My new industry, Kids Fashion... Oooooh Boy.

It has been an extremely long time since I have posted on this blog and for that, I apologize. I now realize that I was keeping countless readers in the dark and know that I have a responsibility... to the kids!

Of course if your kids are reading my blog they are probably bored out of their little minds and rightfully so. At any age below 30 you probably have better things to be doing, like going out to bars with friends and getting into general mischief with random strangers.

Me, I'm the SAHD with an online Children's Clothing Boutique, NiGi. This is a business that I never dreamed I would get into in my earlier years. You see, I've spent countless years traveling the world playing music and being a general nuisance to everyone I came into contact with. That's how I got my wife, Danielle, to marry me.  I just kept annoying her until she said yes.

We will have time to go into all of that later.  What I really wanted to talk about was this:

Is the fashion industry blatantly impossible for a start-up?

I must be honest, I fully believe in my product, NiGi Children's Clothing. I spend at least two full days a week and three partial days working tirelessly at the computer doing social media with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ (not-so-much).  I am getting somewhere, a few new "likes" per day and I get to meet people on LinkedIn, we are even starting to get Twitter followers on a regular basis. I am learning SEO and SEM slowly but surely... I should say a bit more "slowly" than "surely."

As I said, I believe in our clothing.  It is cute, handmade, hand-painted and completely unique.  I've traveled the world, no kidding, the WHOLE WORLD, and never seen anything like it.  What I run into is trouble with many buyers (not all).  In many cases I can't even get them to speak to me! When I do, they say "send me an email with pictures."  When I send the email, I don't get a response.  So I will call back and hear, "oh yeah, I never looked at it.  Would you send it again?"

This happens in an infinite loop.

I have gotten to the point of trying to find buyers when they are in their stores (which they rarely are) and speak to them in person with product in hand.  It is at this point that they direct me back to option A: send an email... which they promptly never look at.

What am I doing wrong?!?!?! Are these buyers scared of me because I am a male?  I should doubt that because there must be other men in the children's clothing business.  Should I be cracking some sort of proverbial whip that I am not grasping yet?

I am now reading "Some Buyers Will, Some Buyers Won't" which I borrowed from the Kindle Library.  I am hoping to have some kind of insight into this issue by the end of reading this book, however it was written with the U.K. fashion industry in mind so it may not be right for me.  We will see.  I will keep you all informed (all two of you).  Who knows, perhaps I will be the baddest thing out there in two weeks! I mean, people have got to see how super cool I am... SAHD, Musician, Children's Clothing Brand Owner, Good Looking.....ish.

Lovies and Kisses everyone!

And So It Begins...

I'm 31... for now.  You would think that someone my age would be completely comfortable and knowledgeable when it comes to writing a blog.  Not really.  In all truth, this would not be happening at all if it were not for my wife, Danielle, who decided that it wasn't enough for me to run our in-home children's clothing business, take care of our daughter, Charlize, and work evenings playing bass.  OOOOHHHH NOOOOOOO, "honey you should write a blog!"  She says this with that huge smile on her face.  It's the same smile that has made me do many things that I do not want to do... or in her words, things I want to do but just didn't realize it... until now.  So for her amusement (and mine, lets be honest) here is my blog.

Some readers may be asking themselves "what does SAHD stand for."  If you haven't been clued in to it's elongated meaning yet, it is an acronym for: Stay. At. Home. Dad.  It also means exactly what it says phonetically. SAHD.  It's like an elongated version of SAD.  You could go so far as to say... sigh. saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

Don't get me wrong, it is not sad to stay at home with your child while your very capable wife goes to work and makes ten times more than you could ever demand in today's market.  In fact, it is quite intelligent.  While I will never have the amazing maternal instinct that my wife has, I think I do pretty damn good when it comes to raising our daughter during the weekdays.  I also have the skills to run our household in the manner of doing laundry, washing dishes, cleaning, cooking and fixing odds and ends.

What is sad is the lack of support we have as dads in today's society.  At first, I had high hopes to find daddy groups and parent groups in general and after the initial cool down of having a new baby in our home I set out online with my daughter on my hip to find the mythical daddy groups of Denver.

"There are tons of groups for parents online!" my wife told me after I called her at work to complain that I couldn't find any SAHD groups that were actually active.  I found a group on Facebook that said they were dedicated to helping SAHD's and creating play dates but after "liking" the page I noticed that there was only one disgruntled post by someone about two years earlier.  I figured it was kind of tacky to reach out to the mommy groups so I went to the parent groups that I could find online for our area.

I emailed four (count 'em) four different local parent groups.  I waited.  I emailed again, this time asking if I was doing something wrong because I was not receiving any response.  I waited.  I went online and noticed that there was plenty of activity happening on the websites... and then I noticed something that hadn't really stood out before.  All of the people interacting on these sites were mothers.  There wasn't a single (or married) dad posting to any of the blogs.  (BTW, you have to be an approved member to post to any of the blogs.)  There were ads about events happening in our area but none of them were hosted by men.  Was I an "undesirable" because of my gender?  I still don't know the answer to that.  In fact, when we have talked to our friends with kids, they just shrug.  They don't seem to know and I assume it is because the Stay-At-Home in their cases is always the mom.

I'm sure you are probably saying "well, this guy must be creepy or something." You might be right and perhaps during the course of my entire life no one has had the balls to tell me that I am creepy.  I mean I am 5'6" and weigh in at a whopping 135 lbs so you can see how someone might be afraid of me.  My skinny, malnourished (my wife would say) body is obviously something not to be trifled with...  Seriously!?  I am a professional musician!  My job is to make people like me and it works about 99% of the time (I've never been to good at wooing the heavy metal crowd).  I am not creepy!

So this is why SAHD is sad.  It could be for a variety of reasons... perhaps men just aren't good at having daddy groups.  I mean, imagine a group of us hanging out with our kids:

"Hey Bob, isn't that your kid over there pooping in the drinking fountain?"

                  "What?  Sorry.  I was checking out that M.I.L.F. with the blue stroller over there."

"Your kid, Bob, he's dropping a deuce in the water fountain."

                   "He doesn't know how to play cards."

(All likenesses of people living or dead in the above skit is purely coincidental)

Obviously it has to revolve around potty humor.  If I didn't add a little dookie humor in my blog the men would not read it and the women would think I was not a real man.  I am a real, baby havin', male member of the human species folks.

I guess truthfully it would go more like this:

"Sooooo you got the Subaru Outback eh?"


                          "Yup"


"Good cars"


                                             "MmmHmm"


            "Yeah, so, I got one too."


"Oh really?  Do you like it?"


                               "Yeah I do.         Good car."


                       "Yup"


"MmmHmm"

So maybe it is for the best that we stay out of the public eye with our babies so the rest of the men out there don't see us saying things to our kids like,

                    "Did someone have a poopy-woopy!?  OOOoooooh you made a stinky-winky-pie!"

All while we swing our crap-laden child in the air similar to how you waved a stick of incense when the R.A. knocked on the door of your college dorm.

If we were truly honest we would say to our man friends, "Yeah, I stick my face right next to that butt about ten times a day just to see if she decided to take a mud bath in her diaper.  She rocks a good one as much as three times a day depending on if we fed her waffles for breakfast or not."  Then we would follow up with the fact that we almost cried three times while watching the commercials during the super bowl that year.

SAHD.

Tune in next time for:
Child Therapist or Child. Therapist.