HO! HO! HO! Santa’s Bringing La Bella to Town!

With just over two weeks until Christmas we’re all going full speed ahead! We have finally caught up with the influx of catalogue requests, so Bianca’s hand can now recover from addressing over 500 letters. Also, Kylie has custom made over 50 beautiful Tug Proof® necklaces for a Fit Mums event, so she is also bouncing back from some strenuous work. Nevertheless, we’re still going very strong and are now putting together Christmas cards for all our lovely customers!

In other news, you may have also noticed from the ® symbol above that La Bella has finally received official advice from the trademark examiner that we now own the concept of Tug Proof®. It has been a long time coming and is very exciting for the La Bella team!

We hope everyone enjoys and endures the up and coming weeks until the holidays. Don’t forget to visit www.labellaonline.com to finish your Christmas shopping!

Drowning in mail...

Christmas is very busy!!! At the moment we're also running our special catalogue offer and we're way behind. We expected about 300 enquiries but we've had over 1000!!! We've been busy making more necklaces to keep up with the demand.

This photo is of Bianca (our fabulous sales and marketing assistant) with some of the orders in the background. The girls have been helping us sticker and fold and so I madly hope that people understand if their piece of paper isn't exactly symmetrical as it's the best a 5 year old can do - and I'm so proud of the girls for helping Mummy's business.

The whole reason La Bella exists is for them and so I can spend time at home with them.

Fashionistas

We had our first shoot with yummy mummys today.

In the past we've focussed on photos with children and the jewellery to get across the tug proof aspect, but this time Kylie (not La Bella Kylie) and Jenny (both beautiful mums of 2 kiddies under 4) modelled for us and we were really impressed!! Both girls were from FitMums and virtually volunteered for us!

Aren't they awesome???

Here are some behind the scenes photos taken from Kylie's i-phone.

New designs coming...

We've been designing and testing new necklaces and rings and we're set to photograph them this Thursday - we'll then release them to market!!

It's been an interesting process and we've changed over from cotton cord on a lot of designs to china cord (silkier, more flexible cord) as the necklaces hang so much more beautifully on this.


We've had two mums volunteeer to be models for the photo shoot and as per our usual flexible practices, we'll be providing babysitting services while they model. We've never done a shoot with real live model mums so we're excited and I think they are too!

We've also been busy with our free necklace offer (see www.labellaonline.com homepage) which we've put together as we find that when people buy our products they tend to become multiple repeat customers - they end up loving our designs. One lady put in her ninth order in the space of 12 months last week!

The offer is a way that we can attract new people and thank them upfront as we trust they will become repeat customers. It's a risk but one we're happy to take.

Mumpreneur Online E-Book

We're very thankful for the wonderful supportive people we have around us. Today an interview I did for www.essentialbaby.com.au was posted on the web (about half way down). This was achieved because of our wonderful supporter Dave Crowhurst who works in PR and organised this opportunity for us for free! We're very impressed Dave!!!

The ebook has been selling very well and I've been invited to give a talk on it at the Chamber of Women in Business - Yay!!!

The funny thing was I thought the article wasn't coming out for a few weeks so I mentioned I was pregnant thinking I'd be able to keep my little secret safe for a bit longer. It wasn't to be. I haven't reached the 12 week mark yet but the cat's out of the bag as the interview went live early!!! My cousin read it online and told me it was up!

I've had to quickly get on the phone to closer friends to let them know that baby number 3 is on it's way before they read about it from a journalist online................

The book is available at www.labellaonline.com and then click on the category Mumpreneur Resources.

In other news, the attached cartoon was done for us this week and I think it's pretty cool! We asked them to model the picture of this one attached of my Mum with Bella but to make the lady younger................

Sale

We've been busy this week and we've got a sale this weekend - ends on Sunday 25th at midnight! Hurry 15% off!! www.labellaonline.com
We spent this week proofing tonnes of publications at the printers such as order forms and the catalogue and promo flyers and stapling and writing on the new catalogues - only 800 to go!!!

Hi from Bianca the New Sales and Marketing Assistant

Bianca is a student at the University of Canberra doing a Double Degree in Commerce and Marketing/Avertising Communications and has worked casually at Mazzucchelli Jewellers for over two years.

Bianca’s passion and appreciation for jewellery started a very young age as she would rumage through and ‘borrow’ her mothers collection to wear, a trait which she still occasionally dables in to this day.

Bianca is really looking forward to and is very eager to assist with La Bella Creations already sterling reputation and hopes to promote the business further and get to know all the lovely customers!

Branding

Kylie teaches brand building at the University of Canberra for 2 hours a week and this week we realised that we hadn't articulated our brand personality. Essentially that means if someone thinks of us as a person - what type of person are we?

We had a bit of a brainstorm yesterday and came up with these traits:

Practical
Supportive
Beautiful
Trustworthy

Of course we're also affordable, reliable, approachable, strong, durable, happy, caring etc etc, but it's really hard to pin it down and it felt a bit arrogant to say we were beautiful. I mean of course our jewellery is beautiful.

It's designed so that when you get in a lift, or buy a coffee at the local cafe strangers will love your jewellery piece so much they'll comment on it, as well as it being safe around baby and strong etc. There's nothing nicer than when a customer tells us how much good feedback they're getting from being out and about with a La Bella 'piece' on!

What else is happening? Our very first print catalogue is being printed this week and our new Sales and Marketing Assistant, Bianca, starts with us on Monday. We've kicked off a 'bead off' competition between 3 customers to see who can design one of our Summer necklaces which is pretty exciting for everyone.

We're national finalists this week for the Australian Marketing Institute Awards and we've got a colleague in Melbourne, James from Cre8ve, picking it up for us if we just so happen to win it....

Mumpreneur Online E-Book

I finally published my e-book today and sent out the media release, and did the social media updates.

The book aims to help women, especially Mums, set up a successful online business.

The idea came about as I get a lot of women wanting to meet me for a coffee, or who drop me a line asking for my hot tips on being successful online. I made a lot of mistakes in the first 12 months and we've worked it out now. We're growing fast, we've won awards and we're making enough money for me to work from home and employ others on flexible working hours as well.

The book goes through a very practical and first person account of what businesses can do to avoid a few common pitfalls and to help them make $ faster. Here's the blurb.

In this e-book Kylie outlines a series of practical steps and things to think about for Mums starting a successful online business. These include choosing a business idea, how to pick a business name, setting up an easy to use website (even when you have no idea on how to run and update one), choosing the right website host, business planning, customer recruitment, advertising and many other helpful suggestions along the way that will make life easier for you.

Throught the e-book, Kylie gives you practical resources and tips to help you launch your new career.

http://www.labellaonline.com/products/Mumpreneur_Online_E_Book-171-33.html

New office

We've moved into our new office.

My Mum and Lakeisha had to help me put together the white leather office chair as it came in a box in a thousand little pieces and freaked me out as I couldn't really work out which bit fit where. I can't believe my 5 year old didn't freak out and loved the challenge. Both girls have been re-arranging the necklaces and they love the water jug. We had to quickly clean up a water spill on the desk before a meeting this week which I only just noticed before we sat down. Luckily Tim (friend that is a small business owner) dived out to the kitchen and mopped it up in the nick of time.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with our new space.

I took photos of the other desk, but blogger won't let me upload them.

I've also put my new e-book Mumpreneur Online up for purchase on the website. I'll need to send out a media release for it next week and set up the website that I've bought to host it on. For now, it's available for purchase at La Bella www.labellaonline.com.

Shipment of beads

We received a fresh shipment of beads this morning that include the beautiful beads we've designed for Summer. I've attached a picture of us enjoying one of the boxes. It was very exciting for all of us, and the girls were over the moon. Check out their faces!

The new necklaces will need to be designed and tested so we're not likely to showcase them until just before Christmas (and that's pushing it).

We've also been busy this week setting up interviews for our Sales and Marketing Assistant position, and finishing the catalogue design and cover design for our e-book.

News, glamour and work

We heard on the news today that Getaway presenter and Mum of 12 month old James is pregnant with her second baby. It's very exciting as Catriona has been very supportive of La Bella. We wish her warm fuzzies for a hassle free pregnancy and birth.

This week La Bella won the Australian Marketing Institute's Best New Product State award and we're in for the national finals in mid October. The photo is of he girls sharing the joy with me later that day.

This Saturday night I'm MC for a fashion parade being held by Carmen Steffens featuring accessories. I'm very flattered to have been trusted with this task and I'm very nervous about the stunning stiletto's I've been given that they expect me to walk up and down the stage with. I'm trying to choose what to wear from 3 dress choices so a good friend is going to come around tomorrow and be ruthless in her assessment while I do a fashion run for her. Yikes!

On a less glamorous note, the new desks and meeting table have arrived for our new office and we're hoping to move in early next week. Our catalogue has also been approved by us and we now need to send it to the printer next week. Yay!!

We're still leafing through applications for the Sales and Marketing Assistant position and we hope to interview late next week.

www.labellaonline.com

A new staff member needed...

We've just put a recruitment ad up on www.seek.com.au for a Sales and Marketing Assistant.

Here's the link http://www.seek.com.au/job/b-sales-b-and-b-marketing-b-assistant/act/18150949/37/1/
We're hoping to put someone on from mid October. It'll probably suit a Mum working part-time between school hours or a Uni student.

Birthday week

I've been up at 5am every morning this week baking and decorating a cake for Lakeisha to take to pre-school and then of course another cake for her birthday playdate. I love whoever invented novelty cake tins as it's saved me a lot of time.

We've been buzzing in the office unpacking from our trip, processing some back orders and we're putting together our catalogue. I've attached a sneak preview of the front page. The baby is beautiful Poppy. She's the daughter of Greg who does some photography for us.

We've reviewed our business goals and we're brainstorming ideas to improve customer service. The IP for Tiny Tot Tug Proof TM is almost finalised and we're now moving to international IP! Yay!!!!

Our focus today and tomorrow is to tweak our project management system, do a business review (mastery checklist) and set up some times with our accountants to go through budget projections. Yuk!

Oh and we're excitedly awaiting, any day now, the arrival of some beautiful new blue beads we've designed for the Sizzling Summer range - to be released in January!

Check us out at www.labellaonline.com

Welcome

I'd like to introduce La Bella's team members. There's Trish (manufacturing & markets), Tash (admin & markets), Misty (admin), Mark (HR& Finance) and Kylie (that's me and I do everything else). There's also Lakeisha (4) and Bella (2) that add value in orders processing and design!

We manufacture and retail beautifully strong Tiny Tot Tug Proof TM, Durable Jewellery and Cute Kids jewellery.

I'm a budding Mumpreneur that gave up her high flying coporate career to spend more time with my family and pursue my passion of running a small business.

We're very excited at the moment as we met Sir Richard Branson on Saturday night and we also did a 4 hour session with Tony Robbins. Our to do list is HUGE and we're bursting to the seams to implement everything we've learnt so we can improve our services to our customers.

The biggest challenge with that this week is Lakeisha turns 5 on Tuesday so amongst my 'to do' list of setting up a blog, designing a Summer range and scoping a distributorship system, other tasks include making 2 birthday cakes (one for pre-school & one for home), wrapping presents, and organising a 'small' after school party on Wednesday for 9 children under 5. Hmmmm - it'll be a busy week!!!

www.labellaonline.com