BUSINESS TOOLS

If you’re a young textile artist looking to build your career, enlist Beautiful Silks as a resource by becoming an associated emerging business.. We’re more than a retailer and more than a wholesaler. We provide a total business service for young designers and makers of textile goods: scarves, wraps, gowns and other garments, accessories, furnishings, carpets, tapestries, painted silks and other wall-hangings, even shoes.

Whatever you need to pursue your craft, we can get. But we offer more than that. We can help you market and sell your work, secure your supplies and get them more cheaply, streamline your business operations, even build your client, invoicing and inventory database or your website. To assist designers who are short of cash, it is even possible to trade some of your work for provision of some business services (although generally not supplies of products).

Take advantage of our expertise and learn whilst you do it with our technical skills mentoring program. Our multi-media training materials, now in production, cover the entire production process of a garment from cutting to dyeing (see our training page). Technical workshops are held regularly around the country (see our workshops page). Workshops can also be held in your premises and tailored to suit groups of designers. Just pick an area of Marion’s expertise and she’ll design a workshop around it. These start at $800 per day, inclusive of preparation costs, limited travel and materials, and course notes, and including GST.

Our business skills mentoring program is based on our own experience of over 40 years of dealing in textiles, coupled with our business manager’s 13 years of commercial legal practice. They cover areas of copyright, business planning, foreign currency transactions, use of offshore companies for asset protection, banking and finance, debt recovery, business negotiations and market testing. We operate a real-time business mentoring help desk (which does not extend to legal advice) – ring for mentoring with any business problem for $40 for up to 30 minutes, or subscribe for $200 per year for up to 15 x 15 minute help-desk sessions We also operate business mentoring workshops, and one-on-one business mentorships at $80 per hour inclusive of GST.

Our business tools include supply chain management; distribution management; business planning, market-test planning, copy-writing, marketing through our web-site, showroom, travelling showroom and regular appearances at Fibre Forum events; representation to our many resellers, which include leading boutiques and craft suppliers; and inclusion in our catalogues which are subscribed to by our large, international database of clients.

Our advanced workshops and business services are for more established designers and traders. We offer marketing through our web-site, including outsourced invoicing and distribution services; introductions to our customs clearance agents and freight forwarders for your exports; commission-based procurement for large orders of incoming product; overseas representation in the Chinese, Indian and middle-Eastern markets; short-run production; introductions to domestic and international banks to facilitate international payments and access to our specialist team of lawyers and accountants who have expertise in import-export and particularly in the textile industry.

Those wishing to access advanced business services and workshops need to register as associated businesses.

Click on the button to go to our information page... or to Rigister

From March 2007, associated emerging businesses and associated businesses will be able to access our inner Melbourne warehouse and office for display of their wares.