Back Once More

I have been out for a long time, busy with my business and with another blog
britanniamarketing.wordpress.com

If you check this blog you will see a very common problem around the internet business (much more than we would like to believe) – SCAMMERS.

They are smart, and normally attach small entrepreneurs because they know we normally DO NOTHING when we get scammed. I have decided to do differently and start to speak out what happen to me.

Do you know what is the beauty of all of that? Feel I am helping others.

I had no one to help me do not get scammed and I am ashamed myself to speak that out and loud, however if I do not publish my experiences and warn others, the scammers will make more and more victms.

There is no better feeling than to know I am being at service and helping people.

God bless you all

Renata

When Helping People Make the Difference on What you and Your Business Can Be!

I Believe than when we do things from the bottom of our hearts to help other people in need our satisfaction has not end, that is why I bring to you the video that I have added to youtube two days ago. It is about a Jewelry designer that decided teach her art and knowledge on how to work with seed jewelry to Brazilian women in jail that have not perspective in life. This work is giving to the prisioners joy, hope and good perspective of future. For 3 days worked they get one day that is taken off from their total time in jail plus a salary per production that can reach 450 reales (what is more than a salary in Brazil). The video is in portuguese language but I am sure that the way the prisioners talk and show how they feel will be internationally understood. Is really worth to watch.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqVg9I-wxRY

Is all about Market…

I have been away for some time but I am back to continue where I have stopped.

 I have been talking in the last topic how interesting is that in my company has been easier market abroad than in the country that I am in, however is logic that as the country I am in is not my own country even thought I can consider pretty much inside of this culture already as person, it does not mean that I know that much the business culture.

Market is not where we are in, but the target market we want to reach and when we speak on this terms it implies that we should know quite well who is our customer or at least who is the customer we know that our products is done for and go to get that market.

When we talk about small companies that have more will to do something that can afford to do it, the market thing and that marketing are a big challenge. Small entrepreneurs cannot afford to pay for consultants and marketing agents, we have to do most of everything ourselves for obvious financial reasons.  And I can include myself on this group.

I have been making one mistake over another for not have any other small entrepreneur or group of entrepreneurs to go to or talk to and this is what I have been trying to shout to the world and maybe someday I can form my own small entrepreneurs group in which we can help each other, advice each other, tell stories about ourselves to each other. It might be silly but as any other group – this works in other countries and I really would like to build one someday if I am luck enought to get to know others in the same position that I am that are willing to share their success and mistakes to others that are like them small entrepreneurs.

I dont know if you have ever read anything about Dan S. Kennedy, if you dont know that name, you should. He is almost the father of direct marketing and if I know very little of marketing I own to him. He is American and I know him only through books and his newsletters but it is wise to read his books. I have still a long way to go as I do have contact with his stuff only the beginning of this year, however I know that, through repetion and reading his materials some day I will do the same as him and that I will get the same success as he does.  If you want to check him out go his website http://www.dankennedy.com/index.php

catch you late

www.artelati.com

New Beginning Continuing…

This week has been tough in the sense of a lot of work, and a lot of work – is good for an entrepreneur.

First I want to annouce that Cui Tingting is the new trainee of my company – She is a young Chinese woman that is studying in Kajaani Polytechnic in Finland that throught this blog took contact with me. She is going to help me a lot find outsource manufacturer in China that can produce design handbags, jewelry and women’s accessories with my logo. I know that these products will be a complete different sell strategy that I use nowadays, but business is business and any entrepreneur should be able to diversify.

I am signing the contract with a UK based company to represent my unique handmade products to UK and Ireland markets and this will be a very good beginning to introduce my exclusive, unique and design handmade seed-jewelry, golden-grass among others things to Europe. Do you know what is interesting of all that – THE FINNISH MARKET did not discover yet my products because they need time to wake up. Now that my products will be selling in big markets such as UK, I believe that in the next FORMA messut (trade exhibition) that will happen in the end of January 2007, they might wake up. I will have to wait and see…

try to catch you folks later.

Summary of the Beginning until Now!

I have been quite busy renewing my catalogues with the New Seed-Jewelry collection and Golden-Grass incredible handbags collection among other things and it has shifted my attention away from telling the summary of my new starting since the end of May.

Artelati Oy that is a short for Arte-Latino Oy was born in the end of May this year – 2006. The beginning is tough and everybody knows it. I don´t have YET, a physical store because in my case as I live in Viitasaari (small town about 100 km up north from Jyväskylä – that is a bigger city in the middle of Finland) that is no point to open a store of unique and exotic handmade products in a place where there is not much market for it. To tell the truth in Finland my market is in Helsinki and Tampere, but what can I do? You might think, why don’t you move? Because things are not that simple when you are married and have small kids. My husband lives here and don’t want to move and I believe this is a better place to raise kids than in big cities – however is not the best place to be an entrepreneur if you want to really succeed.

I am sorry for the ones who think that work is more important than family, I strongly disagree – I have lived in Brazil for the first 26 years of my life, about 3 subsequent years in Finland, 6 years in Spain, back to Brazil for almost 2 year and finally for the last 4 years in Finland. I believe I can tell from experience that only family and friendship is what we have in life that is worth because the rest we can build over and over again as I did it many times.

Back to the summary – once I had openning the company I took about 2 months to get any product at all to start to show and see the reaction of the market and was only in the Forma Trade Fair in Helsinki that hapened last August that I start to really lauch little by little my company. As you can see I am pretty on the beginning yet.

Last week I got a mail from United Kingdom’s market agency and they are interested to import my – Unique Handmade Design Seed-Jewelry – golden-grass, giant-bamboo, corn-leaf fiber & synthetic fiber, and Fish-Scale Flowers. I was updating my catalogues and modifying them updating with new products that is coming up and was great to modify everyting also to fit the UK’s market. I have sent today my catalogues and price list – now is wait their reply!

Oh, by the way for the ones who are interesting to know what is golden-grass and see its beautiful natural gold color – download my e-book (that is a short report in which I tell what is golden-grass, its history and curiosities) – there is also a video with incredible images of Jalapão, where golden-grass is from). This e-book have an interesting featuring you can e-mail your friends and send the link to them. If you think is worth others read I encourage you to send to others, ok? To read it just click here:

www.artelati.com/EverythingthatShineisGolden-Grass_002.exe

I hope you enjoy reading it and please give me your feeback. I would love to know what you think!

Back to Suppliers

Every business is different and is very difficult to give the right formula for anyone.

When talking about suppliers as I have told before, the only thing I know as a rule is – never stick with only one supplier because you might be in the hands of your supplier, however for some kind of business is really difficult you do not have a strong dependence with one supplier. In my case things are very elastic however if I dont have somebody in Brazil to go to talk with my suppliers or even go there to make the order, I might be without products. Is trick but is very important on whatever business we are in or we want to get in be aware of who to work with, have good realtionship on a win-win basis with your suppliers and have always an alterantive option in case something unexpected happens.

Out For One Week!

I have been out for one week, but don’t think I am in vacation, no, it is a mix of private life with hard work.

Last week I have been in Jyväskylä city, my boy (that is about to complete 5 y.o. in December) had to go to the main hospital to do some check and I have take the advantage to go to the field and sale, sale, and sale.

 I did not sell that much, but I got a lot of another good things going on. I believe this is a good time for me. I am going to explain. Beside been an entrepreneur at full time, fighting for a place in the market, I got what I always want – a job like guest lecturer in Jyväskylä Polytechnic in the International Business Department. I dont know when can I start, if this year or the next one, but will be interesting to actually teach the practice of being an entrepreneur and passing some of the basic tough lessons that only having your own business can teach you.

In addition to that, I am going to have a lot of help from the students of Media that are going to help me doing a professional advertising for one important magazine I am going to advertise next January 2007. That is great, isn’t it? I also ask for this magazine if they have any interesting whatsoever to take my company and my unique and exotic products to be one of their topics and guess what? They wrote me today saying yesss, they are interesting in my company and I will be news in the next FORMA & FURNITURE magazine in Finland. I will also be in the next Helsinki FORMA trade fair exhibition January 2007 and this article will help a lot to make people interesting in my company and products. I just cannot ask more – this is everything I need to give fresh air to my business the incredible and unique natural Brazilian materias such as golden-grass, giant-bamboo, corn-leaf-fiber, fish-scale flower and the unique design seed-jewelry shine as they should be. I am not saying that for me or for my company, but everybody who like different and exotic things that not easily will be found by everybody will love my handmade, unique and design products.

Well try to cach more tomorrow.

Entrepreneurs’ life is not easy

Suppliers – every entrepreneur need one – no matter if you manufucature yourself or if you act as agent, you need suppliers, unless you produce all your raw-materials too.

When you are building something from scratch and don’t have anybody to tell you or advice you on how to do something is even harder to be an entrepreneur. Find suppliers in something you have never done before can be very, very hard.

To find my suppliers, I had to do a lot of research on the net, take contact with people and ask where to find this or that. For me things were even harder because to find local artisans in Brazil i definetely cannot use the net or even telephone. It is crucial be there – now come the question, how did I do as I am living in Finland? Simple answer, I have grown there, have friends and family there and I had to envolve everybody I know to get to those people. It is impossible to have a local center where you can just go and buy whatever you want. I need to make my family and friends go to the places, talk to the people and keep a relationship with them on my behalf, otherwise I cannot buy from these people.

Fortunately I do have my contacts and this have help me, however I have to constantly be looking for other things and rely on my family to do a job that I should be doing. Do you believe that sometimes I want talk with one of my suppliers and I have to call my family to get in contact with them? In the most simple and poor places, local artisans dont even have telephone what make our straight relationship even harder.

Well I have to go take my kids now, soon I will be posting again

The Hard Beginning Continues…

The hard beginning is to know that I wanted to do something, probably importing something from Brazil and other latim countries, but WHAT? and HOW?

Because my brother’s wife Iane, I already knew that I had to focus on handmade products, that I personally like very much, but the options are too much and I did not know how to begin. The better way was trying to dig on internet, searching for handmade products. The quantity is infinity, however I did not have much of a choice: Look for things that we can find anywhere and might be a lot cheaper from China, or Look for complete different things, materials and curiosities that might be of interest to people.

The obvious answer is the second option. After the first question answered there was lefting a million more, however I had to start from something, so let’s get to work!

I made a list with pictures of everything that in my opinion could be of interest of Finnish people, even what I personally did not like at all. I compile this file into a pdf format and I had something to start make my marketing research.

This document had opened the doors of 3 decorators in which 1 of them have its own decoration store and the other was not a decorator however, she has her decoration store too. They all were willing to talk with me and spend some time looking with me to the pictures on my laptop. To go through all those pictures I spend approximately one to two hours with them, and in many cases I could not complete the investigation due to these people schedule and time during the day.

I got the impression that different things do have interest, however people in Finland are skeptical when do not know something and it comes from a place so distant. It might not be too professional base a marketing research on so little interviews and with no real evidence that it could work, but I had to decided to do something or be unemployed depending on my husband and I did not want that at all. The result of the hard beginning chapter you already know, I opened my business.

Next post I will go through on how did I find my suppliers and the care I need to have to find, and keep them.

The New Beginning

In the last post I was writing about my brother and his family (wife and little daugther) that were about to came to Finland and I had to help them in everything. For one side was great that finally after so long time being far for anybody of my family I was going to have same family near again, but on the other hand I did not have a job and was myself about to move to another city. I did not have any idea in what I could do, until I start to think in what my brothers wife could do to work in Finland, since she does not know much english or any other language besides Portuguese. She is quite talented on doing any kind of crafts, biscuit, little magnetic cute dools and anyother thing she could do with her hands. Thinking about this and seing how powerful in Finland the handmade products apear to Finnish people and natural materials are valued I decided to focus my attention on searching for handcraft items that could be of any interest to the Finnish market and even for Europe. This idea did not left my head and asking my contacts in Brazil (people I know and trust) to look for different and exotic things I found out that in Brazil there are lots of raw-materials that is not common anywhere else on the planet and that could be a good business opportunity. At the beginning I did not have only in mind Brazil, but the whole Latin America, plus China and India. However talking with Ran (a wonderful Chinese friend I have that have studies with me at Åbo Akademi), she disuade me of the idea of China and other places saying that Brazilian crafts are not beautiful, but also exotic, exclusive and unique in many ways. That was when I have decided to focus on import Brazilian products to Finnish market and European too. I do hope some day do the other away around and export also Finnish things to the world. To be continue tomorrow…