to be finished with the business plan before midnight. I think we will make it, but I'm not 100% sure. More like 99,5%.

We have met with the bank today and with our business coach Christan.

This evening we gave an inspirational presentation for Venture Cup at Handelshögskolan in Gothenburg. About 100 students were there and they seemed to like what we had to say. It is fun to talk about The Fair Tailor and we get so much energy in return from the audience.

I don't have the time right now, but soon I will write a post about our lecture at Rättvis Handelsforum in Malmö, but now I have to finish that business plan.

Sebastian Stjern

THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet

Front page news

Today we want to encourage all our fans to buy the newspaper Göteborgsposten.
If you do you will find a very interesting teaser on the front page, a small teaser and a picture on the front page of the financial section and a big article with a huge picture on the first spread.

If you do not want to see our pictures but just read the article you can also find it here.
We are really excited and very happy about this publicity. And the funny thing is that the reporter, Linus, contacted us. Lina spoke at seminar at the organisation Företagarna and they were so impressed by our story that when the reporter contacted them to find young people who have started a company they told him to contact us.
We really liked the pictures Magnus, the photographer, took. Our office is very, ehm, minimalistic. But he managed to find angles to give it life.

Today we are leaving for Malmö where we will speak at Rättvis Handelsforum and on Monday and Tuesday we will speak at Venture Cup. People must really like to hear what we have to say =)

We have put up a temp page at www.thefairtailor.com. Check it out if you want a preview of our website design and learn more about our company.

If you want to get updates on what happens with The Fair Tailor - send us an email (info@thefairtailor.com) and we will send you our newsletter.

Sebastian Stjern

THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet

A radio star

Today we've got a packed schedule but I have something I want to share with you.

I have told you that Lina is currently doing a radio commercial for Venture Cup, a business idea competition that we entered last year. The really liked our idé and thus wanted Lina to do the radio spot.

Jonas at Venture Cup has uploaded a clip to YouTube and here it is:

On Friday we will be in Malmö to speak at Rättvis Handelsforum. Please check it out if you are in the area.

Sebastian Stjern

THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet

A stylized logo and a press release

Earlier this week The Fair Tailor sent out our first press release. It is only available in Swedish, you can read it here. We used a service called MyNewsdesk to send it, I can highly recommend the service.

I promised you guys the new stylized logo and the black/white logo once they were finished and here they are.

We decided to go with a black button thread on the black/white logo to make it more visible against the grey button.

We wanted to keep the font of the logo and at the same time make the button cleaner, to be able to use it for example on logos.

The webdesign on our future site will follow the style of these logos and the x and the button will follow us for many years to come.

Our fabrics are currently on their way to Nepal. According to the latest reports we will keep our time plans. I just hope everything will work out well at the Indian/Nepali border.

The work at the production house is going well, Govinda and Tirtha are working together to get all things up to speed for the start of production.

As I wrote in my last post we are giving some fans of The Fair Tailor the chance to become one of our first customers and the response has been great. Next week we will have a raffle to decide who will get the chance.

Sebastian Stjern

THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet