Associated Business
Our business issues are your business issues.

“It was hard enough to build up my skills as a weaver to my current level,“ said one client. “And now you want me to learn business skills as well? It’s a whole new set of stuff to learn!!“

We all know people who talk constantly about how "someday" they will start their own profit-making business as a practising artist. Many of these people never seem to take action. Why? Many say, I want to have a career as a practising artist, and I know this means having my own business, but I don't know the first thing about managing a business. For instance, how can I even find time to grow a business if I am overwhelmed doing my art as it is?

It’s hard -- it’s really hard -- to give daily attention to your business when you’re trying to meet deadlines on getting product out there, especially because our outside circumstances -- things like clients’ needs, suppliers’ availability, sales, cashflows -- change daily. What’s more, you can’t see the immediate results. It’s not like a garment. A garment either hangs correctly when draped on a model, or doesn’t; the dye either took, or didn’t; but questions like:

* How do we reach our goals?
* In what new ways can we innovate and optimize our business?
* How do we bring best practices to our business?
* How do we save money?

These quotestions are hard to answer, hard even to evaluate, because you can’t see the result until
way after you’ve made your business decisions, and there are many other factors which can affect performance.

The ability to answer those hard questions is the big factor which stands between a great design and a great designer. It’s why people with heaps of talent aren’t necessarily the best known or best promoted, whereas people with less talent but more business skills often are.

Wanna make that leap? We at Beautiful Silks have set up procedures to help you. If you are a textile artist or trader, maybe you should consider becoming an associate business of ours. It’s win-win.

Our associated businesses can join our development forums, where we have joined with other professionals to provide exposure to a wide source of ideas. We’ve streamlined the problem solving process and we can provide us with an objective review.
• we can provide you with skills, infrastructure, reviews and a supportive network of experienced textile business people (for example fabric designers, pattern-makers, dye technologists, and specialist textile subcontractors), as well as printers, graphic designers, and web designers.
• we can help you exploit your skills (e.g. teaching craft workshops) and sell your products.

You can join our retail space by enrolling in our Associates Program, or you may simply get some coaching and mentoring when you reach crucial milestones in your business.

What we can show you?

Our experience includes, but is not limited to:

• Knowledge of suppliers
• Over 20 years in design and manufacture
• Knowledge of supply chains, shipping, customs agents, warehousing & insurance,
  land transport & similar logistics
• Support systems, both software and old-fashioned technology
• Banking, finance, offshore banking, and foreign currency transactions,
• Telecommunications
• Packaging and packaging suppliers
• Retail networks
• Customs, customs brokers, import and export permits
• Business licensing, accountancy and tax matters
• Business planning

How can Beautiful Silks help you think about these issues? How can Beautiful Silks help your business?

In heaps of ways. We:

• Ask the dumb questions. By nature we tend to forget what we know. By sometimes asking the dumb questions we come back to the basics that allowed us to be successful
• Ask the hard questions. Sometimes we all need someone who will challenge us. This will help identify old belief systems and assumptions that may not serve you anymore.
• Teach methods. We’ve done well in our business for a reason: we have developed a valuable methodology, which incorporates an approach and skills that you need. (I’ve written my Ph.D. thesis along similar lines... if you want to download the relevant chapters, just email me and I’ll send you the link). There is nothing wrong with realizing that you don't know everything.
• Introduce new ways of thinking and doing things. Many times a person will hire a coach because what was working is no longer working. A fresh perspective is needed. There is nothing wrong with realizing that you’re in a rut and need help.
• are objective. We keep you thinking in a straight line without being pulled off track by side issues. We bring a clarity and focus to the situation
• Hold you accountable: Many of us in positions of responsibility need to be held accountable or we can lose focus or direction. It is too easy to be transaction driven and focus on the immediate. This means the really important stuff doesn't get done.
• Let you vent. All of need to vent in a safe place. This frees up valuable resources and lets us see the situation in a different light.

Ok... so you've finally reached that stage in the development of your textile business to get started. You've done the research, you have a game plan and you're ready to go except for one small detail... you need more resources than you can afford.

Beautiful Silks can also:

• Provide access to valuable resources. In our time in business we have developed a serious infrastructure, not only of computers, fax machines, photocopiers but of meeting rooms, transport (including lockable trailers), display equipment, shop-fittings, cameras logistical equipment (trolleys, racks, tubs for rolls of fabric) which are available on a fee-per-use basis.
• Provide introductions to useful people. In our time in business we have developed relationships with people who get things done. One of the valuable tools I bring to the relationship with my associates is my relationships with other companies and individuals that, if need be, can help solve and resolve problems very quickly. We can also introduce you to potential business partners, key customers, and resellers.
• Provide access to markets through our retail show-room, warehouse, trade fair presence, web-site and gallery.
• Assist in developing financial projections based on economies you achieve by sharing our resources. Financial projections for the business are equally important, including a profit and loss statement, a cash flow statement, and balance sheet for the enterprise. These are developed along with a narrative discussion of key milestones and detailed monthly budgets. Developing these components of the plan entails market analysis, competitive strategy, and manufacturing cost analysis. Our association with offshore manufacturers is very helpful to designers at this point.
• Developing, updating and refining business plans is an annual ritual for most businesses, to guide day-to-day operations. Effective business plans include an executive overview, detailed discussions of the product or service of the business (including the all-important value proposition), the market size and dynamics, competitors and competitive positioning, the management team, and the operations of the business. We will work closely with you to create the detailed tactical and financial plans necessary for the operation of a business.
  Creating this plan is the first step toward working on your business instead of working in your business.
• Where necessary, we can also arrange external consultants for you to deal with special areas (e.g. law, tax, Patents and other industrial property rights).

What gives Beautiful Silks the
qualifications to help your business?

In an ideal world, everyone could accept everyone else at face value, but the world we live in is far from ideal. For example, all sorts of people who’ve never run businesses work in the TAFE system delivering small business training. They’ve never run a business, rather like computer consultants who haven’t worked in the industry.

We’re different!

Our credentials show that we’ve “been there and done that”: Peter Lucena has been trading textiles successfully for over 45 years is demonstrably the most experienced textiles dealer in Australasia. We have a successful textile business which has been operating, with a small break, 10 years in the same building. Marion Gorr commenced working in textiles in Melbourne in 1996, after a long career in design and manufacture in New Zealand. Jon Gorr ( the elephant) was a bankruptcy lawyer from 1991 to 2004 and helped over 500 individuals and firms in financial difficulty to reconstruct themselves; his research for his Ph.D. thesis covers the teaching and learning of practical business and legal skills. In short, we know emerging textile businesses. We know small businesses. After all, that’s where we’ve come from.

Visit our testimonials page for references and testimonials that you can check. (Email me, if you're super-keen, if you want the link the relevant bits of my thesis)

Whilst working as a bankruptcy lawyer the elephant wrote over 50 business plans for struggling businesses looking to restructure or survive administration, which has allowed them to regain the confidence of creditors, raise funds for new ventures, finance business expansions, introduce new products and services into the marketplace, or and bring more intelligence to the business planning process. Most business planners focus on businesses which are making it. By working with so many that weren’t, in bankruptcy practice, the elephant learned to help businesses avoid financial chaos.

We are successful business people in our own right. We are not retired TAFE teachers. We are not people who think that running NEIS schemes on commonwealth funding is a fast way to earn a buck.

Acquiring new skills and knowledge is what keeps us sharp and allows us to grow our small businesses and ourselves. But just like any other product, you have to be a savvy consumer to get the most out of a learning experience. Set out what you want to get out of the experience first. We’ll aim to answer your questions about the learning situation, style, and delivery to your satisfaction. And, of course, we’ll guarantee this in writing: the learning or training to be delivered, how and when the services will be delivered, and the price of the services. We’ll set out materials for you to read in advance, and suggest a Personalised Learning Plan with session goals for your specific needs. This way we’re both clear about our expectations before we proceed.

CLICK HERE to see a sample set of class notes with discussion points.

Some new businesses can receive a huge boost by becoming part of our exciting new retail project.

From November 2007 Beautiful Silks - Australasia’s premier silk business - will sell our range of silk textiles, fabrics and fibres from Australia’s premier silk retail area - our new inner city warehouse and retail space at 101 Victoria St, Fitzroy, Our main target market is predominantly the sort of person who attends the Textile and Fibre (Tafta) Forums -- female, aged over 40, with disposable income, educated, craftspeople themselves, and generally either urban or retired professionals in retirement areas of rural Australia. Our secondary target market is textiles students, predominantly young women at inner-city tertiary institutions. Whilst we also market to resellers like boutiques, wedding designers and fashion houses, as well as craftspeople, artisans, service industry consumers (such as schools, galleries, museums, theatre companies and the like) and some industrial consumers, most retail items are purchased by retail consumers.

We are looking to display and sell the work of producers of exciting, new Australian designs in textiles, garments and accessories. Their work will complement ours, and each-others. They will make a minimum 12 month commitment to use our space and let us market their work.

There is a strict limit of 12 artists or designers
to be displayed in the retail area.

Our artists will also benefit from:

• our strong wholesale presence, allowing us to wholesale our artists' work;
• our major web-site presence, and our strong industry profile developed through major sponsorships;
• the location of our gallery next door;
• our international gallery connections and links to importers of Australian textile goods throughout Asia;
• our unmatched expertise in the textile industry and in small business management and development;
• access to our skills, meeting areas, systems, services, infrastructure and logistics.

Our area will be Australia’s premier silk retail area because of its tried and true yet unique concept. It will incorporate a relaxed, understated sales area; no pressure, only high-end product, great service by experienced, dedicated and trained staff who share the buyers’ passions for textiles. It’s the concept developed by Peter Lucena and used in Auckland since the 1960s, updated for Brunswick St in 2007; and will be for textiles what Readings is for books. Instead of book readings we’ll have a gallery, instead of writers’ groups we’ll have discussion forums and workshops. And, of course, coffee and snacks whilst you’re browsing. Our retail space will attract people wanting to buy any of our great range of products, our raft of business services our our series of training DVDs over the counter. The entire concept will backed by our terrific web-site, which will be updated with every new product of every associated business available in our retail area.

Interested?

People proposing new or existing businesses who want to be part of our project will need to include a business plan in their application. if you don’t have one, we can help you to prepare one (which does not mean that you’ll automatically be accepted). You must explain in clear, concise language:

What is your product or service? You will also want to include why you've chosen this particular product or service.

Who are Your Customers? Identify who you plan to sell your product or service too and why. The demographics (age, sex, language, country or city, income, etc.) You need to clearly identify your customers in order to properly target your advertising, packaging and pricing,so we can see if this fits with our target market.

What Makes You Different? What niche are you filling that they are not or what do you plan to do to fill a particular void in the market that you've identified?

• Will the market pay your prices?
• What price do you have to charge to make money?
• Whether our business style fits with your personality style.
• Whether our business style fits with your target market.
• A budget for that shows you can pay for our services.
• Any Opportunities for you to develop new skills.
• Any Opportunities for you to develop a new, marketable product or service.
• Risk to you if the co-operative project fails.
  

To wrap it up, you should include a breakdown of both projected profit and loss per month (in graph form)for the first year in business. Show one-time and day-to-day expenses versus projected profit. Your business plan should show you making enough of a profit each month to live on – if it doesn’t, then it may be considered unfeasible.

We can only proceed if co-operation is in both our interests.

People who want to sell goods in our space will pay us for:

• rent, which includes the marketing levy, access to meeting rooms and access to our infrastructure (handy for those without a commercial base in Melbourne who wish to meet clients). The expected amount of rent is $3500 per year inclusive of GST.
• logistic support, for example when we arrange cartage, customs clearance or storage of your goods. If you’re paying rent, you’ll get a substantial discount on the cost of us arranging these services and you’ll get the actual services for not more than the discounted price we have negotiated for ourselves.
• products they buy from us (you’ll have to buy from us if we can supply what you want at a competitive price, but you’ll get a minimum 10% discount if you’re paying rent).
• products we sell for them - a commission on sales of 19% inclusive of GST.
• introductions and facilitation (e.g. to when we arrange a manufacturer to make garments to your sample and then oversee the production; when we set up facilities for you to accept payments from overseas client’s credit cards in US dollars so that you can buy supplies in USDs without having to convert currency and pay bank fees) this will usually be a percentage of turnover.
• mentoring and other professional services. If you’re paying rent, you’ll get a substantial discount on these.
• in some cases such as photocopying, a per-item fee on an at-cost basis.
  

What’s in it for us?

We seek to build core relationships with our associated businesses. This will allow us to focus 80% of our time on the few (20%) relationships that can help us reach 80% of our financial goals. By building our core relationships with our associated businesses, we aim to spend less time to earn more money, because we’ll focus in on our highest-potential relationships. They’ll be easier to service once the client is integrated into our business model as an associate.

We aim to become a trusted, strategic advisor to our “core relationship” clients. Clients we’ve built up to be technically capable and good at business buy more from us, not only because they’re stronger but because we retain their loyalty. This will allow us to stop wasting time on the clients that won't help us as much.

We will build our core relationships by providing “win-win” business solutions, where we share some costs, some risks and some profits. By assisting in cost and risk sharing, marketing and the provision of value added services we will assist our associated businesses to meet their business goals, and solve their problems. We will:

• alert them to opportunities which are likely to move forward, such as joint presence at trade fairs, and ways we can co-operate in taking advantage of those opportunities.
• add value to our associates by mentoring and coaching, in a way that will build the relationship, in a way that ties directly to our associates’ goals and opportunities.
• introduce our associates to our huge network of business associates, other traders, craftspeople, artisans, and professionals.
• allow our associates to duplicate our systems including our proprietary software.
• share costs and risks wherever possible to allow all of us to take advantage of economies of scale. We will pass on savings we make through increasing economies of scale to you.

The most powerful solution to be offered to a business which does not have a series of systems is our own tried and proven set of systems. We make them available as part of our mentoring package.

Turning your dream of a business into the reality of a business is not easy and there are no guarantees. But the opportunity exists and, if you're prepared to take the leap, working with Beautiful Silks should put you on the right footing to get started.

So, what's your next step!?

Email us here!

Or phone 03-55651882 for a discussion.