Been a while: some catching up on life, The Strathmere, and so on

Good evening...pour a glass or make some tea, or have some coffee while we catch up. 

Life

I haven’t journaled in a while. I haven’t published here in a while. I haven’t had a minute to breathe in a while. I haven’t had a moment to stop and think...for a while. I think for a week or two it, life, has been absolute chaos. I’m outside of my normal routines (except for the morning walk and coffee) and am simply in survival mode. Make sure I do what needs to be done, show up where I need to show up, a be as on-time as I can be. Work is just making sure I’m on top of orders, making sure I’m continuing to make new things, making sure I’m preparing for Father’s Day ahead, and then preparing for the Pittsburgh Cigar Crawl at the end of May, and the event I’ll be doing at the Hilton Hotel later in June. Making sure I eat and sleep, making sure I am present for Mozzie, making sure my head is mostly above water. 

Survival mode.

I’m in the middle of moving out of my apartment and into a townhouse. I’ve written about the upcoming move, and now find myself deep into the move. My apartment becomes more and more empty with each passing day as I take boxes over to the townhouse each night. The weekends, the past two, have been productive for getting larger pieces moved over. Most of my personal stuff (including everything in the kitchen) is moved over. I just have my bed and the clothes I need, plus coffee, eggs, and bacon. Everything else remaining is mostly work related: my two work benches, the machinery, supplies, leather, etc. Most of the shipping materials have been moved, except for what I’ll need for fulfilling orders this week. 

I’ll be placing another IKEA order for a few things. My goal to make the furniture I need is still there, just being shaped a bit by reality. I’ll have a fixed place to make the furniture in the basement of my townhouse, and will chip away at projects, replacing what I have or need to buy with what I make. It will be a slower process but a realistic one in that the making of furniture is a hobby, something I do that is not work. I’m slightly disappointed with this, but it is the most realistic approach with what life is at the moment and for the foreseeable future.

I’m writing now before plugging into work for a couple of hours this evening. I’m still doing a few hours a week of “IT Consulting” and want to get the bulk of it accomplished tonight so that I don’t have it nagging me too much during the week when I need to focus on my primary source of income and all of the final steps to fully move out of the apartment by this coming Saturday.

The townhouse is going to be an amazing place for me. Mozzie will have his own room and I look forward to that being a place where he can just be. In general the largest benefit to the space, the entire townhouse, is that I’ll have a place for everything and mostly won’t see what I need until I retrieve it. The apartment became my worst nightmare in that there was no break from work, from things, from visual clutter (clutter being all useful things, so not clutter in the typical definition, but clutter in that the home for things was always visible). I thrive when there is order and I haven’t had order in my work or personal space in a very long time. 

Last year and all of this year so far I have felt this lack of order impacting my work, my creativity, my mental well-being. All of which has an impact on me as a dad, son, brother, ex-husband, friend, etc etc etc. Having space again is going to be a literal breath of fresh air. 

Plus, I’ll be in a place where I can put up a bird feeder or two, a bird bath, have an outdoor living space, a place to be closer to nature. City life is not for me. I wanted to try it, and so I did. And now I know :-)

The Strathmere

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. 

And So On

Chat GPT

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.

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 paying seasonal staff, and so on.

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Alright. That was good. That was helpful. If you read up to this point do me a favor and send me an email to say hi. I try to reply to most emails, but please understand if I don’t. Even if I don’t, it is always amazing to me to hear from folks who read the words I put here. 

Have a great evening, and week ahead...hopefully I have some time to get a few words published between now and the end of the week. 

Cheers, 
~ Aaron