What A Night

Yesterday in my basic entrepreneurship class my teacher mentioned a home-based business plan comeptition that the Business School does every year. Participants have to have a plan that would work in the home, and the winner gets $5000.

Me ears perked.

My thoughts about my clothing line for postpartum women ran through my head.

I knew I had to enter.

Making postpartum dresses for cjane has really got me thinking the past few weeks of this unidentified market of postpartum women that are in between wearing their maternity wear and wearing normal clothing. The reaction I have been getting in comments and emails about my postpartum dresses had convinced me enough as of last night that starting a postpartum dress line would be a great first project.

Too bad the business plan for the competition was due at 5pm that day. My heart sank when my teacher told me after class.

"But come up to my office and I'll show you the winner's from last year business plan. Maybe you could whip something up in 2 hours!"

Her enthusiasm for my idea was flattering, but slightly over optomistic. A business plan in 2 hours? How about 7.

THankfully, the ladies in the entrepreunership office let me turn it in the next morning. I stayed up till 3 am writing about future sales, ideas, stats. This part of the whole put a little damper on my business dreams, but it was totally beneficial to actually put in numbers and make a real concrete plan out of my intangbile ideas. where was I going to get a manufactureer? How much would it cost me up front? these kinds of questions aren't really thought of by an artist like myself.

These 7 hours and this project is another reason why I love BYU so much. It encourages art and creativity far beyond any other school I have seen, while still maintaining a sense of reality in all the projects. My teachers have always prodded my creative mind to see how it can stretch, but then they always follow up and say, "now can this actually be feasible? do your research! you will be in the real world soon!"  My fantasies of being the next Kate Spade will only go so far if I dont have all the numbers crunched and consider reality. 

So I was at Kinkos at 2:30 getting my business plan bound.

I might cry if I don't get to the final round of the competition when we give presentations to the panel with more details about the business. I might cry.

here are some designs that I am doing for cjane: They all have buttons or a zipper down center front for easy breastfeeding accessibility. How clever. These are more or less good representations of what cjane will be wearing.