Our First Team Picture

Whew!  What a year 2011 has been so far for Bit of Whimsy Dolls!  The first six months of this year Rob and I watched as demand continued to grow for new patterns, finished dolls and clothes and we found ourselves at yet another big decision point - Do we level off and just do what we can OR do we take the next big step to become more than a stay at home business. If you've been a Facebook fan over the last several months, you know what we decided - TO GO FOR IT!

After finding the perfect office to work from, our attention turned to figuring out what roles we needed to fill, how many team members we needed for the various roles and most importantly  trying to find people who were the perfect fit.  I'm so excited to finally introduce to you the first full Bit of Whimsy Dolls team.  While I have had a couple other friends assist with various things, this is where it really begins. Below is our first 'team picture.'

Starting from the left, I'd like to introduce you to each of the women who really make the BOWD wheels turn as fast as they are these days.

Terri was the first hire after Rob and I opened the office.  Terri joined us about a week after the office opened.  In fact, we were still setting up much of the equipment, work spaces and only had concepts for how we thought things needed to work.  She had responded to an ad I placed in the newspaper back in January when Rob and I thought we were taking the business in a different direction as a home-based model.  When we opened the office, Rob asked me to pull out all the response we'd received from the ad and Terri was one of the first people I wanted to meet and see if she was interested in working at the new office.  She was, and the rest is history!

Karen, like Terri, also responded to my original ad in January.  At the time, we talked on the phone and it was obvious to me that she loved to sew and was someone I would certainly want to know better once I had the BOWD act together.  Fortunately, when I reached out to Karen shortly after the office opened, she was still interested in hearing about the sewing opportunity. Karen officially joined the team just after Labor Day.

Ailene happens to be a former high school classmate of Rob's. In this crazy social media connected world, Rob had reached out to several friends of his on Facebook and quickly received a response from Heidi (she's the one on the right).  Heidi in turn shared the Facebook message with Ailene and they both were interested in the opportunity to help with photography, listing and shipping.  Ailene has a passion for photography and has done several projects in her spare time. Seeing what Bit of Whimsy Dolls was about, she fell in love with the dolls and immediately started sewing dolls for her girls, even though she doesn't have a lot of sewing experience! Today, Ailene shares the photography, listing and shipping responsibilities with Heidi and is instrumental to getting the finished dolls and clothes into customer's hands.

Sarah - That's me.

Kathy - Shortly after we opened the office in June, I had the good fortune of being featured on the front page of the Business section of our local newspaper.  It was a wonderful 3/4 page article that had several pictures of the dolls, office and me.  In that article, I mentioned that the new office would provide me the ability to hire up to five sewers for the dolls.  Having read the article, I had a knock on the office door the following week.  It was Kathy.  She said that she had read the article, loved what I was doing, and wanted to introduce herself to me for consideration of one of the sewing jobs before anyone else had a chance.  With gusto like that, how could I say no? She fit right in and joined our growing team a week or two later.

Heidi - Having received one of Rob's Facebook message around 11pm one evening asking if she or anyone she knew would be interested in assisting Sarah with photography and other activities, Heidi not only sent back an enthusiastic 'YES!' that she was interested, she also passed Rob's note to Ailene as I mentioned above and both joined the team just a few weeks ago.  Heidi and Ailene have both jumped head first into the wonderful world of handmade and sewing!  Infact, if you go back to September 18th on the BOWD Facebook Fan Page, you'll see one of the first BOWD dolls Heidi ever made, an awesome Peter Puppy from someone who had not sewn much previously!

Rob and our kids - Best husband in the world and the guy behind all Bit of Whimsy Dolls technology and business stuff.  What can I say?  I couldn't do it without him.  Robbie, Abby, and Billy are the loves of our life and truly provide the creative inspiration behind almost every design I've made.

Well, that's it.  That's Version 1.0 of the Bit of Whimsy Dolls team and I couldn't be happier with everyone who has made the decision to join me and make the Bit of Whimsy Dolls dream a reality!  As we move forward, we'll be doing little spotlight, get-to-know-the-team posts on different members of our team. There's so much more in store for BOWD over the next year.  I only wish I had more hours in a day to turn my imagination into the new patterns, dolls and clothes that are screaming to get out!  We're working hard every day (and most nights!) to give you the best products and customer service possible.

As I was preparing this blog post, Rob found this picture of me working in our living room.  It was taken in spring of 2008 when BOWD was only 6 months old and I had around 5 - 8 designs.  Looking at this picture, it's hard to believe just how much things have grown over the past four years or so. So much has been done and there's so much more to do! We really are JUST. GETTING. STARTED!

Rob and I both sincerely thank everyone on our team and our entire team thank you for continuing to support our business.

August Charity - Muscular Dystrophy Association

Rob and I have selected the Muscular Dystrophy Association (www.mda.org) as the charity for August.  Like many of you, we were incredibly touched by our first monthly charitable activity earlier this year when we partnered with www.gettyowl.com to raise money and awareness for Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA).  Over the months, we’ve stayed in touch and continue to follow little Getty’s blog and keep them all in our thoughts and prayers.  SMA, is one of the many forms of muscular issues for which the Muscular Dystrophy Association is in search of a cure. A wealth of information on the various forms of diseases can be found at http://www.mda.org/disease/

In the United States it’s become somewhat of a Labor Day tradition to watch the Jerry Lewis MDA telethon.  While Rob and I cannot say that we’ve ever sat and watched the entire 24 hours, we always enjoy checking in to see how much money has been raised and to watch the corporate sponsors and other groups give incredibly large donations. For the month of August, Bit of Whimsy Dolls will donate 10% of all sales on www.bitofwhimsydolls.com to our local chapter of MDA in Youngstown, OH.

Thank you in advance for your continued support of Bit of Whimsy Dolls through your purchases on our website and spreading the word about us to friends and family.  Together we’ve been able to give thousands of dollars to worthy charities like MDA.

Supporting Ronald McDonald House

[from Rob] This month, Bit of Whimsy Dolls will be supporting Ronald McDonald House Charities (www.rmhc.org).  Here’s why…

For the past 12 years, I have been a technology and strategy consultant to the healthcare industry and as you might imagine I have had the opportunity to visit literally hundreds of hospitals across the United States. I love knowing that the work I do plays some part in the care provided to people every day. That said, when I know I’ll be working in a Children’s hospital, things take on a completely different feeling.  There’s something about seeing a 4 year old in a hospital that feels different than someone my age or older.  Children are suppose to run, laugh, and play. Sadly, this isn’t the case for so many.  

As a Father, I hope to never experience the emotional rollercoaster of having a child in the hospital with a life threatening illness. No parent ever hopes for this, obviously.  Unfortunately, many families find themselves in just this situation… and when this happens to a family, everything else stops.  Nothing else matters except retuning their child to health and going home.

In some cases, children must be treated at specialized hospitals in another city making it impossible for the patent or family to return home during treatment. Ronald McDonald House is one of many different organizations that provide housing to patients and families who cannot return home during treatment.  For the month of July, Bit of Whimsy Dolls will donate 10% of all sales on our website www.bitofwhimsydolls.com to Ronald McDonald House Charities with the hope that families can remain together when it matters most.

June- American Red Cross

Thank you everyone for helping raise money in May for Great Strides to help find a cure for cystic fibrosis!

I was born in Florida, lived in Utah and now live in Ohio but I consider Georgia my home. I am a Southern Girl through and through! In April, my hometown was hit by a tornado and even though all of my family and friends were safe, there are many who were not so fortunate. This picture was taken by my brother's girlfriend of her neighborhood and it is only a glimpse of the devastation. Over the last 6 weeks, it has been a rare occasion to turn on the news and not hear a story of a tornado ripping through a small southern town or to hear about the Mississippi River floods. This spring has not been kind to many people.Rebuilding will take a lot of time and a lot of money. Since the needs are great from Joplin, Missouri to Sunnyside, Georgia; we have decided to give 10% of June's sales to the American Red Cross for their tornado and flood relief efforts.

Here We Grow Again!

These two gals are the same… but different. The Mae on the left has arms and legs sewn by me on my little sewing machine and her face is hand embroidered. The Mae on the right has arms and legs sewn automatically by a professional machine and her face is machine embroidered. Yep! This little sweetie is high tech! lol

Rob and I have mentioned in past blog and Facebook posts that 2011 would be a big year with announcements planned for almost every month.  Well, this is another one - and maybe the most exciting announcement of the year (but the year's not over yet - <insert tease here>) Thanks to all of you, Bit of Whimsy Dolls has been growing by leaps and bounds over the last year. Growth is great! Keeping up with growth can sometimes be a struggle as we've watched dolls fly off the virtual shelves on our New Doll Thursdays. We simply can't keep the same old pace and meet the demand for Original Bit of Whimsy Dolls.  This is a great problem to have, but still a problem. 

Rob and I have spent a lot of time talking about how to scale to meet your demand for my dolls.  To help ease this pressure, I hired an assistant full time who helps me with cutting dolls, stuffing the arms and legs, shipping and listing items on my website. She is fantastic and helps me out tremendously. She doesn't sew. Much. Yet. lol I put an ad in the newspaper and interviewed several sewists… I was amazed at how many people did not take me seriously with one even going so far as to tell me "…I feel that your dolls and patterns are too simplified for my skill level… I am sure many other mediocre sewers responded to your ad.  I wish you luck with your adventure."  No Joke… she actually put this in an email. lol. We live in a very old community and most of the ladies that I talked to didn't think that you could run an international business from your dining room. I did hire someone but after a few weeks I came to the realization that we weren't a good fit. I am very passionate and I need someone just as interested and passionate as I am!  I put hiring on the back burner since we had a lot of traveling this spring and it would be hard to train anyone until we got home.

While on vacation in Georgia, we happened to visit A Scarlet Thread, an amazing fabric shop owned by an amazing woman named Karen. We got to talking…as Southern women do… and she gave us some great ideas to help us boost production. She introduced us to a great machine and talked to us about software capabilities that will duplicate my designs on the machine. We didn't buy a machine at that time, but Rob and I talked about it. A lot. Should we make such an investment?  Would it work? Would the quality that I demand be there?  We often seek advice from S.C.O.R.E. when faced with business turning points and after we talked to them about this machine, they asked us why we hadn't bought it yet. We bought it that day! It now sits in our dining room / Bit of Whimsy Dolls world headquarters lol.

In the past, I have looked into machine embroidery and have never liked it. There has always been something about it that I didn't like. Maybe it was how "perfect" it is or maybe it is the type of stitches that are used but I never liked it. I was really, really, REALLY nervous about the idea of switching to machine embroidered faces. I was not nervous about having the machine sew arms and legs for me, however! lol But the faces…. the faces need to be "just right". We contacted a few people to do the programming since we knew nothing about the software and designing, etc. We were excited to just get the machine going! We didn't like the designs that were coming back to us so Rob decided to give the software a go being the computer tech geek he is. I couldn't believe it when he showed me a sample of my hand drawn face sewn by a machine! Wow! The first one wasn't perfect, but showed a lot of promise.  After countless tweaks - add a stitch here, move this stitch over a little, yada yada - he nailed it!  I have to give Rob props for digging into this software and figuring things out! So even though the new dolls will be "high tech", they keep their handmade charm by still being directly based on my drawings. I honestly never thought it was possible until I saw a group of Mae's sitting together! For the next several months, there will be a mix of dolls with hand embroidered faces and machine embroidered faces and the descriptions will say what type of doll it is until we have moved completely over to machine embroidery.

So what does this mean for you? It means that I can provide more dolls for you! Wooohooooo! It means that I can keep my costs down while still providing an awesome product! Oh yeah baby! It means that I will have more time for custom orders! Yes! All custom orders will still have hand embroidered faces and the next three spots will open on Friday May 20th at 3pm Eastern!

Thank you to everyone who has supported us over the years! This has been an amazing journey so far and Rob and I are thrilled about this next path!

How to Purchase a Doll!

The only place to buy an Original Bit of Whimsy Doll directly from me is www.bitofwhimsydolls.com. All of my dolls are one of a kind, named and numbered. They are just as unique as the children who love them! All of the dolls listed on my website are in stock and ready to ship.

I do not sell anything through my Facebook fan page but I do post a preview album on my wall so that my fans know what will be available in every website update. I update my website with new dolls every Thursday at 9pm Eastern with only a few exceptions. Sometimes I do have to push an update back a week but usually just for sick kids and holidays! Since I sell dolls to customers all over the world, I post a countdown clock about 3 hours before 9pm Eastern on my Facebook wall on Thursdays to help everyone with the time differences. This is an easy way to make sure that you don't calculate the time difference wrong!

I do accept custom orders on a limited basis. Custom dolls take a lot longer to make than regular dolls so I only open up a few slots at a time. These slots are also purchased on my website through a special Deposit listing. I always announce on Facebook first when these slots open and I try to give at least 24 hours notice to my fans before the Deposit listings are available!

I accept PayPal through my website but you can pay with a credit card via PayPal without actually having a PayPal account. It is easy to use and secure!

May's BOWD Cause - Cystic Fibrosis & Great Strides

Bit of Whimsy Dolls Friends, it is our honor to announce that we have partnered with another wonderful organizer for a great cause.  For the month of May, we will be raising awareness and donating 10% of all sales on our website www.bitofwhimsydolls.com to Great Strides, the largest national fundraising event for Cystic Fibrosis (CF).  

Now admittedly, Rob and I knew next to nothing about CF prior to having this disease suggested to us for support, but after looking into CF to understand more about this disease and the Great Strides organization, it is our honor to forge another wonderful partnership and we think you too will feel the same sense of curiosity we had.  On behalf of everyone at Great Strides, Rob and I would like to thank you for your support this Month for Cystic Fibrosis and Great Strides.  Below is a brief story written by our partner, Amy Rovai, Chairperson for Great Strides, Sacramento, CA.  

Meet Taryn and Taya! Taryn  is three and Taya just turned one! They are your average sisters- they love to play together, enjoy swinging at the park, and love to dress in anything that is pink and frilly! Looking at them, you would never guess that they are suffering from a life-threatening disease that has no cure… but they are. Taryn and Taya both have Cystic Fibrosis. 

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a genetic chronic disease that affects the lungs and digestive system of about 30,000 children and adults in the United States (70,000 worldwide). People who have CF spend much of their day taking medicines to help deal with infections, enzyme pills before snacks and meals, multiple breathing treatments to help open airways, and chest therapy to help loosen mucus trapped in their lungs.  They have to be very careful about germs and bacteria, since they are more susceptible to illnesses, and have to fight harder to get rid of them. 

In the 1950s, few children with cystic fibrosis lived long enough to see their 5th birthday. Today, advances in research and medical treatments have further enhanced and extended life for children and adults with CF. The current median age for survival is 37, and new research and treatments aimed at targeting the underlying defects of CF, are hoping to extend patients’ lives so they can live longer, healthier, happier lives.

For more information about Taryn and Taya, or the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, please visit: 

http://www.cff.org/Great_Strides/AmyRovaiWieler5767

Thank you so much for your support!