The post below originally appeared on my personal
blog, putting it here because this is where thoughts like this
belong as all of this is really some back of the napkin thinking.
The Strathmere
I originally set out to make a duffle bag, ended up with this lovely creation instead.
The launch of The
Strathmere leather weekend bag didn’t happen last week as I had
originally planned. I want to launch the initial Strathmere Bag in
tandem with The Strathmere Club which is going to be a
membership program of sorts and offer an initial primary benefit of
knocking 35% off the retail price of The Strathmere leather
weekend bag. I want this initial launch to coincide with the “club” so
that those initial owners of the weekend bag have a bit of buy-in to the
ground floor of what I see becoming an entire line of leather luggage:
The Strathmere Collection. Members being able to enjoy
that discount for the entire collection, members also being able to have
direct input on the pieces included, the designs, etc. Members also
having access to member only products and product variations. I
really see awesome and exciting things with this program!
All of this is just waiting on me to build out the backend support of
the membership program. Maybe initially more complicated than it should
be, to get the bag available for sale, but I want to at least get part
of this idea baked out and available for use so I can iron out any
wrinkles sooner than later. I’ll ship it all this week. Ideas are one
thing, putting them out there is required though. They can’t just live
in draft form forever.
Chat GPT
I fed ChatGPT some thoughts on a sticker design for "the club" and it came up with this...which was almost an exact match to my expectations!
Related to The Strathmere, I’ve been using Chat GPT heavily as
a research tool, source of ideas, a sounding board for my crazy
thoughts, and even to generate images or at least the idea of images. It
has really helped me to think outside of the box on several things
related to The Strathmere weekend bag, The Strathmere Club, and
the Strathmere Collection. Is this crazy? I even find myself using it to
talk out loud to in the car while I drive. Using that time to get some
really crazy ideas processed, do research on things, and so on.
an image by ChatGPT using words I gave it...pretty impressive.
Other Strathmere Ideas
One of the first bags I made was this lovely thing I called Across
Town. I’m going to be making it again, with a few tweaks, and will
have it has part of The Strathmere Collection. Where The
Strathmere, the original, the weekend bag, the “cabin size” bag, is
intended to carry clothing for up to around 4 days or so, Across
Town, a name which may change, will be more of an overnight bag,
being suitable for one or two nights away. I love this size of
a bag because it is perfectly suitable as-well to use as a “day bag”. My
plan at the moment is to remake the bag this week, or even next week, so
that I have it for my Pittsburgh trip at the end of the month. That trip
is two nights, Friday and Saturday, with all day Saturday being out of
the hotel and going from cigar shop to cigar shop. The bag will be
perfect for that initial carry of luggage to the hotel. It will then be
unpacked at the hotel and become the day bag I use for Saturday...and so
on.
Product Pricing
I don’t mean to make this such a work related post but it is always on
my mind. I have so many ideas and so many things that I want to do and
try. A lot of which I should be writing about on my other blog, Back of
the Napkin, but I’m here at the moment and so will just put the thoughts
here. One of the big changes I’m making this year with my business is
how things are priced. Profit is needed, margins. I need to
cover cost of material, I need to cover cost of equipment and such, I
need to cover the minimal overhead I have, I need to eat and pay my
bills. And I also need to have money set aside within my business for
investing in growth, marketing, buying in bulk at lower prices, and so
on. As such, my prices need to go up. The Strathmere line will reflect
this from the start, variations of my other current product lines will
reflect it as well. I’ll be very close to:
((Material+Labor)*2)*2
This allows for discounts that don’t eat into things, and also
allows for wholesale opportunities. Plus allows for seasonal staff, and
so on.
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