Happy Bagel: how two friends sell children’s textiles in the center of the capital
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With my best friend Nastya, we met in the first grade and after that we did not part with each other – we went through life together. When we both had children, we quickly got tired of sitting at home on maternity leave, and ideas began to come by themselves. We started with the sale of pillows for pregnant women on Instagram, later we smoothly switched to textiles – bedding and bedding for cots. We started in the fall of 2014, at first they were just home experiments.
We borrowed 5,000 rubles. in debt, we bought fabrics, we sewed two sets on one sewing machine, sold them and bought more fabrics. Gradually, we were able to switch to production and embroidery machines and opened a workshop.
Before starting a business, we sewed, like everyone else, in our childhood in labor classes. When the need came, they tried to sew by trial and error and gradually trained new employees. Now we have reached a certain level and, despite the fact that we are a small company, we try to adhere to a well-established quality control system, tracking the details of each style.
At first we sewed all the sets together, now two seamstresses help us. We are working on a 10% prepayment, at the same time we can do about 15 orders. Usually we work on large sets and in a month and a half we pre-list all our orders. We do not have such situations so that we do not know what we will do next month – there is always an order for the future.
We can sew one set in one day, but from the moment of accepting an order to its release it is necessary to spend a lot of time on the photo session, packaging, quality control, coordination and sending to the courier. If the customer is satisfied with everything, we send the order.
If we need to process large wholesale orders, we will be able to negotiate with industrial production and give delivery to outsourcing with our technological recommendations. While we have not used this direction, we consider it in perspective.
On Mondays, we usually go for purchases of accessories and fabrics – cotton, chiffon, satin, on other days we select colors, order delivery, evaluate the list of sets for the week, draw up a cutting and sewing plan and give it to seamstresses. When all orders are ready for issue, we iron them, steam them, prepare them for photography, collect them and send them by courier.
In large stores, a similar set of things is offered, and the buyer has to choose from what is, and we prefer to do things that would fit the interior of a particular children’s room or the mood of a particular person. Someone loves giraffes, and someone cannot live without butterflies – we try to provide a large assortment and please everyone so that we can order everything. Because of this, we have to keep a lot of different shades of fabrics, including at least ten shades of pink: among them – thawed rose, delicate rose, dusty rose, Barbie shade.
It is necessary to take into account different nuances, for example, the size of beds. Not always what you want can fit in size, and not everything can be entered in the nursery. We mainly work under the order, taking into account the wishes of the client and their previous designs. Often, we select the entire interior on a turnkey basis, starting with sheets and ending with curtains, from photographs of the room.
We have a workshop in Moscow in which we select fabrics, make sets and hold photo shoots. Embroidery machines are stored here, there is a photo studio and a showroom where customers can familiarize themselves with our collections and have a look at our experimental models.
For the manufacture of the order we take from the month and more, because the supply of fabric and lace can go for a long time from a variety of cities. We work with a variety of suppliers, in almost all large companies we have an accompanying manager who can pick up and deliver us fabrics using the Pantone code. We choose only soft organic cotton.
Products differ depending on the age of children and beds: bassinets or standard cots are bought for newborns, and larger ones for two to three-year-olds. In fact, the child does not care what kind of bedding he is sleeping on. Beautiful and high-quality set gives parents the confidence that the child will be comfortable.
