Urban Polkadot!!

Holy Guacamole, have we been up to a lot! Hmmm, that was cheesy, let me try again ...
Gee Wizzz you outa see what we've been up to!
Hmmm... still cheesy?
Eee gatz!! Do I have a lot to tell you Pumpkins!!

Okay, okay, enough.

So here is the story ... last winter, a month or two after Paul was laid off from Circle West Architects, I was telling him how I thought he could start selling something online with his artistic abilities; graphic design, woodworking, rendering, etc. ... so we kept our minds open to ideas. A little later, we noticed one night that Taya pulled one of our kitchen chairs up to the tv and plopped herself comfortably there to watch (tv, yikes, I know). We both thought it would be a fun project for Paul to make a wooden toddler chair for her. He came up with this endearing design very quickly; we immediately saw it as an opportunity to sell multiples. Shortly, Paul designed a table to go along with it, we picked out colors, chose company & product names, Urban Polkadot & Taya's Table & Chair set, and one idea turned into another!
 


We eventually decided to take our design on the road while on a family trip in California back in July. We showed our products to several boutiques in Southern & Northern California & received great feedback! Shortly after, we decided to attend The ABC Exo (All Baby & Child tradeshow), a juvenile products show that is the largest of its kind. And we had A LOT to do to get ready! ...Brochures, press kits, designing & building a booth, paperwork, website creation, manufacturing/business/price point research, producing more table & chair sets, etc. etc. - all on a short deadline - we worked our hineys off - especially Paul! 
We attended the Expo in Las Vegas last month and it went great! The ABC Expo includes vendors such as Fisher Price, Graco, Maclaren, and more, including new or small companies like ourselves, and attendees such as online retailers to lots of boutiques to mass chain stores. 
We were received with a lot of enthusiasm by attendees (retailers) and have significant interest from many of them, including some retailers with key design appeal. We also had great interest from some different media sources. This design blog included us in their display of ABC Show products too! 
So things are looking good!! We have a lot to do and are looking to have our table & chair sets on store shelves by Spring 2010. In the meantime, we plan on selling them online for the Christmas season (I'll make sure to let you know when that happens).
So go check it out!! www.urbanpolkadot.com
(And tell your friends! Or if you know of someone who would be interested in a small investment project, let us know & we'll be happy to share more about Urban Polkadot with you -- and them :) )

Wondering why it's taken me so long to write this post?  Well, I don't know what was going on but I must have written and rewritten this post in different versions at least four times before blogger lost it and would not save it, or my computer would just shut off, etc.  Craziness.  Every time.  So between being very busy lately (with other updates to tell about) and not wanting my work lost again, this is what we get!  But just pretend the Expo happened last week - it'll make you feel better :)

Key Words:  Urban Polkadot, Kids Furniture, Toddler Furniture, Table & Chair Sets, Toddler Chair, modern nursery furniture, rocking horse, toddler rocker

Somethin' Better

AwesomeRossom. We've been staring at that roach picture for far too long now, and the post before that was basically my sob story (with slightly positive aspirations right?) I just had to post something new to look at instead of that lovely roach picture; so here is a sneak peak of something I'm LONG overdue in posting about ...


Love Jana's photography as usual :)

Oh, did you think I was going to tell you about the long overdue topic? Naahh, this is just a teaser ...