The first collection that my handbag company charm and luck ever designed was gaming-themed. Inspired by my partner’s love of bridge, we created beaded bags with a variety of gaming themes – the Blackjack bag, the Four Slots bag, one shaped like a die, and so on.

Before we even did our first trade show or contacted salesrooms, I was able to secure an appointment with a Las Vegas-based chain which had many stores in casinos in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and airports throughout the United States.

I was absolutely thrilled! Just to have a buyer return your phone call sometimes is challenging and then to actually secure an appointment is amazing. I remember driving the four hour trip from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and being so full of optimism.

My First Customer Appointment

I spent the night before in Las Vegas so I could be fully refreshed for my meeting. When I had the meeting, the buyer absolutely liked the bags….or so I thought.

We discussed when the bags would arrive in the stores and which doors (specific stores) would carry the bags. I distinctly remember her wanting the bags to be delivered in time for the Christmas season.

Because I knew that many large companies normally put their orders in spreadsheets with a store matrix designating the breakdown of style per store, I wasn’t worried when we didn’t discuss the quantity of bags for specific doors. I left confident that we would receive an order via email in the next couple of days.

Due to the prices of our bags, we did not want to order from the factory until we had actual orders in hand. In our initial planning stages of our company, we agreed to always work as a supplier who was “cut-to-order”. We never wanted to be sitting on a lot of stock, so even though, later on, we would sometimes pad (adding additional units) our orders, we never did projections like many larger companies.

• Larger companies ‘project’ their hot sellers and make educated guesses as to which styles the buyers will order. They buy heavily into their projections, taking the gamble that stores will buy their goods attracted by the decreased production times. With projections, larger companies can deliver the goods in days rather than months, because they have the goods in stock.

As my partner and I debriefed after the Las Vegas meeting, my partner asked whether we should just pre-order the goods from the factory. We did not want to appear like small fish if the buyer emailed an order on November 15th with a delivery window of December 1st – 15th, and we did not have stock ready. Our bags were very intricate and could take up to eight weeks in production time alone! It was a huge financial risk for us to pre-order the bags without a firm order from the store. However, this was an important client and we really wanted to be one of their vendors.

We both weighed the options and decided to place the order so we would be ready when the order came in. Well, the order never came in, despite my incessant attempts to follow-up with the store buyer.

I do not know what happened. Perhaps the buyer did not have the “open to buy” (money in her buying budget) dollars to buy for a holiday delivery after all, or perhaps she found another vendor with bags that she liked more. I do know that we made a huge blunder. In the excitement of thinking we had secured a large deal, we took a gamble that we would pay for for years to come. That stock sat in my office for at least a year before I sold it to an off-price retailer.

Lessons Learned

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1) Never Apologize For Being The New Kid

What I learned from this mistake was to never apologize for being a new or small vendor. New vendors should never worry about being new if their company infrastructure is secure. By this, I mean you should have your website which looks professionally done, a confident staff (or intern), a reliable person or system to get goods out on time etc.

Seasoned veterans can sniff out new companies which don’t have their acts together and will know to avoid them. Besides, up and coming companies often have their fingers on the pulse of new and innovative ideas and technology.

2) Get It In Writing

This is an obvious rule but one we completely ignored. We were so anxious, or might I say desperate, for such an important buyer to write our line, that we were willing to overlook this rule.

I had known from other vendors that generally large buyers don’t give you a paper order at meetings as it takes time to set up new vendors in their system and sometimes they have to get their orders approved by their boss.

• Buyers will often submit their orders via an Excel sheet which clearly lists the delivery date, terms of payment, shipping guidelines and the breakdown (sometimes called matrix) spelled out.

3) Don’t Fixate On One Client; Cultivate Other Customers

As with dating, there are other fish in the pond. I was so focused on this one big client who I was certain could change our fate that I neglected the other potential clients who were probably a better fit for our line. Years later we did get into Las Vegas by selling to their competitor, MGM Mirage, and our goods were in The Mirage, MGM Grand, Bellagio and a whole host of other amazing hotels. That chain store that I was initially so focused on was just a sad and distant memory.

4) Take Calculated Risks

I absolutely believe that rules are put in place for a reason. However, I can honestly say that many results we achieved with our company were a direct result of us being flexible. Ordering the product which sat around for years was a lesson well learned for us. It made me much more aware of buyers who would ‘ooh and ahh’ over our product, only to never put in an actual order from us. I was reminded of this lesson daily as I would see the cartons full of the casino bags sitting there in our warehouse.

No matter how much preparing or studying you will do, nothing will prepare you for the challenges and lessons that come up daily with your own business. You will make mistakes. This is a fact and must be accepted. However, the lessons we learned were invaluable. Believe me, we tried to avoid mistakes at all costs, but there were times that we just could not avoid them. But, as a child learns, once we made our mistake, we did not make it again.

Christine Syquia

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