MAGIC, Las Vegas, day three (Thursday Feb 19)
The last day was a wash for us. I wanted to attend a seminar today, but I attended it yesterday completely by chance. The show itself was winding down all day. So we walked and talked. We met some pretty cool companies… The folks at 180S kicked down a free pair of gloves to the wife and me. Nice gloves for skiing and boarding and will definitely come in handy. Easy to talk to folks and I want to give a shout out to them. So when you are looking at ski gloves, 180S has some really cool features…one of which includes a special finger for operation of iPods without having to remove your gloves. So if you ski or board while listening to tunes, there is no other option than 180S. The gloves are quality, not gimmicky.
Also talked with some folks from Kuhl (pronounced cool). Not really fashion in the strictest sense, but some nice outdoor wear and base layer stuff. Very high quality and I can already attest to the functionality of their gear. It is cold and rainy here in NorCal right now and I am wearing a wool 3/4 zip pullover with a unique lining that is similar to fleece, but different. Retails for around $100, which is pricey for a guy who looks for sales when buying functional clothing, but clearly quality stuff. I will be washing it this evening to see how it holds up –always important.
One other goal of my trip to MAGIC was to try and find sales representation…I feel that a rep can do a lot with a good product. In one of the seminars, I was called upon to explain why I had raised my hand to a “survey” type question, and in explaining, I mentioned that I was a startup with product warehoused in our garage at home. So a rep from the Las Vegas area approached me and we exchanged business cards…I called to follow up but no response as of yet. Perhaps men’s underwear was not what she was looking to add to her line card? As for other leads regarding reps, I have nothing to report, though I was told to look into LinkedIn…I am already on LinkedIn, so was apprehensive about doing something not related to my primary job since I have many contacts from within my present company. So I have opened another account with XOvergear as my company.
Summary:
By the end of the week, I was exhausted. We were so tired at the end of each day from all of the standing and walking, we failed to partake in any late night activities. The most we did was eat out and one night we went and got foot massages. 75 minutes well spent. My legs still felt exhausted afterwards, but the process of getting the work done was so relaxing. I wanted to get a full body massage, especially being in Las Vegas…but I am still nursing some cracked ribs and simply could not imagine trying to lay on my stomach. I can’t even lay face down in bed yet and it has been 3 weeks since using my upper body to try and break up the ice while snowboarding. I will also admit that walking the show opened up a lot of ideas for us, with decisions as to how we might move forward. Business decisions that we will need more time to consider.
MAGIC Las Vegas Day three
February 25th, 2009MAGIC Las Vegas Day two
February 25th, 2009MAGIC, Las Vegas, day two (Wednesday Feb 18)
Today I spent some time attending seminars and quickly learning that the seminars appeared to be primarily geared towards larger established companies or companies that are quickly growing/expanding. In fact, I am starting to feel that the entire show is that way. I was amazed at how many smaller retailers and companies were on display…and the reason for my amazement was that according to discussions with others, a single (smallest) booth (8×8) runs in the neighborhood of $5000 for the show!
Anyway, back to the seminars. I attended a couple of seminars regarding global sourcing (strategies and options) as well as how to lower cost of landed goods. Again, I got the distinct impression that startups really have to work hard to pull relevant information from these seminars as they tend to focus on how to manage and rate multiple factories in multiple countries etc.
Closing out the seminars on Wednesday was “e-retailing and marketing 101”…finally a seminar that applies to someone in my position! So the seminar begins, and I find that it is actually a seminar called “Fashion business Inc. presents “starting and branding a new clothing and accessory line””. I am thinking to myself that I must have confused my days, since the guide that I have shows this seminar to be on Thursday at 4:00. It turns out that it was in fact moved up a day, and was the ONLY other relevant seminar for a new business/start-up and was on my short list to attend. Oh, and the discussion that I had planned on attending? –it was moved to another room FOR THE SAME TIMESLOT! Ok, the message is pretty clear by now. If you are a small business or start-up, you are not all that important. I mean, I spent the better part of a day listening to the issues facing companies like Ann Taylor and JC Penney, companies I might add, that have very little in common with me and those like me, only to find that the two seminars most relevant for new businesses are arranged so that they are in the same timeslot but in two separate rooms. I fully understand moving the discussion from Thursday at 4:00 –after all, the show ends on Thursday. But in moving, clearly no thought was given to the timeslot selected. Not to mention that the guide which I picked up on Tuesday afternoon was incorrect. I did not occur to me to investigate the accuracy of the shows and their respective timeslots.
It is not my intention to be a whiner. I learned a ton by walking the show as well as attending seminars. In fact, I met some folks in the same boat as me w/r/t starting their own businesses and feeling that the discussions were ignoring them. I hope to continue communicating with some of these folks…
MAGIC Las Vegas Day one
February 25th, 2009MAGIC, Las Vegas, day one (Tuesday Feb 17)
Today is the day where we finally attend THE clothing tradeshow. It is called MAGIC and it is huge! The wife and I flew together and met her sister just a few hours later. Her sister decided that she wanted to come along at the last minute and I was all for it. She is a seriously gabby girl, and I figured I could use all the help that I could get. She is also a lot of fun to be around, and she was only going to do the first two days before heading back to the family.
The first thing that I learned after getting our badges is that we arrived a day later than we should have. What I mean by this is that being a start-up, my goal was to attend as many seminars as possible, and Monday, day one (the day before the show opens), was the first of their many seminars. “Sourcing ABCs” followed by “Developing a fashion product and getting it manufactured” were on the agenda for Monday, and both really apply to what I’m trying to do at XOver. Of course, one thing that I learned by the end of the week is that the guide I was carrying with me was subject to change. In fact, it did change in one instance which made little to no sense to me –more on that later.
There were no shows of interest to me on Tuesday, so I spent the day in the Sourcing building talking about fabrics and possible manufacturers for future production. I am still very happy with my contact in Shanghai, and I look forward to doing more business with him, but I need to be able to keep him honest with pricing. So I dropped some samples with various manufactures in the hope of getting competitive pricing bids for comparison purposes as well as samples to check their quality. –I fully realize that I may very well have to redo a lot of the work that went into getting a finished product if I were to change suppliers at this time. The first time around, it took the better part of a year to iron out all the details and I would expect nothing less a second time around –unless I was able to travel to China and spend significant time overseeing things.
SEO rambling
December 17th, 2008I believe that I have mentioned in previous posts that I have retained the services of a company that specializes in SEO –search engine optimization. The company name is Visible.net, and the nice thing about this outfit is that they are there whenever I need them. Meaning, when I call them during work hours, I have had at least a 95% hit rate when it comes to getting a person to actually speak with. Unfortunately, having a day job means that not only do I not have the time to call during normal work hours, but I find that I have trouble thinking of intelligent questions to ask of them when I do. I mean, I do have one question…when are sales going to increase? –in case you are wondering, yes, I have asked them this very question –earlier today in fact.
Having recently installed Google Analytics, I am now able to track hits to my site in a far more comprehensive manner than using the Yahoo! based site tools that come with hosting through Yahoo!. I can even view the location of visitors to my site. Things are so slow right now; I have the time to look at every single hit. Visible.net is supposed to help me with getting my web page to show up on web searches for any number of things…from men’s boxer briefs, to men’s cotton underwear. One thing is painfully clear to me. Traffic is not getting to my site. I would venture to say that I have a fairly encouraging “sale to unique visitor” ratio of maybe between 1% and 5%. But with some days only having a single site hit (unique visitor), or worse, none…it is hard to generate sales. I have taken to selling on ebay with seriously discounted pricing levels from now until Christmas. Profitability is extremely low, but I am really hoping that folks buy and if they like what they see, they return. There is where my confidence is high. –as mentioned in a previous entry, the sizing is the only area where I have some reservations, and that is easily overcome…just order a size larger…
I have also gone and joined MySpace, as well as Facebook. MySpace seems better suited to promoting XOvergear.com than Facebook, But that might have more to do with my complete lack of familiarity with both. Visit me at Facebook…under the name of Xover Gear. I am not sure how to search…but if you are familiar and reading this, it may be a simple thing. Suggestions are always welcome.
Just to be clear, my efforts mentioned above are targeted at SEO. As much as I like the folks at Visible.net, after 4 months I have not seen any improvement in site visits. Anytime that I see a spike in visits, I can pretty much trace it back to a particular event that I did on my own. eBay is a perfect example. I have posted some product for sale on eBay in which I have posted a link to my xovergear.com site for additional sizing information, -this realized a rather quick increase in site activity.
I know that I also need to work on my social bookmarking. Some sites that come to mind include the following that I have or am in the process of joining…technorati.com, delicious.com, flickr.com, partnerup.com…as well as some that I am hoping I get started with soon, including, twitter.com, dmoz.com, etc… I am sure that there are more, but I am guessing that using what I’ve already signed up for might help me the most. I have started searching for forums on entrepreneurship, and starting a business, but have had limited success. I did find a discussion forum on MySpace forums, but I have not had time to read through much of it.
Tell you what, I sure wish that I knew how to work with sites like Facebook and MySpace, and even wordpress –which is what I use for my blog. I want to improve the appearance of all three, but find you need to know code, not to mention the complete lack of an intuitive building structure. I have attempted some things on MySpace with very (extremely limited) success. Same goes for wordpress. You are reading my blog now.
I wonder if using MSN homepage and their blog page would be helpful? I am guessing that it may not be worth my time, especially considering the issues I have with what I am currently engaged.
Anyway, getting late and I gotta run…
“keep the rubber side down:
Shrinkage???
December 17th, 2008I just got feedback from a fellow traveler that I gave a free sample to, (who turned around and ordered a dozen more). He sent me an email letting me know that his shorts seem to be shrinking! His comments were to the effect that they shrunk even after the first wash. Now, I have attempted to replicate just about every scenario that might exist in the design of my underwear, and I have noticed that the underwear will shrink a small amount after the first washing, but I have not seen any noticeable changes after that. In fact, I wrote the shrinkage off to a fabric that was no longer relaxed and flat (as it comes out of the package).
Further communications with this fellow traveler to see if I might learn exactly how they are being laundered failed to turn anything up that would be considered out of the ordinary. I include laundering instructions on my packaging indicating to steer clear of hot cycles and more importantly, very hot dryers, but that was more for fear that the heat, especially during drying, would attack the rubber in the Spandex. A fear that has not yet been confirmed in all the wash cycles that I have subjected my product to…
But this does raise a concern –and some comments as well. I did all of my own design work, meaning the shipping of samples back and forth between the factory and me, using leftover material that was of similar composition to my material, but NOT the same weight. Similar in this case meaning the cotton/spandex ratio of the material. The weight that I am using on my first shipment is a heavier weight cotton/spandex than one can purchase directly from a supplier (off the shelf). I have noticed that my sizes of the finished product are not exactly what I was expecting (and had designed). While I still wear a size M, the production sized M is much snugger fitting than the samples that we sent back and forth during the course of a year of development. A reality check confirmed this to be the case as I still have all my samples (which are all size M) in my underwear drawer and they fit loosely in comparison.
If money was not an object, I would be placing another order with revised specifications for size, and would discount the existing units to try and move quickly. This size issue seems to affect the all cotton shorts more so than the mesh with cotton. Of course, discounting them now just might help with sales, since traffic to my site has been dismal. See other update…(SEO)
Once I get to reorder time I will be updating my sizing, as well as getting some new colors out there. I am also working on a few other ideas, which I will discuss in another entry…
Technorati submission
November 10th, 2008This is my submission to Technorati
Technorati Profile
As an FYI, this is a part of my attempt to increase traffic to my website: XOvergear performance apparel as business has been slow. I will not blame the economy as I do not believe that the economy is doomed. Things will bounce back, and let’s face it, good economy or not, folks need underwear. I cannot help but think that our boxer briefs and trunks are the best deal in designer men’s underwear period. I will admit that they are not for everyone, but if you like them, you love them. I would say that better than 50% end up wanting more. The fit is snug, some call it a “European fit”…I call it an athletic fit. I want achieve success, if for no other reason than to prove my theory that the big manufacturers are only in it for the money. I badly wish to move forward with new colors and designs. I want to release my ideas for women’s sleepwear -which will simply be boy shorts for the bottoms along with form fitting tanks and tees for the tops.
Then there are the men’s dress/workout XOver tee shirts that I want to start designing and offering. All logos will be placed strategically so that they can be worn under white dress shirts. Later, you can wear them at the gym without having to look like you are wearing wife beater or bargain tee shirts…
More to come…
SEO and other updates
September 16th, 2008Where to start? Online business has not picked up…in fact, I would venture to say that it is down or even non-existent if the past two weeks are any indication.
We have signed up with a company (Visible.net) that specializes in SEO as well as web marketing. They cautioned me not expect to see much improvement for at least 4-5 months. It is all a matter of trying to move the XOver website up in web rankings with search engines. To that end, I am trying a few things on my own…this blog being one of them. It turns out that Blogging is supposed to be helpful for online businesses. To think, I thought that it might be interesting to just document this whole “starting a business” adventure. So the blog idea came way before my learning that it won’t hurt my website any. As mentioned earlier, it does not seem to be helping either come to think of it.
Starting this business, little did I know or realize how little time I would have to focus on this. That is the price one pays for actually having a day job that extends into the evening more often than not. This is not me whining, just stating fact. I am sure that it comes as no surprise to anyone that has actually started a business in their lifetime. This is not to say that it is not rewarding, it is actually fun. Even if not exactly financially rewarding, the fact that I was able to follow up an idea and actually do something about it…and the thrill of knowing that the result really works as been it’s own reward. I have been wearing my underwear designs for a year now, and I still love wearing them. It is hard NOT to use the blog as an avenue to self promote, as I really believe in what I am doing, and only time will tell if I am right. At least there are others that feel the same way that I do. While I would expect friends and family to support me, my very first online sale to a customer in Indiana resulted in a Yahoo feedback being completed (unprompted I should add) with “excellent” ratings across the board. While it has not yet resulted in more sales to this person just yet, I feel a small victory nonetheless.
I have also managed to receive some testimonials. I asked a few customers if they would be interested in having their comments appear on my website in the form of testimonials, and I had two responses within the day. Doug and Doug. I just posted another testimonial from Allen, and they can be seen at XOver testimonials . In the event that you might have visited my site, I expect that I will be pulling down the hair and skin care page. For starters, we do not warehouse any of these items, and if someone were to order them, we would basically make nothing on them. The wife will not like to see these things gone, but
More positives… I am told that Chris Siebenhaar loves his shorts (Chris races AMA formula extreme, as well as Supersport (both are 600cc) with Matsushima Suzuki). He has presented samples to his teammates, though I am not sure about Garrett, but reportedly Danny Eslick likes them and has even asked for more. With the last race of the season coming up at the end of September in Laguna Seca (2 weekends from now), these guys will need to go back to their hometowns to train and prepare for next season –not to mention the need to go back to work to try to earn some spending money. Danny is reportedly asking about selling XOver gear in Oklahoma and surrounding areas (where he is from). Chris on the other hand is expected to be a rep for Suomy helmets, and had shown interest in talking up XOver when travelling the country to different shops for Suomy (though I certainly do not see any conflict, I will not support any activities that might jeopardize his primary function).
Here is Chris:
July 29 Update
July 29th, 20087-29-2008 Blog entry
This past weekend was very busy. I had 3 Saturday appointments scattered all over the bay area…from Napa to the UC-Davis area to Oakland. In total, the wife and I covered about 290 miles that day. I will discuss stops one and three.
However, before all this could happen we had to prepare enough 5X7 cards in order to have some sort of product display that was more than just an 8.5 by 11 bag with underwear inside. I have several thousand 5×7 zip-lock style plastic bags, and wanted to have my shorts packaged in them, and had to design and print 5×7 cards to insert into the bags. A quick stop by Fry’s for heavyweight paper stock, I ended up buying 5X7 photo paper in Matte finish as well as some 65# 8.5×11 heavyweight paper, not to mention printer ink for our printer. For DTM, I dropped off 24 pairs of shorts and for rideSFO I had some 20 pieces. We ended up heading to sleep at 4:00AM. We had started working shortly after 9:00PM that evening, and this is after starting my Friday with my typical 4:00AM wakeup as my Fridays often start in Oregon (I do have a day job that takes a minimum of 10 hours a day –frequently much more than 10).
DTM Motorsports
Stop one was with DTM motorsports in Napa California. Steven Giovanonni (sp?) is a friend of mine that has a small business and agreed to take some XOver gear product to display in his shop. I easily spent an hour there just waiting to talk with him as he was working with customers and his place was pretty busy. That is what’s great about DTM…the customer service and interaction. I like his business model to differentiate himself from other shops through superior customer support. Any time that you visit him, he can suggest great places to ride, or where the races might be that weekend…nevermind that he really knows his products. Anyway I digress. I finally get to talk with him about the product, and we still have a small audience of folks hanging around his shop just killing time. Next thing you know Steven is talking up my boxer briefs to a couple of guys…”I wear these when playing Indoor Soccer…and they are fantastic”. “Jogging and bicycle riding are so much more comfortable with these shorts…” etc. Steven has had pre-production samples, but never really provided much in the way of feedback in the past. After all, we do ride MX as well as pitbikes together, and we talk about just about everything. So this is the first time that I have heard him say anything about my product, let alone sing it’s praises. Needless to say, I was pleased. I expect to learn a lot from working with Steve.
On a positive note, Steve has reported a sale the first day that product was displayed…in fact, he was in the process of setting up a small display after getting his price tags installed.
ride SFO
Quan (my wife) is friends with Phil, founder of rideSFO who does freeride and downhill mountain bike protective apparel and lifestyle clothing. Our meeting started a little late and we were up against a hard stop on his end, but what can you do with bay area traffic the way that it is? Regardless, once you get Phil started on a topic, there is no stopping him. He now has roughly 20 pairs of our boxer briefs in store. I hope that he has evaluated some by now…he indicating that he thought that they would work great for a new hobby that he has taken up –Yoga. Phil went on for some length of time about how he was unable to find the perfect underwear for yoga, and that he easily spent a couple of weekends searching for the perfect underwear, but wound up short. I hope that his search is over.
Anyway, we talked about everything under the sun, even discussion how to get involved in conventions, which conventions to try to attend, and even offering some floor space at an upcoming show. (I will provide more details later as they firm up) Regardless, Phil is an idea guy who loves the challenge of starting a business. I hope that I am able to meet up with him on a more regular basis as his enthusiasm is truly infectious. I have yet to hear back from him on the shorts, and am hoping that getting this blog entry will help prompt him into action. I like the fit of XOver gear with rideSFO.
Starting a business online
July 21st, 2008Week 2 update:
I decided to try Google AdWords today. From the reading that I did, it seems entirely possible to go broke with Adwords, and if not for the “set monthly limit” feature, I would not have signed on. Of course, that is assuming that there is that much interest in men’s underwear (boxer briefs) to begin with, and that people start clicking on the campaign advertisement. Yahoo appears to have something similar, but after starting my business with Yahoo small business, I am a little concerned about doing everything through them. I have not had any hits to my site to speak of, and the one thing that I liked were my chances of getting hits through Yahoo searches. Clearly I made an uninformed assumption.
Also of note, I purchased DreamweaverCS3 and Intuit Quickbooks 2008. I don’t know how to use either, but looking at it from a distance, it seems like a good idea to just give it a shot. I am guessing that my opinion will change once I actually start to dive in and realize that I have no idea what I am doing. While I like a challenge, sometimes it sounds like a better idea in theory than in practice. Of note though, is the fact that I did the graphics for my website as it currently stands using Photoshop and Illustrator, two other programs that I had zero experience starting out on (but they are more geared towards instant gratification -meaning you do something right, and you see it instantly). I am looking forward to improving the look and feel of my site, and if confidence increases enough, possibly changing providers. While I have many ideas, the real challenge(s) will be to see if I can bring them to reality.
I do have some updates worth mentioning… I have provided my product to an AMA motorcycle road racer (Chris Siebenhaar of team Matsushima Performance Suzuki), who fell in love with them…so much so that he wanted more to give to some of his racing friends, among them being Jamie Hacking, and Ben Spies. Yes Ben Spies, but as of this week they have not seen my product. This weekend was the Laguna Seca MotoGP weekend and both Hacking and Ben were wildcard MotoGP factory riders for the weekend, so they spent 90% of their time in the MotoGP garages…Chris did not run into either, but he reportedly did give some to his teammates -Danny Eslick and Garret Carter who reportedly liked what they saw. I hope to have something substantive to report in the future on this front. Regardless, from the standpoint of comfort on a motorcycle, they are getting thumbs up from roadracers (I ride a little Supermoto myself, as well as MX) which I suspected might happen having spent the past year developing and wearing them to the track.
That’s about all for now. As mentioned earlier, I hope to have something real to report out in my next update. I was hoping for weekly updates, but if there’s nothing to report, then I will likely not waste space with drivel. If you got this far, thanks for tuning in.
Welcome to XOver
July 10th, 2008Thanks for visiting my site. I sure hope that you take the time to see what is here…what must be described as the best deal on high end men’s underwear. My initial idea was to find nice boxer briefs because my wife likes them on me, and I like the look of them. I started by buying everything under the sun, in the process I spent a lot of money and never found that “just right” fit. I did however find some fantastic designs with respect to colors and prints…but I imagine that with XOver just starting out we are quite a ways from being able to throw some of our ideas onto fabric.
In the meantime, I have spent a year getting just the fit that I want. Now I can look good wearing boxer briefs, yet feel comfortable while doing so. Comfort has always been my pet peave with the boxer type brief. Either my junk was pressed against my skin (legs), or there was simply no support to speak of and my stuff was all over the place -fine for work (I wear a suit), but not so good for the gym or sports. I also found that the snug fitting brands tended to leave me feeling sticky and uncomfortable (pressed against my own body…), and that was before ever working out. Fit became an obsession of mine. Next came fabric. I quickly learned that my fabric cannot be simply bought…it must be ordered to spec from a mill. Cotton/Spandex is nothing special or new, but the weight that I found that I like the most, is special. This blend is heavier than anything you will find in the competition, (far more so than the big underwear companies) far softer and with perfect memory. These big companies sell SO MUCH product, yet with seemingly no design thought put into it. It is not surprising as most guys simply don’t think much about underwear, but I hope to change that. Starting with close friends, guys that used to settle for tighty whities bought in bulk, are now clamoring for XOver gear sportswear -or sports underwear.
Let me tell you right now. If you want underwear that fits every bit as well at the end of the day as it did when you pulled them out of the dryer, then you have got to try XOver. If you want to feel fresh between your legs at the end of a day (what you might now think impossible), you have got to give XOver a try.
What have you got to lose.
