The Creative Process

My very talented friend received my laughable sketches early on in the business process. I think the development of our characters was one of the funnest parts of the entire process. After sending her the sketches I also sent her the rough draft of our first book. We both new that we wanted an eco-friendly line and eco-friendly robots! My friend and then partner balanced each other very well because she was extremely detailed oriented and I was not. I was so happy with the first sketch she submitted, Jacy Botberg looked so cute (maybe a little more robot-y and less people-y like she is now), but my partner wasn't happy and continued to improve on the image until we came to the current and super cute Jacy!! I was happy with each version. I remember there being a shoe debate, but the ones that resulted are absolutely adorable! As each character was delivered by email I was so excited. I used to check my email on my phone throughout the night just to see if something was delivered. I was so impressed by the talent of my partner and so excited about our future. Who couldn't love the Botberg's and the O'Geary's? I know we did!!

One thing that I really appreciated my partner did was to develop a color palet for the line. She really knew that it was important to me that the clothing and characters be very vibrant. The colors she came up with were amazing! All the sketches and colors were done in Pantone...which would later become a problem as we didn't know dye colors should be Pantone..TPX, but that is another story.

One more thing, while my partner was busy creating our amazing characters she was also busy getting our website ready and exploring other aspects of our business that I may have not thought of. She was great!

Securing Investors

During the business plan phase I quickly realize that I was going to need more money than we had to invest in the business. Instead of assuming the risk of a business loan I chose to transfer the risk to investors. This made sense to me because I had just resigned from my job and planned to stay at home with my daughter. I had every confidence that Bot Tots was going to be a success, but SBA loans were down by 40% and most were going to high tech businesses, so I new my chances were slim.

I consulted with my SBA coach who gave me some great advise. After reviewing my financials he suggested that I create projected profits for at least three years under different scenarios for my investors. One very interesting thing about financial projections like profit and cost projections, is that although they're based partly on research in the industry you are trying to break into, but they're really just a best guess. I determined that I wanted to secure .05% of the aggregate children's apparel market. That may seem small, but it equaled a large annual profit when successful. The great thing about the children's apparel industry is that it is highly fragmented with its biggest competitors only securing about 20% of the aggregate market.

So my financials were reviewed and approved by my SBA coach. The next step was to determine what kind of return I wanted to offer my investors. I initially came up with the idea of 1% for every 1,000 dollars invested. My SBA coach suggested that investors get rewarded for growth of the company (since they really weren't traditional investors in that they didn't actually own a portion of the company, but were just given a promise by myself that I would share a portion of my profits during the time period indicated in the investment agreement). So it was determined that investors would receive an increase of .25% of profits for every 10% the company grew after the first fiscal year.

So with my business plan done and printed, my financials in order, and my offer to investors I sent about ten packets out to people who had expressed an interest. Most were impressed with the business and invested!!

Currently, I have a secret number that I know Bot Tots will reach. I already have the checks written out to all my generous investors and I cannot wait till I am able to send those checks. My investors will be happy to see all those zeros!

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