Thursday 4 September 2008

Starting at the beginning ...

You have the idea, you have bored your friends about it and then comes the reality. Take a deep breath and go! Many small businesses are set up each year, some will become defy the odds and make it. This is my story as I to try to launch an innovative new website selling children's products.

My great idea came over a year ago – we got fed up of parcelling my daughter papoose style to get her to nursery when for most of the journey she would be over heating. Ever inventive, when DH bemoaned the lack of something to keep her warm, I quickly ran up the cutest little hoody for her. That would have been that, but every time my daughter went out in her little hoody the comments came flooding in. I was keen to pursue this, but trying to bring a single product to market is rarely cost effective – so the project went on hold.

Even this early on I found out a thing or two about the perils of internet business. Before I got to the name Rocking Hoods I thought that Babes in a Hood may be a good idea. Wrong! I made one for a little girl in a wheelchair (up to then at the end of daycare they just sat her in her chair with her anoraks back to front with her little hood dangling about her chin) when her Mum tried to look up Babes in the Hood to write up something complementary, she did not find me - and the only feed back I got was that what she saw made her blush...like a beetroot! (Hence Rocking Hoods not Babes in the Hood).

The good news is that you really don't need to start with a blank page; there is loads of advice out there to help. The big problem is working out where research ends and procrastination sets in. My plan is to share with you some of my research and the pit falls of stumbling into business. I hope to have some uplifting successes, but we shall see...

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