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

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.