A brush with (not very) big business (and an auction for Haiti)

A sad story of the demise of my t-shirt empire...

I have, for a while, been personalising children's t-shirts.  A bit before Christmas I was delighted and astonished to discover that the owners of a posh baby shop not very far from me wanted to stock and sell them.  Wow!!!  This has gone astonishingly well (in a very small scale) and in the last five or so weeks I've sold three t-shirts.

I'm delighted with this, but also utterly exhausted by it. It doesn't sound like much, but what with work, and house-moving and oh, yes, three small children, I found my heart sinking each time they called with a new order.  This didn't seem right somehow and so I rang them up the other day and told them that I wouldn't be doing it any more.

They were flatteringly disappointed, but nice with it, and said they'd send me a cheque as well as the t-shirts that I made for them to display.

Which was when I realised.  First rule of business?  Negotiate your terms.  What had I failed to do?  Erm, well, discuss them..... There'd been all this chat about how much they were going to sell them for (an utterly astonishing (and in the view of some - myself sometimes included - astronomical) £25.99 each.  Sounds (is) expensive, but also given the time each one takes me, and the cost of materials, actually not (if at all) profitable...  And that assumes I get the whole £25.99.  Which, I, rather late in the day, suddenly realised I wouldn't.  And I hadn't ever discussed how much I would get.  oops.

So.  Answers on a postcard.  How much did I get?  Three t-shirts.  Retail price £77.97. 

To you, Mrs Plan B.  £37.50.

Oh.

And that, my friends, is why they make money.  And I don't. 

But it is a story that ends happily.  We were in Edinburgh airport on Sunday evening when I spied these....

Price? £37.50.  It's fate.  And I am the girl with the tartan shoes...with the flowery linings...

And the even better news.  I therefore now have three "display" t-shirts going spare.  An Evie (12 - 18 months), a Jack (also 12 - 18 months), and a Mia (3-6 months)...

And I'm putting them up for auction in aid of the Bloggers for Haiti appeal....  Please put your bids in as a comment here by Sunday evening and I'll put them in the post on Monday.  Please do pass this on as it would be lovely to raise a bit more money to add to the fabulous £4,000 already raised.

Oh, and consider this my apology to the blogging community for being so rubbish about commenting on all the fantastic stuff I've read recently.  Blame whoever didn't put 25 hours in the day...