Archive for the ‘Behind the Business’ Category

alt summit NYC

The Alt Summit is practically THE conference of the year. A perfect meeting place for all bloggers, design-minded people, and companies hoping to connect with them. After missing out on their summit in SLC, I was so lucky to find out their new NYC summit was happening at the same time I was in town for NYIGF. Yet another perfect coincidence.

Here’s some highlights:

We started out very early in the morning doing some crafting at the Martha Stewart office (of all places!).

The first talk was by Tina aka Swissmiss aka Tattly aka Creative Morning founder aka Teux Deux app creator (phew!). What an inspiring speech. We then listened to Pilar Guzman, editor in chief of Martha Stewart mag and founder of Cookie magazine, and Kevin Sharkey, Martha’s right hand man, give an amazing insider’s view of Martha’s magazine and what goes into making an issue. I was able to speak with them during cocktail hour and Pilar was already familiar with Petit Collage! (gasp).

martha at alt summit

Look who showed up unexpectedly. MARTHA!

After lunch was a blogger panel. I met a couple of new forces: Jenny of Little Green Notebook and Katie of Matchbook Magazine who talked about blogger etiquette and much more. There was another panel featuring the art director of West Elm, the CCO of Tea Collection, and Etsy on “what the cool brands are doing” in today’s social media. So much good stuff.

lorena at alt summit

Yours truly and Michelle, CEO of Land of Nod!

A rooftop party closed up the day’s events where I met my long time idol Jodi Levine. She created Martha’s kids magazine and worked there since 1994! I believe she’s editor at large for crafts now. She also knew our line well. I almost fainted.

What an absolutely fun packed day. I’m so glad I was able to finally attend! I hope to go again next year.

design*sponge grace bonney with Lorena Siminovich

A serendipitous thing happened while we were in New York prepping for NYIGF. With just a casual message to her friends about being in town for a couple days, Lorena ended up being interviewed on After the Jump, a radio show by the one and only Grace Bonney, of Design*Sponge!

It’s an unbelievable interview, we all listened to it upon our return from NY. Hear about her surprising start in graphic design and how she juggles parenting and the success of Petit Collage at the same time.

Original link to Design*Sponge

Listen to it FREE on itunes 

Listen to it online at Heritage Radio

 

*image courtesy Design*Sponge

lorena siminovich petit collage in san francisco chronicle

Last Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle Home featured our one and only, Lorena Siminovich, in their Stylemaker Spotlight!

Big thanks to the Chronicle and Anh-Minh Le for the wonderful write up. In case you didn’t grab a copy on Sunday, here’s a link to the web version.

We are back in the office today after quite an exhausting and productive weekend at the San Francisco Renegade Craft fair. This is the only fair Petit Collage actually participates in directly selling to new AND current fans of our work since we mainly do wholesale business with stores.

I met a lot of sweet expecting couples, a lot of mom fans that had purchased our products in the past, and even a pilot who bought and made me sign a San Francisco print to remember the city he visited! Seeing all these people has given me fresh new energy to keep doing what we do.

Families had a lot of fun with our San Francisco photoboard (pics to come) and my own family got our photo taken at the Magbooth that set up next to us. Here’s my dad and my daughter being hilarious, and boring ol’ me who didn’t have a costume.

family at renegade

Although the jetlag is taking the best of us, I still wanted to write an update on our trip.

Here’s the good news:
1.We’re finally back!
2.Food was awesome
3.The trip was very productive!

As Petit Collage continues to expand its offering, we went to Hong Kong and China to visit factories, trade shows and meet with our agents, who overview our sourcing and quality control. While the majority of our line is made in the USA, demand grows for more affordable gifts items so we’re now searching for the best manufacturers around the globe who are aligned with our environmental responsibility and ethical standards. Hence, it was important to see them in person.

Annie, our senior designer, and I embarked on a 6 day adventure with a packed agenda, comfortable shoes, and loads of coffee.

Here some snapshots of our trip:

hong kong trip

Clockwise top to bottom: Lorena and the view from Tsim Tsa Tsui, afternoon dessert at our hotel, beautiful hanging gardens, colorful ferry destined for Hong Kong, modern airport carpet, even more desserts, peking duck at the convention center of all places (!!!), instant taxi button.

I have been lucky to find many local resources to grow Petit Collage.
Through one of these organizations, Working Solutions, , I was invited a couple of days ago to City Hall to speak in a roundtable with SF Mayor Ed Lee about small business.
After that, I spoke in front of Budget & Finance Committee in favor of additional funding for SF revolving Loan Fund which  helped our business last year.
The board of supervisor is expected to approve the proposal tuesday.
I was quoted in SF examiner (I didn’t know there was press when I was speaking!)

http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/2012/03/small-business-loan-program-gets-green-light

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...