First e-survey, inspiration by Drivhuset and more about ALMI

I've just sent out our first e-survey and I'm really excited about the response we'll get.

I've sent it to 151 persons. If you are not one of them and if you can read Swedish I can send it to you as well.

The e-survey will be a base for the development of The Fair Tailor, I hope it will give me a few pointers about what people are interested in.

I really like Drivhuset!

I have mostly spoken to Andreas there but today I spoke with Maria and it was very inspiring. We and ALMI have different ideas on how to solve things but there are other ways of doing things and Maria was good at pointing them out.

I spoke to Carin at ALMI today and we agreed to disagree.

They have their view on how things should be done and we do not share that view.

And that's to bad.

But it was a good talk with Carin, she managed to explain their view, earlier ALMI has not informed us on why they feel they way they do. They believe that a project like ours should be financed strictly by own capital, i.e. you should not loan money for a project like this.

Sebastian Stjern

The Fair Tailor

-Dress Responsible

I get knocked down, but I get up again, they're never gonna keep me down

The title of this post is a line from a song by the band Chumbawamba and it symbolize pretty well how I feel right now.
So, ALMI turned us down. They believe that for a project like this you should not work with loans, you should only use money you already have.

What to do?
Lay down and die? Give up the project?
Of course not, we just have to change a few things. Be smarter, do things differently.

I am stubborn so I haven't completely given up the idea of ALMI, but we need an alternative. And that's what I'm working on right now.

Today we're meeting with the Minister of Enterprise, Maud Olofsson. Well, we're not the only ones she's meeting with, Drivhuset has organized a mingle with Maud and Lena Ek who is a member of the European parliament.
I hope to be able to talk a little with them.

Sebastian Stjern

The Fair Tailor

-Dress Responsible

Drivhuset focus group

This morning I was part of a focus group for Drivhuset. 

Some students from IHM Business School had put together focus groups to evaluate a new product from Drivhuset. Since both Lina and I have had a lot of help from Drivhuset I hope my input was of some use for them.

The blog statistics service told me that this blog was the number one site in Google if you search for fair trade tailoring, that's kind of cool.

Right now I'm just waiting for ALMI to call and say that they will give us a loan.

I'll keep you posted on what happens.

The first day at IQube

Yesterday afternoon we had a coaching session with Andreas at Drivhuset.
It's always good to talk to him. He thinks we are doing a good job, but he has always these little tips on how we can make things a little bit smarter.

After the meeting we went to a lecture about the art of selling.
Ulla-Lisa Thordén told us about selling from an interesting perspective. She is a veteran in the business and she thinks of selling as something everyone can do, it's just about to find the right product to sell, i.e. something you believe in.

Now we have to run, we have our first day at IQube, the company incubator I have written about earlier.

Some good leads

We had the meeting with Drivhuset this afternoon and we got some new good leads to follow up on. One thing we discussed was company from Gothenburg that has started up their own cotton fields in Sri Lanka, just to be able to make sure that everything is done with a fair trade focus. That’s impressive!
We will try to get in contact with them and see if they can give us any tips.

Skype is a very good invention!
I talked to Tirtha, the manager of the school we hope to work with in Nepal – Watabaran. He seems to be a really nice guy. He offered to come and pick me at the airport so we can talk. That seems promising. He comes highly recommended, so it would be great if we could work together with him.

I read today that Sweden imports goods from Nepal worth approximately 7MSek, about $850 000. If we get the result we hope to get we will increase that figure significantly =)

I had dinner with a couple of friends tonight and they are really exited about the project. It’s always good to get energized from talking to people who believe in the things you do.

Feeling a little bit more relaxed

After the last couple of day’s hard work on the business plan it feels good to be able to relax a little.
We still have a lot of things to do, sure, but we met the deadline and now things are a little bit more relaxed.
Money is a major issue right now, and it doesn’t seem like there are too many ways to go. We hope to be able to solve it with a mix of our savings, a bank loan, a loan from ALMI and something we don’t know about yet. And of course by winning Venture Cup. If we were to win both the regional and the national finals, that would cover our financial needs. So as long as we have the best business plan in the country we have nothing to worry about =)

We will have to investigate the possibility to try to get venture capital, but first we want to see what the bank and ALMI has to say.
If you know anyone who likes our idea and who has a money to invest, please let us know =)

Even though money is an issue, it doesn’t matter if we don’t think we can get the company up and running in Nepal. I hope my trip there next week will give us some answers.

Later today we have a meeting with Drivhuset. The meetings I have had with them before have been interesting, so I hope something good will come out of the meeting today as well.

An important meeting

Time does what time usually does when a deadline approaches, it runs out. The Venture Cup deadline is now just 27 hours away.
Last night Lina finished the budget, and I must say that it looks promising. Let’s just hope that the Venture Cup judges feel the same.

At 1pm today we have an important meeting, our first meeting with ALMI. We are hoping that the will like our idea and agree to give us a loan. I think we have a good business case, but then again I might be biased…

I am also trying the get a hold of a person at a bank that we have been recommended to contact by Drivhuset. Besides from ALMI we will also need to take out a conventional bank loan, and of course but in a lot of our lives savings =)
Drivhuset is an organisation that helps people who want to start up their own business and we have got a good contact there.

Now, it’s back to the business plan for me. I hope to be able to give a short summary on the ALMI meeting later today.