Our bags have traveled a bit over the last year. You would never believe the sites they have seen.

The green toolbag checked out a very cool UFO watchtower in Antonito, Colorado.
And our new toolbag checked out Monument Valley.

Bags not pictured here went to various wonderful places, like Ecuador, Aspen, New York, Miami, Mexico, and Spain. All in all it has been a good year for the old bags at S.STEIN. We can’t wait to see where the new ones will go!

We are busily working on laying the foundation for our new company that extends the S.STEIN brand into an eco-friendly line of products. Sher and I each held focus groups at our homes with friendly audiences. Our other partners will be doing the same in the coming weeks. I invited a ton of people to mine, and was hoping for a mix of men and women, but ended up with women only for one reason or another.

My group was fascinating. One topic we discussed was work, and what work is. The work that the women don’t get paid for outstrips the work they do get paid for by many times. All of the women in my group were engaged in teaching of one sort or another as part of their paid work. I might add here that none of them do this full time because their other responsibilities in life require that they are there for those. One woman had no children at home, and the rest did. Some of the common threads of unpaid work were:

cleaning, of course
tutoring
volunteer work (mostly related to child rearing but not all)
driving (kids in modern times need to be driven everywhere)
organizing
social coordination–all of the women were married and responsible for coordinating social activities.

I found myself relating perfectly to all of these jobs.

I usually feel lucky compared to other women I know because my husband cooks and does laundry. He never has, to my knowledge, cleaned the toilet, but he does vacuum from time to time. When he isn’t traveling for work, or isn’t at work, he shares car duty. Nonetheless, he is a man, and as I was talking to these women in my dining room last night the point hit home quite succinctly.

A couple of the women who came to the group brought their children with them. That was fine. If I wanted them there I needed to accommodate kids too. Ken said he would look after them, and set them up with a movie to keep them out of our hair. Not five minutes into our discussion, the screaming and laughing voices of children drowned out our own voices. I went to see what was going on. All four of the kids were playing in my office of all places. I pushed them out to the great room, banishing them from “our” half of the house.

I wondered where my fabulous husband was. So, I went hunting. I found him stretched out on our comfortable bed reading a novel, completely oblivious to what was going on anywhere else in the house. I tried to remain calm. “Ken, can you give me a hand with the kids?” He seemed confused. “I mean, you did say that you were going to keep them contained.”

When I returned to my group I could feel my anger welling up. When is the last time that I stretched out on a bed to read a novel? I know, it was the last time I went on a trip without my family. I should add that he has just returned from a three week long trip to Brazil where he was studying concepts of time on the beach of all things. Clearly, he learned the lessons there all too well, and has not adjusted to the hectic pace of family life in the northern climes.

So, in the end, I am just like all of these other women, and my husband isn’t any better than any of theirs, but he does do laundry and cooks. The next group I do is going to be all men. I am dying to hear how they define work and how work defines them.

The days are whirling by. Every day we are getting more and more hits on our website, and sales are slow but steady. This is a scary business we are in. There are so many handbags out there; it is unbelievable. One of the issues we have encountered in the market, is that our product is so different from what is out there; we don’t have a lot of studs and tassels, and our bags are not ultra-fem. We believe that this is a good thing, but maybe we are deluding ourselves!

The whole experience of building a web business has been educational, to say the least. I never thought that doing this would be a full time job, but it is. Who would have ever thought that there were so many shopping blogs out there, and so many different ways to connect with people? One of the best things about doing this has been learning that people in the world are generally pretty nice; they want to help make our business a success.

In case you are wondering about what’s new, and you haven’t visited our site lately, we are getting into felt. This felt is heavy-duty industrial felt made from recycled wool. Our fall line will sport some new ones as well, but if you want a preview, check out: The New Gearbag on our site.

Ever since I jumped into this line of business, my friends and acquaintances have been asking me, “So, how is the business going?”

I typically answer, “It’s going well.”

We have nothing to measure by. How are new businesses supposed to go? Businesses are kind of like air travel. You sit on the tarmac sometimes for a long time before taxiing out to the runway. We are on the runway now, and picking up speed, almost ready to take off.
We have come a tremendous way in a short time.

We launched our site officially at the beginning of November. Since then, we have been hard at work (and we love our work), redesigning, designing, tweaking, trying to get our name out into the wider world, and yes, selling. We now have our Spring colors selected, and are gearing up for more production.

So, there it is, we are doing well, and will do better in the months to come.

Last year I decided to jump on board with Sherry, my co-blogger, to help launch S.Stein Workbags. What I had to offer was the ability to get stuff up on the web, and at the time, I thought I might be able to do some sales work too, until I found out that I don’t have the right personality for it. I am curious what makes some people sales people and other people not sales people?

I feel really comfortable negotiating for a car, or writing a proposal for work that I want to do for a client, but picking up the phone and cold-calling is dreadful to me, and I am not a shy person. Perhaps it goes back to the six weeks after college that I spent as a phone sales person at Time-Life Libraries. Those were pretty unsettled times.

I remember going through orientation all too well. My sales manager, a middle-aged, a well-quaffed woman named Debbie stood erectly in front of the small group of that day’s inductees. We were given our sales book, which consisted of carefully scripted sales pitches for each of the collections we would be responsible for selling. During the orientation, Debbie told us that if we couldn’t keep the customer on the phone, it would be our fault; there is something in the Time-Life Library for everyone, even those who have declared bankrupcy or who are blind. Afterall, blind people might be interested in buying a book for one of their sighted friends, or grandchildren.

I took my place at my assigned calling station, and began dialing. I made a sale, and rang the service bell. Debbie posted a sale next to my name at the front of the room. I kept dialing, and kept making sales. I won a prize that day, and every day thereafter for having sold the most books. Each day I felt a heavier and heavier weight descend on me. I hated my job. I hated pushing books on people who could not really afford them, and who didn’t understand that they would be paying for these books for months to come. One day Debbie called me into her office. She told me that if I wanted it, I had a bright sales career ahead of me. After only a few weeks I was up for promotion. Not only would I get a commission on the books that I sold, but I would also get commission on the books that anyone below me sold. I felt sick. I quit the job two weeks later, opting for a research job instead.

Now I wish that I had stuck with sales. There hasn’t been a time in my adult life when selling has not been important, and I am psychologically crippled when it comes to doing it.