Lola's Chain Mail:Week ending 26th February

Welcome back to Chain Mail Friday ♥

Meet Doe Deere ♥

image courtesy of Doe Deere Blogazine.

Without further adieu here is my interview with the very lovely Doe Deere, unicorn lover and creator of Lime Crime cosmetics.

♥ I love your line, the one thing that really strikes me about Lime Crime is that it is so fun and vibrant! If you were given only three words to describe your products to a beauty editor what would they be? Like an elevator pitch? I would say that it's bright, pigmented, & whimsical! I think our slogan says it all: "So bright it's illegal!"

♥ Lime Crime is primarily sold online. How did you market your products to your customers? We sold exclusively online for the first year, but are currently branching out into retail stores in US, UK, Canada and soon Australia. When we were first starting out, my main marketing tools were MySpace, Twitter, and my blog - Doe Deere Blogazine. I enjoy writing and sharing, so I started posting makeup tutorials on my site back in 2005. Those were the dark ages of makeup tutorials, and, believe it or not, I was the only girl on the internet doing tutorials. Now we have YouTube, and LiveJournal communities, and lots of other sites! It's pretty awesome how the whole thing took off.

♥ Does selling online have any advantages over selling in physical stores? Yes, absolutely. You don't need a display, don't need to convince buyers to carry your product, and the overhead is significantly lower. However, the obvious problem with selling beauty online is that people can't try it. My dream was always to let my customers experience Lime Crime in person - which is why it's so exciting to finally have my products carried in physical stores!

♥ What was the hardest thing for you when beginning Lime Crime? Designing packaging and establishing a customer base. I love packaging and insisted on designing it myself, without having prior experience. Hit a few bumps on the road here and there. But in the end, I'm glad I did it myself - I have a much better understanding of how things work now, plus I love learning new skills. Getting the word out about my brand was tough. When you do something so far removed from the mainstream, you don't know where you fit in - and finding your customer can be a challenge. But in the process, I got to know my customer much better and even learned a thing or two about myself!

♥ How has social media impacted on your company? How have you approached using this method? I think the internet in general lent a hand. I've been online since 1996 (while still living in Russia) and marveled at the possibilities this invention brought us. I've made friends, business partners, even met my husband online - launching an online business was just a natural step. I love social networking, and enjoy connecting with new people very much.

My favorite sites:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Formspring (the new thing where anyone can ask you a question, anonymously or not).

♥ Lime Crime has recently been picked up in Urban Outfitters, congratulations! What do you think are the main contributors to this happening? Thank you so much! It's a milestone for us for sure, since Urban Outfitters is the first retailer to believe in our line and carry it in their stores. How did we end up there? Well, we were featured in Daily Candy, and that generated a great deal of buzz. Urban saw our lipsticks and wanted to carry them in their stores immediately. Our opaque lipsticks can be found in UO stores throughout Canada. I think we're a great fit with Urban because we are young, playful and tastefully edgy - just like their customers!

♥ Should we look out for Lime Crime in other stores soon? We are launching in Space NK this April, in both, UK and US. Space NK is a wonderful chain that carries cutting-edge brands such as Nars, Laura Mercier and Lipstick Queen. We are proud to be joining the family!

♥ What would you say to other women who want to start their own businesses? Go for it! If you have an idea, don't wait, do it now. Don't be afraid of failure - behind every great men there is a string of failures.

♥ What are your most used beauty products? Lip balm and eyeshadow primer - they keep my lips chap-free and my eyeshadow bright all day!

Thank you Doe...these answers have been really helpful to me and hopefully other aspiring entrepreneurs will enjoy them as well.

My Weekend....

Weekends at my abode are usually spent whiling hours away on Wikifashion. The wiki geek is currently working on a forum for the site and I am fielding photos from lovely bloggers who are reporting on behalf of Wikifashion from both New York and London Fashion Weeks. Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself that one day this might technically be "work".

On Sunday morning we met up with the lovely Joelle from Hello,Lovely who will be working on Wikifashion's redesign!

So excited.....and if that wasn't enough, I arrived home from our soy chai latte filled gathering to find that none other than Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia) had contacted me to say he loved the site! This completely boggled my mind. If it weren't for Jimmy's work on Mediawiki and Wikipedia, Wikifashion simply wouldn't exist. So to have him stumble across my site and be kind enough to let me know that he liked it, makes the many hours (and 29,000 + edits) all worth it.

If you could peak inside my head right now, the above picture would best describe what it looked like. Suffice to say that email will never be deleted.

The Wishing Jar

Pop in your wishes for the week....

Mine are in no particular order:

• Finish the New York Fashion Week pages on Wikifashion.
• Get the London Fashion Week pages up to date.
• Spend less money on groceries.
• Keep up with my exercise and weights routine.

Lola's Chain Mail:Week ending 12th February

It's Lola Chain Mail time again! These weeks seem to fly by! So in homage to Valentine's Day I thought it would be sweet to give each other a compliment this week. No need to be sappy, something you genuinely like about the blogger would be nice. So if you didn't have a Valentine, now you do. If you're new to this blog and don't know what I'm talking about, have a look at instructions here.

Comment away....

Lehman Brothers once rejected me for a job...phew

Because of my background in economics, the tale of Lehman Brothers, has been drilled into the back of my brain. I was studying Global Banking in 2008, so the collapse provided for excellent fodder for my lecturer, who consistently ran over time.

However for those that do not know who they are, the gist of the story is that they were one of the first of the financial institutions to fail in 2008 during the unravelling subprime mortgage crisis.

My reaction to this was a little peculiar, I am a little ashamed to admit this, however I felt a little bit smug. Around five months prior to their collapse I attended a very intense interview for an American company. Although the job advertisement was a little cryptic, the salary that they were offering popped from the screen like a carrot dangling above my head.

So along I went to this interview, one of many I had attended during this time. I sat in the waiting room, nervously reflecting on my resume and strengths. The interviewer was nice enough, he asked few questions and I asked if he would be able to tell me who this company was? He told me that wasn't possible, I asked if I could take a guess? The look on his face when I said Lehman Brothers was so satisfying. He said that I was the only person to have guessed who the company was. Surely my fantastic googling skills would transfer to financial analysis? I had it in the bag.

He asked a few more questions and proceeded to leave me with the most difficult problem solving questions I had ever encountered. He set a timer for one hour on the desk and left me to wonder what on earth I was doing?

It is probably one of the only times in my life that I have felt defeated. These questions was so perplexing, it would have been more productive to have counted the threads in the carpet. That too would have been just as difficult, so I did the only thing I knew how to do. Write whatever came to mind and spend the rest of my time staring out the window and deciding what I could do.

Here's what I worked out:

• I certainly did not want to clean windows on skyscrapers. I watched a man dangle from the building across from me, flinching every time he swung from floor to floor.
• I hate problems, they are just that, problematic and frustrating. Why would I want to become a professional problem solver? Some might argue that's what an economist is, however I think they are best described as scientists of life. Puke! My political econ tutor would be proud.
• I love fashion, economics, blogging, the internet, entrepreneurship and information. It was no surprise that my favourite subject at university was Information Economics. It delved into social media and the new economy and studied how the flow of information is best utilised.
• These loves would be very difficult to combine. However I would do my best.

Wikifashion was conceived around six months later and I think it's the best combination of my interests.

Moral of the story..don't do what you think sounds impressive. It will more than likely crumble around you. Try and figure out what it is you like doing, seeing, listening to or reading about and try to form a job that way.

So what are the things that you love? Do your interests sum to your career? Try listing them below, it's always advantageous to write things down. It will help you to visualise things and form a clear picture.

The Wishing Jar

Mine are:

• To keep up with my running/walking everyday.
• Find someone to tweet from London Fashion Week for Wikifashion....anyone interested?
• Start reading the books we chose for Book Club.

Pop in your weekly wishes .......

Happy Valentine's Day ♥

So I can finally reveal my present to you! I have been slaving away at Miss Mac for the last three days creating a Wikifashion page for everyone who has been kind enough to comment on my blog, in all I have created around 100 new pages.
You can have a look for your blog on this page here, they will be listed alphabetically and categorised under country. You can also use the search box to find your blog. If you can't find yours, feel free to add it or ask me to help out. I'd be more than happy to do so.

Joelle from Hello, Lovely has created some gorgeous badges for everyone to place on their blogs. You can see an example of one in the sidebar and also above. They are available in blue, green and pink, take your pick!

If badges aren't your style you can tweet the link to your page, post about it or create a page for someone else you might know. Here are the instructions for creating a blog page.

Starting from next week I am going to be using the pages to create the front page articles on Wikifashion. If you'd like to be on the front page, all you have to do is add a badge to your sidebar and tweet @Wikifashion. A lot of the pages are quite sparse, so it would be really great if you could jot down a bit of information about yourselves in the "About" section. That way I can create the best featured articles possible.

If you want to be part of the Wikifashion community and you need a little help creating a page, feel free to comment below, email me, tweet me....whatever you like. I basically don't leave my desk unless I need sleep or strawberries, so I'm always here to help out ♥

If I've forgotten anyone, I'm so sorry. Please let me know and I'll hop to it!

note: I'm wearing my strawberry macaron necklace in this video ♥

xoxo

The Economics of Tavi 101

A lot has been discussed in the past week about the antiquated debate of fashion bloggers versus fashion journalists. My general feeling, is that it's basically a game of the pot calling the kettle black. Fashion journalists have accused some of online's most publicised bloggers of being "sell outs" and mouth pieces for public relation consultants. To me this is the height of hypocrisy, magazines have long been chained to advertising dollars, journalists' words at the beck and call of their editors and editors scramble to feed their readers advertisements disguised as genuine articles and so the cycle continues.

For the most part I think journalists have their Stella McCartney knickers in a knot because they do not understand the online world, the free flow of information and user generated content. For too long they have controlled the ship, they liked their absolute advantage over fashion content, now they too must navigate the murky waters. Magazines once operated under monopolistic competition, they understood one another and knew the game like the back of their hands. They can see fashion bloggers forming a comparative advantage over the online narrative and did not anticipate their own slip.

The print media are suffering from what is called adaptive expectations, this basically denotes that ones views of the future are depicted by assuming past trends and errors will continue. If only journalists could be more dynamic and understand that if they let go of the golden rope, they would be able to change and grow with the online world. By holding onto their tried and true methods they are risking defeat. The online world has opened up a raft of new opportunities, the barriers to entry are extremely low and so a lot of new players have entered the game.

It seemed that both bloggers and journalists were playing nice, until a simple bow construed the view of certain editor. The bow in question belonged to none other than Tavi of Style Rookie, a seemingly unstoppable force in the fashion world. I would liken Tavi to that of an asymmetric shock. Her establishment into the online world created a minor stir, but once she stepped over that invisible line into the tangible fashion industry, her bow acted like a satirical noose to the print media and editors alike. The bevy of bloggers now vying for their precious advertising dollars have caused a raucous.

No longer will the two be divvied up like first class and economy. Both forms of media serve different and very important purposes. It's high time the market and readers had access to a wider variety of content. Although in the short term a flood of information may decrease quality, the market will correct itself and return to a fashionable equilibrium. Until then, why can't the two enjoy a friendly oligopoly?

Chictopia 10 Social Influence Summit

Many of you would have heard of Chictopia, it is a fantastic community for the fashion industry and bloggers alike. On February 13th they are holding a summit which will involve a mixture of technologically savvy brands, upcoming designers and the cream of the crop fashion bloggers. In all, three hundred bloggers will be attending the event in New York. Topics covered include, blogging and the future, who is the next Rodarte? and why we value individual style?

Unfortunately living in Australia has restricted me from attending. However, being resourceful I thought just because I can't physically attend, why not attend online? In short the lovely Phyllis from "For a Delicate Few" will be attending on behalf of Wikifashion. During the event she will be our guest tweeter, take photos and conduct little interviews. I am beyond excited to see what she comes up with.

Once I started to wander down the yellow brick road, I thought New York Fashion Week starts the day after the summit. Why not attend that too? Unfortunately I did not receive invitations, but why not find someone who did? This lead to the very gorgeous Keiko of Keiko Lynn offering to be Wikifashion's guest tweeter during numerous shows, a Mod Cloth party and the Independent Fashion Bloggers conference. I'm sure my head will be spinning trying to keep up with the flood of tweets, photos and information I receive from these two super bloggers in the following week. So if I am a little absent, you know why!

If you want to take a peak into any of these events, why don't you follow Wikifashion?

note: I have been working hard on your V-day gift and hopefully I will finish it tonight.

Full steam ahead....

I'm working on something very exciting this week. Let's just say it involves everyone who has ever commented on my blog and anyone else who wants to join in (basically one giant Valentine to you all)!

I am posting this to help keep myself on track and accountable to my "to do" list. Can't wait to give you your present, I am aiming for Thursday morning....so if nothing eventuates, do feel free to give me a prod.

If you would like to join in and you haven't already commented, do feel free to leave me a message. I know this is a little cryptic, but perhaps you can think of it like a virtual lucky dip.

Here's to sleepless nights sitting at Miss Mac.

The Wishing Jar

My wishes for the week are:

♥To finish updating the Oscar's Wikifashion page.

♥To find someone to tweet from New York Fashion Week for Wikifashion.

♥To get things done on time and not forget about them.

What are yours?

Ask me anything...

So I've just signed up to Formspring. Basically you can use it to ask me anything, you can do this anonymously or choose to leave your details. My answers will then be visible for everyone to see. So ask away....my page is here.

Lola's Chain Mail:Week ending 5th February

It's chain mail time again! Here are the instructions for those a little perplexed. Have fun ♥

Let them eat cake ♥

I love ostentatious jewellery, it's so far removed from my quiet personality. I think it really helps to show my creative side, the side that loves colour, feminine things and anything happy. This piece of jewellery was purchased in 2008 from a department store in Tokyo. After returning to Ginza to attempt the queue at LADURÉE for the third and final time, I promtly gave up when I saw the line curl around and around the third floor.

As we walked back to our hotel, we visited another department store, the name of which escapes me now. Inside, I found this cute little macaron necklace. It was like my consolation for not having tried a real one. It's strawberry, pink, sparkly goodness is now forever etched in my trinket box.

My first Lush Haul

Lola's Picnic ♥

I thought it would be a nice idea to spend some time each week collating sweet things that I had stumbled across. Often I will find images and news items that are just too bite sized to fit into the blog.

Think of Lola's Picnic as visiting your very own tapas bar each Friday. Delve into the basket to find a mix of fashion, media and business goodies. 100 % fat free I promise! Sign up here to receive your invitation.... the more the merrier ♥

The Wishing Jar

It's Monday again! No case of the Monday Blues for me ♥ Hopefully you know the drill, pop into the wishing jar some small goals or dreams for the week.....

Here are mine:

♥ I wish that my lovely boyfriend will be ok today (he has to go into hospital).

♥ I wish for more subscribers for Lola's Picnic (you know you want to join in!).

♥ I wish that I will be able to clear my head and focus better this week!

What are your wishes?