Startup Advice: Finding the Right Space

As a small business still very much operating in “startup mode”, we feel there’s a lot of lessons to share in the do’s and don’ts of building a business. One hurdle every entrepreneur must overcome is space. Juggling the overhead expenses and setup needs can be difficult, and if you’re on a budget like pretty much every small business is, making the leap from working in your home to official office is scary.

That’s where Smoffice comes in. the Durham Chamber Commerce in conjunction with some fabulous Durham sponsors are running a nationwide competition to win “the world’s smallest office.” If you’re anything like me and love browsing those super tiny rooms/homes in IKEA, then you probably share the same level of excitement for this initiative. To enter is super simple:

• A one-page business summary covering your idea, your market, and your team

• A 60 second video telling us about yourself and why you and your company would be the best candidate for the Smoffice

That’s pretty much the easiest entry process. Ever. And, the rewards outweigh the prep 10:1. The winning startup receives:

 

 

• Six months of free office space in the world’s smallest office, conveniently positioned in the storefront window of Beyu Caffe, Durham’s entrepreneurial gathering place.

• Some high-end office furniture

• A tablet

• Wi-fi

• Legal, accounting, and marketing assistance from the best in the business

• Endless introductions and access to area entrepreneurs, investors, and community leaders

• Tickets to sporting events, music and theater venues around town

• A condo in downtown Durham

So here’s our advice: apply for The Smoffice today. You’ll not only be giving yourself a huge boost for your business, some time to get your feet under you and access to a community we’ve loved calling our home!

Calling All Models!

We are looking for models in the immediate RDU area for a photo shoot with Brooklyn-based photographer Stephen Hurst! 

The photo shoot is scheduled for the following days and times.  If interested you must be available for at least two of the time frames below.

Tuesday, April 10th: 6:00-11:30am; 1:00-7:30pm
Wednesday, April 11th: 6:00-11:30am; 1:00-7:30pm
Thursday, April 12th: 6:00-11:30am; 1:00-7:30pm

Who:

We are looking for female models who are at least 5’4″, 18-25 years old, and have transportation to and from our Durham office.

No previous modeling experience is required and ethnicity/diversity is encouraged!

When:

The casting call is this Friday March 23rd from 12pm-5pm.

Where:

Our lovely Durham, NC office

407A North Mangum Street

Durham, North Carolina

Click here to view map

What to Expect at the Casting Call:

All models will be photographed by our team during the casting call! Please be prepared to take the following photos

A full length standing photo
A full length profile
A waist up image
A head and shoulders picture

What to Expect at the Photo Shoot:

 We will provide meals/refreshments, makeup, hair and styling.

Please be prepared to bring your own personal items to assist in the shoot, such as footwear, extra jeans, accessories, makeup, etc.

If interested please come by our office this Friday between 12pm and 5pm! For ideas of photo shoots we’ve done in the past check out our flickr page! For more info and directions visit our Casting Call Event on Facebook.

New Year, New School House

Ok, we’re reeling a bit from an amazing day yesterday. After our CEO and COO unveiled our 2012 collection to Barnes & Noble College (and received rave reviews!), we’re so excited to share our Fall line with you over the next couple of weeks.

The inspiration for this collection spurred out of many amazing conversations and months of soul searching. But in the end, we decided to let our mantra, American Collegiate Craftsmanship, lead the way. Our amazing designer, Emily, alongside Rachel and Susan put together a set of trend boards and hand-crafted designs (literally, she sketches amazing things for us just in her free time!) that are so truly special. Today, I just have to share a snippet of what we’re talking about, so without ado, here’s our inspiration – enjoy!

When I first met Charles Carroll, I could hardly believe there were still people making sweaters in the United States.  Like most young people in my generation, the labels in my closet are like sashes in a Miss Universe pageant: Mexico, China, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Jordan.  Charles, however, has spent the past forty years making clothing in America, and, as I soon discovered, had more than a thing or two to teach us about making garments the old fashioned way.

School House’s fall 2012 collection features the very best collegiate fashion our team has created with our local factory partners.  What started as an effort to bring our t-shirt and hoodie line from Sri Lanka to the United States, evolved into a soul-searching opportunity to elevate our entire brand.  Our mantra—American Collegiate Craftsmanship—speaks to the journey we’ve been on and the products we believe in.

Here, you’ll find oxford shirts crafted in a historic factory in Garland, North Carolina, updated for the college girl of 2012, as well as covetable, cozy knits made by a worker-owned sewing cooperative in the Appalachains.  We even branched into accessories this season, bringing American made school spirit tights and a chunky, irresistable infinity scarf to the line.  Our favorite pieces, however, are Charles’ sweaters—the perfect pairing of our team’s trademark collegiate fashion sense with his old school approach to quality and construction.  The result?  A collection that’s both youthful and classic, modern and vintage, rooted in the legacy of American manufacturing but inspired by 21^stcentury fashion.  We hope you love it.

Thank you, as always, for shopping School House!

xoxo

Rachel

Thankful to Be a Small Business

It’s Thanksgiving week, and for most people that means gathering with friends and family to eat a good meal, celebrate a happy and healthy year, and most of all reflect on all those things in life we take for granted. But as a small business, we’ve never needed a holiday to count our blessings – each day has it’s ups and downs, successes and failures, and part of being a successful business in this economic climate is celebrating those everyday wins.

Take for instance our move to US manufacturing. Bringing our apparel business back to the US was priority number one for our executive team, and when we transitioned business from Sri Lanka to North Carolina, we counted our blessings. Anytime you switch factories is a big risk for a company – will the new factory pick up where we left off? Will the product have the same quality? Same turn time? Can we fulfill all our orders? We answered all those questions this year. And, more than once, we failed. We didn’t get every order out on time. We had some quality problems. Our COO, a seasoned fashion and apparel veteran, has spent months on the floor with our workers showing them how to make our product and having tough conversations about craftsmanship and quality as we were making our garments. But despite the setbacks, we’re thankful. Our business model is greener than it’s ever been. We’re close enough to our factories to see School House clothing being made, and touch and feel our garments on the assembly line. And we’ve never had more public support for what we’re doing. Each day it seems we get a new email congratulating us on doing the tough work we’re doing to help rebuild our economy, and putting those priorities before making a profit or always getting it right.

And among the big wins, were the small victories. We signed on 60 new university partners this year, giving us a chance to reach more students with our brand and mission than ever before. We hired 3 new people, bringing our team to 5 and hopefully growing that much more in the next year to come. We also got some great press, designed a bigger and better Fall 2012 line, fundraised and joined forces with partners that will elevate and grow our business.

The point is this: for a small business, everyday is risk, a hurdle, a success story and a chance to be thankful. And to all the fellow startups and entrepreneurs out there, we’re just thankful for your camaraderie. Happy Thanksgiving!

XOXO, The School House Team

New Schools, New Styles

With every order, we’re refining and adding new styles and designs completely unique to your school. In honor of our most recent launches, here’s of preview of our collections at Stanford, University of Oregon, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Iowa and University of Cincinnati. These collections are available now at your on-campus bookstore, and we hope you enjoy <3

University of Cincinnati : We love our Bearcat patch, and the sweatshirt poncho and swegging combo – a match made in heaven!

University of Iowa : A gold foil Hawkeye tee and old gold cardigan couldn’t fit together better. It’s the perfect game day combo!

Stanford : The Stanford t-shirt dresses have an important style update: a gold belt. It’s cute, it’s trendy, it’s AMAZING.

University of Oregon : The UO Zip Up Hoodie is one of our favorites! Plus, we’ve never done a green cardigan before…

University of Wisconsin : The classic photo tee is one of our favorites, plus we’ve always wanted Bucky on one of our cardigans.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Office Thursdays: Opportunity Threads + School House

Meet Opportunity Threads, School House’s new cut and sew partner. Opportunity Threads is a worker-owned, cut and sew cooperative based in nearby Morganton, NC. Theirs is a company with an emphasis on both fair labor and sustainable environmental practices, buzzwords that here at School House are enough to fill our hearts with joy.

In the not-too-distant past, North Carolina was a powerhouse in the textile and apparel industry. Unfortunately, trends toward outsourcing and a service-based U.S. economy have contributed to an overall decline in North Carolina’s textile and apparel industry, which has traditionally played a fundamental role in providing jobs and revenue for the state.

Enter Opportunity Threads. Founder Molly Hemstreet recognized the need for a new model of labor organizing in the South. Her idea was to take the pieces of this declining infrastructure that has long been a part of North Carolina history and to put the pieces back together in a more sustainable way.

Molly got in touch with worker-ownership pioneer Frank Adams and Maggie’s Functional Organics, a worker-owned sewing cooperative in Nicaragua, to work on the idea of bringing the model of worker-ownership back to the U.S., specifically to an area that has been hit by job loss in the apparel industry. The connection was then made to workers in Morganton, NC, a rural county with high unemployment but two critical resources: manufacturing mills and talented ex-apparel workers.

And so Opportunity Threads was born. Its principles? Dignity for workers, fair wages and worker-ownership, quality and sustainable production. The goal? Not only to recreate textile work in Southern Appalachia in order to change the lives of many workers, but also to build upon this industry by emphasizing fair trade and sustainability.

We at School House are proud to be partnering with Opportunity Threads. We appreciate a company that puts workers at the heart of its business. In this way, their goals align well with our own: to support the sustainable industry at the local level. As Molly says, it’s “not just an idealistic thing, but a way to do good business.”

Mitts Nitts + Our T-shirt Cardigan

Meet Emily. Emily is our (gorgeous) fashion designer. While she may have joined us not so long ago, she will be the lady responsible for bringing you some of our best spring collections (hello neon, americana), and she’s a rock star.

Now, meet our striped t-shirt cardigan. This beauty, which arrived at the office one day after we requested a sample from our knit partner Mitts Nitts, it appeared at School House HQ and we fell in love. It’s so soft. It’s fitted. It’s jersey. The stripes align perfectly. The patch, our TCU one-of-a-kind, is oh so aptly sewn on the pocket. And it has gorgeous gold buttons.

We cannot go any further without paying tribute to Charles and his team at Mitts Nitts, who just so happen to manufacture down the road from our offices in Durham, NC. Did we mention this was produced for us in just one day while they were making other beautiful sweaters and cardigans? Charles is proud of it, and we are, too! We cannot wait to grow our relationship with Mitts Nitts and bring you beautiful t-shirt cardigans like this throughout Spring 2012.

SH Production Notes: Neon Neck Tape

Neon neck tape. When you work in the fashion industry, it’s times like these – when you receive your first round of neon neck tape samples – that you appreciate the fact that you work in apparel and not office products (no offense!). We were almost giddy with excitement when we received these threads with our “Made in USA” promise weaved in. The Three Amigos, our trim suppliers, simply are the best in the business. Always on time, quality work and a can-do spirit for their clients; they make made in the USA look good (literally).

We can’t wait to ship you our next navy cardigan or charcoal gray tank top with this beautiful neck tape lining the inside. We know you’ll appreciate the detail as much as we do.

Under Construction

School House is going through a lot of changes in 2011, and we couldn’t be happier to claim that we’re ‘under construction.’

This fall, School House will be available at just over 100 campuses nationwide, adding the ranks of storied schools like University of Iowa (Go Hawks!) and Vanderbilt to our fashion community.

This year also marked our move to “Made in America.” We are now proudly 100% sourced and produced in our home state of North Carolina, and we haven’t compromised our living wage promise in the process.

This year we’ll be launching some of our most fashion-forward collections to-date, and our new manufacturing cycle will allow us to create cutting edge fashion quicker, meaning you’ll be wearing the trends while they’re trending on your campus.

We’re customizing our collections more than ever. We’re delving into University archives, talking with alumni and students and researching everything from your university hang out to the library to make sure School House products always feel like they are crafted for your campus.

And as we continue to redesign and make improvements to www.shopschoolhouse.com (our work in progress!), give our Facebook page a facelift, become part of the conversation on twitter and even start this blog (!) we can’t help but channel a little Bob Dylan as we embrace the fact that we are proudly ‘under construction.’

Stay tuned!