Hairbows

Ali and I are feeling much better today, just both very sleepy and exhausted feeling.

I got a new “bee bonnet” last week. Or maybe more aptly put, a “bee bow”.

You know how Ali loves hair bows, and they have just the CUTEST bows ever on Etsy? That is where I buy all of Ali’s bows because there is literally NOWHERE in town that has cute hair bows. Even if you can find a store that has bows (which is hard to begin with), they are horrid poofy 80’s bows (sorry, Mom, I know you made me wear these when I was little, but it’s ok, it actually WAS the 80’s).

Anyway, Ashley, AJ, Ali and I were walking through the mall the other day, and I mentioned how well a kiosk in the mall would do selling hairbows like the cute ones on Etsy, because they would be SOOO super easy to make, and there would be no (current) competition in town. Plus, think of all of the stay at home Moms (like us) who walk the mall allll the time. Ashley surprised me and said “Totally! We should do that!!”. I wasn’t quite expecting her to think it was a doable idea, and she might have just been being nice, but it set of a row of dominoes in my head.

It wasn’t purposeful, it’s just that my geeky businessy side took over my mind and FORCED me to concoct an ENTIRE business plan in my mind.

Gotta find out how much a kiosk costs in the mall.

I could buy all of the supplies, then get all of the already crafty stay at home moms I know (like Greta and Lydia), and all of the potentially crafty SAHM’s I know (all the rest of ’em) to make the hairbows, and I could have this great spreadsheet keeping up with how many they made, and then split the profits at the end of the month according to the percentages of the total hairbows made.

I could have tiered levels of how much they got per hairbow depending upon the complexity of the hairbows.

I could totally sell the hairbows for 1 for $5, 3 for $12, 5 for $15. . .etc. Or should the price point breaks be different?

How would I get people to actually work at the booths? Maybe high school girls? Maybe the aforementioned SAHM’s would like to work a few hours a week.

How much FUN would Ali and AJ have getting to help out making and keeping up with hairbows in a few years? I really got off on a long rabbit trail thought stream on that one. It reminded me of all of the crafts we made as kids (in particularly, Heads, but that’s another blog for another day), and sold at Christmas time (at Christmas Village and Homestead Hollow) to earn money to buy Christmas presents with. I absolutely LOVED doing that!! I would keep up with how many I made, what the break even point was, how many dollars that I would make per Head, etc. Yes, it’s true, I’ve always been this geeky.

Back to hairbows. I figured out inventory control systems, accounting systems, profit points, costs, etc. All in an afternoon’s “back of the mind” thoughts.

I even tried to call and find out how much it costs to lease a kiosk at the Galleria, but their sales staff was quite incompetent with this device called a TELEPHONE and kept accidentally hanging up on me and giving me the wrong numbers (maybe they knew that I wasn’t ready to lease a kiosk tomorrow).

Anyway, I know all of this is crazy talk – I already work for three companies, am a stay at home mom, and of course have to make time for my blog. Plus, businesses like this rarely ever make much money. And I remember how much unbelievable TIME it took for my Mom to run businesses at home.

But it was so FUN to think about!! And it still is. . .my geeky side still has a hostile takeover of a little corner of the back of my mind, trying to figure out how to make the time to make it work.

I know, go ahead and say it. I enjoy numbers WAY too much.