Finding time...

As our business expands it seems that so does my family! Little Mack is now 12 week's old........ but he's definately the last baby!!!

It's hard to find time to run the business, look after my beautiful staff, help my husband with his property portfolio, go to business events, keep the house tidy, commit to charity events, volunteer at the school and be a good mum BUT somehow it just all gets done. Mums are amazing with what we can juggle and achieve!!!

We only manage it in the Watson household by running a strict routine. Today, Monday, is my favourite day as it's when my mum comes over and watches 12 week old Mack while I get as much as I can done in between school drop off and pick-up - a total of 5 hours of which I think I cram 10 hours of productiveness into.... it's the only day that I don't have Mack hanging off me in some shape or form and although I miss him on Mondays (even though he's in the next room) it's nice to be able to tackle everything without interruptions.

This morning Bella was worried as she thought I must have left him in the school carpark. We're so used to having him around now that it felt strange t leave him with Grandma for the school run!

Every day we go to the post office and hope like mad the new collection has arrived - it'll be like a birthday when the boxes come and we madly unwrap them fresh from Bali. We still manage to make about half of our jewellery but after finding myself balancing a 2 week old baby and bleary eyed from lack of sleep making necklaces in order to keep up with demand we decided to free up some time and have them made overseas. Our manufacturer is fabulous and makes them to the highest quality specifications.

As soon as the new collection has arrived we will let everyone know.

Amber & new collection coming.....

I’ve just come back from the Mumpreneur Conference in Sydney. It was a great experience and it was also nice to have a full night’s sleep while my mum looked after my babies for me. I missed them like crazy though!

We’re coming into the warmer months and our Spring collection is almost here. The collection reflects the brighter block colours that are in fashion this Spring and Summer with yellows, greens, reds and orange as main colours – and of course black.

We’ve outsourced the hand made manufacturing of our designs for this collection to Bali but we forget to factor Ramadan into the timeline so we’re about a month late!!! We hope to have them on the market by the end of September.

In the meantime Bianca is updating our amber pictures to truly reflect just how beautiful these products are and in a silly moment we draped her with all of the samples from the new collection. You’ll also note that Mack is enjoying trying to grab them as well – and of course he’s completely supervised with them!

For now, we have a great September special involving a free necklace AND 10% off so visit www.labellaonline.com and check it out!!!

Mothers' Day

We're re-energising as we wind down from our very exciting Mother's day promotion.

Thank you to all of the lovely customers that took advantage of our special 35% offer - we've had amazing feedback from mums about how excited they were to receive their La Bella gifts. AND Congratulations to the dads out there that chose La Bella for the special day.

The most popular gift was the new Bewitching Black and Gold necklace


Of course the best gifts are the hand made cards and kisses and cuddles you get to enjoy on the day - hoping everyone had a lovely Sunday that keeps them buoyed with energy for the rest of the week!

Mother's day lead up

We've had a lovely week busily packing Mother's day orders. Kylie was also featured in this month's madison magazine as a case study of someone who has successfully changed careers and is able to balance life and work better than before. Very exciting!

We're also excited as 3 beautiful new necklaces have arrived and are up on our website www.labellaonline.com and we're eagerly waiting for the new amber teething necklaces this week.

Don't forget the Mother's day sale with 35% off if you type in the code babylicious at checkout.

We have even more beautiful necklaces designed but there's been a delay with delivery as we just weren't happy with the quality of the workmanship from our suppliers. We'll keep you posted when we've sorted out this little hiccup -hopefully before Kylie's 3rd baby comes - due in early June!

For now, here are some photos of the beautiful new tug proof creations.

New collection - sneak peak!!

We've been really busy changing over to the new collection which includes a lot more amber (some for Mums as well as bubs) and greens, blacks, and golds for Winter.

We've got a fabulous gemstone green pendant, a black swarovski crystal necklace (by popular demand from those that love the pink on black), a gorgeous adult golden amber necklace, a cascading amber baby teether and a long black and glitzy gold necklace.

Old favourites we've kept are Ruby Olive, our popular pearly ribbons and the baltic baby teethers.

Our old collection is on sale for Mother's Day - just enter the code babylicious at checkout to get a total of 35% off your order - stocks are running very low so grab any favourites now before you miss out!

Note that fundraisers can use both the code and the discount offer.

The new collection will be available next week.

Ruby Olive

We're testing some selections of Ruby Olive designer jewellery which we're hoping to stock if they meet our criteria for toughness, durability, etc.

They're very bright lovely necklaces and rings and are designed by Australian, Skye Anderton, and named after her Grandma. We're only able to stock a few which meet our criteria but these few are so different to our usual designs that we're very pleased.

We love the designs and we like the family inspiration. Cross fingers they pass testing! It's exciting to find an Australian designer that we can add to our collection and offer our customers a greater range of quality 'tough' designs. We're keeping our eye out for other Australian designers so let us know if you know of any that could meet our criteria.

We're still working in the Autumn collection which will be released in mid March and features pinks, browns, translucents, and beige colours along with pearls, crystals and acrylics. We're excited!!!

Amber beads running out the door - and Bianca is going nowhere!

I just love it when Bianca tries to leave at the end of her day.

If my girls find out they make it very clear to her they want her to stay. Check out the picture of Bella hanging off her leg!! Doesn't the Blue ice ribbon necklace look gorgeous on Bianca?

In regards to running out the door we've had a very popular run on amber necklaces and we're about a week behind in manufacturing. It must be grumpy baby teething season..... The teething necklaces are great for the majority of babies due to the natural healthy paracetemol like oils that seep into the skin and sooth cranky little ones - and all scientifically validated! We have quite a few chemists that stock them now.

Superbly on Sale

If you have a look at the website you'll see we've put some discontinued kukui seed stock up for sale. These were really popular necklaces but we've only got about 10-15 left of each and we now don't use kukui seeds as beads.

Why not?

Simply because they aren't as durable as the acrylic or crystals. They only cope with a limited amount of baby drool whereas the plastics and crystals can withstand lots of drool. They're still tug proof!!

Grab one while they're at the bargain price of only $8.42 each!

Valentine's Day preparations

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We've been busily preparing extra stock for our Valentine's Day promotion. You can see Bella helping the manufacturing process by giving head massages and trying new ways to wear the jewellery while we work.

The Valentine's Day offer is pretty irresistable. Choose items worth $50 or over,then get a $10 discount at checkout and a free mystery gift worth over $22. The mystery gifts are from an assortment and they're all rather stunning so it's a great offer.

Make sure you hint to the loved ones in your life about how fabulous you'll look in our jewellery for Valentine's Day, and beyond!

There's more about the offer at www.labellaonline.com

Mumpreneur Online Progress

We've finalised the logo for Mumpreneur Online and we're thinking we could have a tagline like 100% tested by dummies!


In the meantime you can purchase the book at www.labellaonline.com under Mumpreneur resources. If you're wondering what this has to do with La Bella, Kylie wrote the book to help women to set up online businesses from home - after her own experience with La Bella.

Mumpreneur Book

The picture is of a rejected logo. We've had some exciting news that the book Kylie has written based on advice on how to build an online business from the ground up has been conditionally accepted by a literary agent. We're spending the next 3-4 weeks working on the conditions which are to double it's size - effectively we need to write another 20,000 words!!!

Kathleen has been working on a logo for Mumpreneur Online and we've been setting up a website for it full of business resources for mums in business. Hopefully it'll be live in about a month.

Business goes on while Kylie slaves away on that task. Wholesale orders are very popular this month for amber necklaces and the design process is being finalised for some new swarovski necklaces and some new blue beaded break away clasp designs.

We're having some trouble sourcing small break away clasps and have searched at least 5,000 suppliers searching for them as our supplier went out of business in the UK. We'll keep searching to bring our customers the most amazingly clever but suitable designs thhat we can.

We've also had some delays with the Smart Mum necklaces (silicone teething) being on back-order for another few weeks.

The office has been hectic with school holidays and Bella and Lakeisha becoming more and more of a fixture while we try to work. Tonight Lakeisha was holding onto Bianca's leg not wanting her to leave work as she'd miss her. How cute!

www.labellaonline.com

Welcome to 2011

Well the Christmas and sales season rush is over and we're back to normal. We were shut down over the holiday season and had a lovely break.

As a small business owner though you never completely sign off and Kylie was able to spend some time thinking about how to improve our catalogue, think about design influences for 2011, increase sales for our e-book and look at business priorities. It isn't too bad when you get to do this on the beach.

Kylie's 5 year old starts school this year and we'll miss her diligent help in the office. Here she is today (straight out of the bath with her wet hair) packing some orders which is her favuourite job and makes her feel very important. Note that Mark (Finance and HR Director) has headphones on as unlike us girls he can't cope with the noise of the kids in the background!

Tomorrow we have a lovely journalist and a photographer coming to interview us for a business profile so it'll be a last minute tidy up in the morning. This time we at least have ample notice to do our hair and check our make-up for the pics!

Although Kylie is having issues with her hair at the moment. Having a bob that needs to be blow dried is not the best option for a 4.5 months pregnant woman with low blood pressure. She faints almost every time she gets the hairdryer out - combination of arms in the air and heat! Just as well she doesn't have to worry too much about having to get dressed in a suit every day with done hair and impress the boss!

www.labellaonline.com