Phoebe’s words…
Hey everyone! All my entries are my own thoughts. I’m just starting out in the online business part of things, so any feedback, suggestions (and praise :) ) are welcome.
The Big Idea
I feel a lot of people think good ideas are hard to come by and even harder to pursue. It’s funny, because I think ideas come rather quickly to me but it’s hard to sift out what’s a waste of time and what’s brilliant.
After giving a lot of thought as to the business idea (product, market etc…), a conversation I had with someone during uni suddenly inspired me. At that time I was confused as to which road I wanted to go down for my career path. I was finishing a degree in Visual Communication and wasn’t sure what was going to become of me. There are so many avenues in graphic design – illustrator, desktop publisher, advertising, commercial artist, mac operator and a heap of other miscellaneous roles. Since there wasn’t a career advisor available I decided to talk to my uni mates. It was a bit like not knowing what to order at a restaurant and asking what others are having in hope of sparking some sort of decision to be made. A lot of people were into desk top publishing, advertising… that sort of thing. I knew I didn’t fit into any of those categories. It sounds like a role that Captain Planet would pursue, but I was actually interested in environmental graphic design – designing for a particular space on a large scale so it could be really large 3D words that act as a sculpture or parts of retail design or shop face. But environmental design sounded pretty unfamiliar to all my tutors at the time so I was a bit unsure how I would approach and continued the question poll to all my friends. Mind you most of them were as clueless as I was at that time :) So anyway, just when I felt like there was no sort of verdict to be made when suddenly, one of my fellow colleagues hits me with:
“It’s not you trying to fit into a job. It’s using your strengths and interests and finding a job that’s right for you.”
I was blown away by that. Although it’s incredibly simple logic, I still find some people changing their personalities to suit the job. In other words the glove has to fit the hand, not the other way around – which leads me to the business idea for the online store.
By asking what are my interests are, what kind of skills and vision I have for the business and what I want the business to stand for these keywords are sparked:
dresses, t-shirts, singlets, sleepwear, natures, notebooks, cute monsters, tote bags, handbags, interesting quotes from movies and songs, mugs, toys to put next to your computer, summer, necklaces (silver, resin, wooden and leather), family portraits, model shoots, travelling, Japan, birthday cards, pet accessories, baby animals and weird trinkets.
I could go on forever but these are some of the things that generally came up as my interests and what I think I’d like to buy online.
Some of my ideas are to create things that are fun and quite mainstream but still clever. Some looks of other fashion sites and brand ideas I like are: FashionPalette, Booware, Polyvore, American Apparel, hellosoursally and trilbyphoenix.
So what now?
Choose your favourite love – What’s good for yourself as well as good for your pocket?
I know it’d be great if you chose a passion that’s individual to you, but if it’s so obscure others might not be able to relate to it and therefore not buy anything from you. How do we balance love and money?
For me I rely on instincts and might base my initial favourite products on what I personally think will be popular on the long term basis. There are two ideas that I’m leaning towards – the first one being t-shirts and singlets (different shapes), totes bags and maybe necklaces (going in for an inch wide, a mile deep here), so in a nutshell – Ladies Fashion. My skills I think would be graphics so if I pursue this idea, I would stick designing t-shirt prints and having an option for other people to upload their own designs too.
The second idea is pet accessories. I really like animals and I know it’s cruel and totally a niche market but I like seeing really cute custom collars, t-shirts and costumes on animals (mainly cats and dogs).. Since DecoNetwork has an online designer I’ll use this to show what my designs will look like on the product, so it’s almost like a print preview 
Plus when I was in teaching English in Japan, pet accessories were huge!
Next few steps : Now all I must do it decide between the two (like deciding between ice-cream and chocolate- both have great potential), source inspiration so I’ll have an idea to how the brand will grow. I’ll keep you posted!
Just thought I’d give a really quick update on how the poll is going. So far 71 people have voted. Thank you for your votes!!! It’s exciting hearing other peoples’ ideas and inspires me for more interesting prints. Since the poll a couple of people have emailed me and let me know what they like and are waiting to see what’s online so they can make a purchase. All I need to do is actually start designing 
