The OC Story- As told by Ofelia Cisneros
March 13, 2011
The Scarf
In mid September 2006 my mother became very ill and my sisters had been taking turns caring for her. My daughter and I decided to give my sisters some assistance, and we took a week off work. On our three hour drive to my parents home, my daughter was looking through a magazine and saw a picture of a model wearing a scarf. She asked me if I would make her a scarf, so we stopped by a discount store to buy some yarn. I started making her scarf, in my own version of what I could make out of the picture in the magazine. My first attempt did not work out, so I took it apart (one of my pet peeves). I tried again, and once more the scarf did not work out, but this time I refused to take it apart a second time. Instead, I bought more yarn and started over. The third time was a charm. My daughter got her scarf and I was left with this rectangle thing. So I decided to embellish it with beads, and this was to be the original wrap.
The Wrap
Soon after, I wore the wrap to work and got great reviews. I had a doctor’s appointment that day and was asked by the employees there at the doctor’s office where I had gotten my wrap. I told them that I had made it. They asked if I would make them for sale. At work, coworkers kept telling me I should sell my wraps. One day at the copy machine I was approached by a member of the computer support department, she said my wraps would do well online. I told her that I was not prepared and would not even know where to begin or what price to sell them for. Furthermore, I really did not know what I was doing. I had only learned to crochet the chain stitch from my mom when I was about 8 years old. One thing was to make something for myself, but to sell something, it must be perfect. She told me she would help me sell online. We made appointments three different times and each times she could not make it. After that experience, we abandon the idea of selling our product online.
Carmel
I shared with my husband that people at work were telling me that I should sell my wraps to boutiques. At this point in our lives, my husband and I both discovered that we both enjoyed gardening. So every weekend we would start out with a brainstorming session at the local coffee shop and pull marathon days (up to 16 hours) working in our yard. We had even enrolled in a semester masonry class at the junior college and were now able to pour our own stamped concrete. Being an early riser I would be up at 4 am crocheting before my husband woke up. This one Saturday morning my husband woke up, showered, and got dressed in his Sunday best (instead of his grubbies for working in the yard). He said to me “get ready we are going to see if this thing (my wrap) has as much appeal as people say it does”. I asked where we were going and he replied “we are going to Carmel and we are going to show this to the boutiques”. I said “it is 7 am boutiques won’t be open before 10 am”. And he replied “that’s ok we are going to scope out the town and pick out the boutiques we would like to approach”. Low and behold, in every boutique we entered, I was the one being approached and complimented on my wrap. In the midst of this, my husband and I agreed on what would be the price of our wrap. The price would be $60. In closing the deal with the boutique which became our first customer in the fashion industry, our parting words were “and how much would you sell our wrap for?” (The deal was 50/50 on consignment). We were told she would sell it for $275. Neither my husband nor I said a word. With an order to fill and a handshake we walked out. About ten steps from the door my husband asked “how much did she say these would sell for?” I answered “275 dollars”. My husband responded “that’s what I thought she said”. At this point my husband said, “You are going to have to step it up a few notches. You can’t be buying the yarn at discount stores anymore”. So we started buying our yarn at upscale yarn shops, I took a crochet class and asked a lot of questions of yarn shop owners. We attended one yarn show in Long Beach and started buying yarn wholesale. For someone who never thought of spending more than $5 on a skein of yarn I was now working with yarn that cost up to $60 per skein, wholesale. By June I had people helping me because I could not keep up with the orders myself.
The Necklace
In late November I made myself a necklace. One day as I was having a conversation with the CEO of the company I work for, she stopped the conversation and said, “I’m sorry for interrupting you Ofelia, but I really like the necklace you are wearing. Will you make me one?” By the end of December I had sold over 1000 dollars in necklaces to people at work.
The Butterfly Sweater
On a Saturday in February 2008, we went to the San Francisco international gift fair to buy material for making jewelry. We were walking down the isle in the cash and carry section when I was stopped in my tracks by a demonstration of how to wear the “butterfly sweater”. I was mesmerized. My husband was about 50 feet ahead when he realized I was no longer by his side. He turned around and saw me standing in front of the booth that was selling the butterfly sweaters. He yelled back, “come on, we are on a mission!” And I shouted back, “wait, wait, I have to buy one of these sweaters!” Out of the many beautiful colors, I purchased an army green one. We completed our purchases and we went home. I quickly made myself a necklace to match my new butterfly sweater. On Monday I wore both my sweater and necklace to work. About mid morning my husband called me and told me that we had not purchased enough supplies and would soon run out. He said I should ask for the afternoon off so we could go back to San Francisco and buy more supplies to make our jewelry. My supervisor who has been very supportive and understanding gave me the afternoon off. So we went back to San Francisco for more shopping. While my husband completed a purchase, I wandered into other booths looking for more treasures to incorporate into my jewelry designs. While in a booth this woman and I bumped into each other. She took one step back looked at what I was wearing, “I like what you are wearing” she said. I thanked her, and she said, “you know, I sell something like this in my booth.” “You have a booth here?” I asked and she told me that she did. She added “by the way I like the necklace that you are wearing.” I told her that I made it to go with my sweater. We stepped out into the isle and she pointed at her booth. I looked at her and exclaimed “I bought this from you on Saturday!” She looked at me in amazement and said “but you are wearing it differently, that is not one of the ways we show how to wear it” I said “oh, I just played with it and this is how it ended up.” She asked me where I was from and I replied, the Monterey area. She said, “you know, I don’t have anyone repping for me in that area” and she asked me if would be interested in being her rep. Not knowing what a rep was I said that I would need to talk to my husband since we did the business together. I found my husband and within half an hour on a handshake we were now her rep. My husband and I started visiting boutiques and selling product as what I later found out is referred to as cold calls in the industry. Within one month we had signed on 19 boutiques from Santa Barbara up to the San Francisco Bay area. Some stores bought both the butterfly sweaters and my jewelry others just wanted the sweaters and some just wanted the jewelry. We and the butterfly sweater manufacturer were very happy with how business was going.
The Sabbatical
In April our daughter, who had graduated from UC Davis one quarter early to save on tuition, had been offered an internship in the Salinas Valley. She came home for four months before starting her masters program at the University of Minnesota- Twin Cities. Knowing that she would be gone a few years and that visits would be few and far between, we decided to take a sabbatical and spend as much time with her as possible before she left to Minnesota. Our sabbatical went from few months to almost a year. Then one day in February 2009 my husband said “OK either we are going to do the business or we’re not. If we’re in we need to work it every weekend.” We decided that we were in and came up with a game plan to start making cold calls again. In our conversations with our customers one thing kept coming up, and that was that we should do shows, being very new to this industry we did not know what this would entail and were a bit apprehensive. Long story short, (ha ha) we did our first show in October 2009 in San Mateo at the Fashion Market Northern California. In February 2010, with one show under our belt, we were ready for the big time and did the WWIN show in Las Vegas. And as the saying goes… the rest is history.
P.S. This past Christmas, my daughter gave my husband and I a very special gift. It was the original scarf that started this chapter in our lives.
In mid September 2006 my mother became very ill and my sisters had been taking turns caring for her. My daughter and I decided to give my sisters some assistance, and we took a week off work. On our three hour drive to my parents home, my daughter was looking through a magazine and saw a picture of a model wearing a scarf. She asked me if I would make her a scarf, so we stopped by a discount store to buy some yarn. I started making her scarf, in my own version of what I could make out of the picture in the magazine. My first attempt did not work out, so I took it apart (one of my pet peeves). I tried again, and once more the scarf did not work out, but this time I refused to take it apart a second time. Instead, I bought more yarn and started over. The third time was a charm. My daughter got her scarf and I was left with this rectangle thing. So I decided to embellish it with beads, and this was to be the original wrap.
The Wrap
Soon after, I wore the wrap to work and got great reviews. I had a doctor’s appointment that day and was asked by the employees there at the doctor’s office where I had gotten my wrap. I told them that I had made it. They asked if I would make them for sale. At work, coworkers kept telling me I should sell my wraps. One day at the copy machine I was approached by a member of the computer support department, she said my wraps would do well online. I told her that I was not prepared and would not even know where to begin or what price to sell them for. Furthermore, I really did not know what I was doing. I had only learned to crochet the chain stitch from my mom when I was about 8 years old. One thing was to make something for myself, but to sell something, it must be perfect. She told me she would help me sell online. We made appointments three different times and each times she could not make it. After that experience, we abandon the idea of selling our product online.
Carmel
I shared with my husband that people at work were telling me that I should sell my wraps to boutiques. At this point in our lives, my husband and I both discovered that we both enjoyed gardening. So every weekend we would start out with a brainstorming session at the local coffee shop and pull marathon days (up to 16 hours) working in our yard. We had even enrolled in a semester masonry class at the junior college and were now able to pour our own stamped concrete. Being an early riser I would be up at 4 am crocheting before my husband woke up. This one Saturday morning my husband woke up, showered, and got dressed in his Sunday best (instead of his grubbies for working in the yard). He said to me “get ready we are going to see if this thing (my wrap) has as much appeal as people say it does”. I asked where we were going and he replied “we are going to Carmel and we are going to show this to the boutiques”. I said “it is 7 am boutiques won’t be open before 10 am”. And he replied “that’s ok we are going to scope out the town and pick out the boutiques we would like to approach”. Low and behold, in every boutique we entered, I was the one being approached and complimented on my wrap. In the midst of this, my husband and I agreed on what would be the price of our wrap. The price would be $60. In closing the deal with the boutique which became our first customer in the fashion industry, our parting words were “and how much would you sell our wrap for?” (The deal was 50/50 on consignment). We were told she would sell it for $275. Neither my husband nor I said a word. With an order to fill and a handshake we walked out. About ten steps from the door my husband asked “how much did she say these would sell for?” I answered “275 dollars”. My husband responded “that’s what I thought she said”. At this point my husband said, “You are going to have to step it up a few notches. You can’t be buying the yarn at discount stores anymore”. So we started buying our yarn at upscale yarn shops, I took a crochet class and asked a lot of questions of yarn shop owners. We attended one yarn show in Long Beach and started buying yarn wholesale. For someone who never thought of spending more than $5 on a skein of yarn I was now working with yarn that cost up to $60 per skein, wholesale. By June I had people helping me because I could not keep up with the orders myself.
The Necklace
In late November I made myself a necklace. One day as I was having a conversation with the CEO of the company I work for, she stopped the conversation and said, “I’m sorry for interrupting you Ofelia, but I really like the necklace you are wearing. Will you make me one?” By the end of December I had sold over 1000 dollars in necklaces to people at work.
The Butterfly Sweater
On a Saturday in February 2008, we went to the San Francisco international gift fair to buy material for making jewelry. We were walking down the isle in the cash and carry section when I was stopped in my tracks by a demonstration of how to wear the “butterfly sweater”. I was mesmerized. My husband was about 50 feet ahead when he realized I was no longer by his side. He turned around and saw me standing in front of the booth that was selling the butterfly sweaters. He yelled back, “come on, we are on a mission!” And I shouted back, “wait, wait, I have to buy one of these sweaters!” Out of the many beautiful colors, I purchased an army green one. We completed our purchases and we went home. I quickly made myself a necklace to match my new butterfly sweater. On Monday I wore both my sweater and necklace to work. About mid morning my husband called me and told me that we had not purchased enough supplies and would soon run out. He said I should ask for the afternoon off so we could go back to San Francisco and buy more supplies to make our jewelry. My supervisor who has been very supportive and understanding gave me the afternoon off. So we went back to San Francisco for more shopping. While my husband completed a purchase, I wandered into other booths looking for more treasures to incorporate into my jewelry designs. While in a booth this woman and I bumped into each other. She took one step back looked at what I was wearing, “I like what you are wearing” she said. I thanked her, and she said, “you know, I sell something like this in my booth.” “You have a booth here?” I asked and she told me that she did. She added “by the way I like the necklace that you are wearing.” I told her that I made it to go with my sweater. We stepped out into the isle and she pointed at her booth. I looked at her and exclaimed “I bought this from you on Saturday!” She looked at me in amazement and said “but you are wearing it differently, that is not one of the ways we show how to wear it” I said “oh, I just played with it and this is how it ended up.” She asked me where I was from and I replied, the Monterey area. She said, “you know, I don’t have anyone repping for me in that area” and she asked me if would be interested in being her rep. Not knowing what a rep was I said that I would need to talk to my husband since we did the business together. I found my husband and within half an hour on a handshake we were now her rep. My husband and I started visiting boutiques and selling product as what I later found out is referred to as cold calls in the industry. Within one month we had signed on 19 boutiques from Santa Barbara up to the San Francisco Bay area. Some stores bought both the butterfly sweaters and my jewelry others just wanted the sweaters and some just wanted the jewelry. We and the butterfly sweater manufacturer were very happy with how business was going.
The Sabbatical
In April our daughter, who had graduated from UC Davis one quarter early to save on tuition, had been offered an internship in the Salinas Valley. She came home for four months before starting her masters program at the University of Minnesota- Twin Cities. Knowing that she would be gone a few years and that visits would be few and far between, we decided to take a sabbatical and spend as much time with her as possible before she left to Minnesota. Our sabbatical went from few months to almost a year. Then one day in February 2009 my husband said “OK either we are going to do the business or we’re not. If we’re in we need to work it every weekend.” We decided that we were in and came up with a game plan to start making cold calls again. In our conversations with our customers one thing kept coming up, and that was that we should do shows, being very new to this industry we did not know what this would entail and were a bit apprehensive. Long story short, (ha ha) we did our first show in October 2009 in San Mateo at the Fashion Market Northern California. In February 2010, with one show under our belt, we were ready for the big time and did the WWIN show in Las Vegas. And as the saying goes… the rest is history.
P.S. This past Christmas, my daughter gave my husband and I a very special gift. It was the original scarf that started this chapter in our lives.