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!

Happy Holidays!

It’s the Friday before Christmas and we’re feeling particularly festive. It’s been a great year at School House and we cannot say enough how much we appreciate all our followers and fans. We’re excited for the New Year, and will go on hiatus next week to spend time with our family and friends and take a break from the craziness of the holiday season to reflect and appreciate all we have. As a ‘Happy Holidays’ from all of us to you, we’re sharing some of our favorite holiday activities and ideas. We hope this tides you over ’til 2012 – have a great Christmas and Happy New Year!

Making Ornaments: The holidays are a good time to reflect on the past year and also look ahead. Why not start a new tradition of making ornaments together that are a representation of what you’ve accomplished in the year or hope to in the next. This globe ornament DIY is great place to start – who doesn’t want to travel more in 2012 and it’s super sweet.

Holiday Card Display: I love sending cards, especially ’round the holidays, but I’m always at a loss with what to do with them. I end up eventually tossing them in the recycling bin, but there are so many cool ways to transform holiday cards into display pieces these days without buying a lame card tree. Check out this dining room display – they strung the cards out in the window as a type of garland.

Festive Drinks: As the years go by I find myself grabbing less and less of the sweets and replacing them with beverages. I opt for cider, cranberry cocktails, mulled wine and even the occasional egg nog. And if you’re wanting to gift something to the host without taking the typical “wine” route, try shaking it up with a martini or hard cider. This cranberry margarita recipe has been on my radar for a while.

 

 

 

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

Southern Designers Leading the “Made in USA” Charge

Ever since officially joining the “Made in USA” community this Spring, we’ve been overwhelmed and inspired by fashion brands like ours that are committed to creating a better local, regional and national fashion economy. Entrepreneurs and brands making USA fashion are few and far between, and statistics about the clothing we buy here are pretty grim. Journalist Erika Miller sums up the predicament pretty well in a report she did for PBS’s Nightly Business Report:

Like many people, I was well aware of the statistics about the decline of apparel manufacturing in the U.S. just 5% of clothes sold in America are made in America, compared to 95% in the 60′s. The decline, of course, is a reflection of the striking difference in pay for a NYC Garment Center worker (roughly $18 an hour) versus a worker, say, in Burma (roughly 8 cents an hour).

And while we were pleased to find out that some major labels like Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s StyleMint and The Row lines are USA made, along with most of Nanette Lepore’s dresses, we are most impressed by small fashion businesses like ours that are doing it, too. So, here’s nod to a couple of our Southern neighbors that proudly wear the made in USA label.

Jolie & Elizabeth // www.jolieandelizabeth.com 

This fashion brand specializes in making the sweetest summer seersucker dresses. Their frocks epitomize Southern style, and are all roughly $200 or under. We love their style, and we’ve included a couple of our favorite pieces, which you can shop here.

Kristin Drohan Collection // www.kristindrohancollection.com

Described as “eco friendly, durable and high style” Kristin Drohan’s furniture collections are stylish and made entirely in Hickory, NC. Her pieces are functional, beautiful and “green” in so many ways. We’ve hand-picked some of our faves, but we encourage you to check out her full collection here.

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.

Office Thursdays: Creative Concepting @ School House

School House’s Living-Wage Legacy in Sri Lanka

School House is now proudly 100% Made in the USA, but we’ll never forget where we started and the positive impact we had on the lives of apparel workers in Sri Lanka. CEO/Founder Rachel Weeks talks about the living wage factories we started and the legacy we’ve left behind. We’re happy to report that the factory featured in this video continues to thrive as a living wage facility, and we maintain a close relationship with them yet today.

Goodbye Summer, Goodbye Interns

We recently said goodbye to our super talented group of summer interns. As back-to-school approaches and we look to land a new round of fall interns, we pay tribute to our summer trio. Thanks ladies, we miss you already!

Rebekah Felts

Wearing our School House FIT pocket tee & Duke skirt.

“Working at School House this summer has been such an amazing opportunity and learning experience. I was able to explore many different components of the fashion industry including manufacturing, researching and retailing. I was given an interesting insight into the growing college apparel industry. This opportunity has allowed me to grow as a person by teaching me the importance of patience and understanding, and as a professional by allowing me to explore the options available in the fashion job market. I have so much respect for Rachel and her team as they develop School Houses’ ethical standards, and I will miss everyone.”

Sara Gates

Wearing the School House Duke touchdown tee.

“My favorite part about being a School House intern was getting to know the entire School House team. I loved that the office environment was one in which people worked extremely hard but could also have fun while doing so. I also feel lucky to have gotten a different viewpoint of the industry by working in the factory. I had no idea how the manufacturing process worked before interning at School House, and now I feel as though I have a good grasp on it. Working for School House was an amazing experience that will undoubtedly help me in future professional endeavors.”

Jess Hetzel

Wearing our varsity cardigan and School House tee.

“Interning at School House was a wonderful experience. Working in production, I was exposed to a side of the fashion industry that few see. I now have an appreciation for each garment in my closet and the process that went into producing it. I loved each and every member of the School House team and am so thankful for the opportunity!”

Around the Office: The Dress that Inspired School House