TRADE SHOWS - PART 4

Ah, Christmas/holiday shows! They sound great. Lots of sales opportunity. Lots of public exposure. We took a look at the finances and how much we could afford to lose, and we signed up for a couple of local ones. These were large (650 and 450 vendors) regional shows, somewhat expensive ($850 and $675, respectively, and the $850 gave us better ratios than the $675 show), and lots of time on one’s feet. We don’t know if we will ever do another one.

The event coordinators of these larger shows cruise the summer fairs looking for suitable vendors, which is how we got into these shows in the first place. We now think, though, that if a large show coordinator is still trying to fill slots for a late October or November Christmas show in July or August, beware. It harkens back to the point about vendor turnover. Large turnover or lack of interest from previous vendors means these companies have to be out diligently cruising for a new crop of suckers like ourselves. This is when getting information about vendor turnover, public turnout, and advertising avenues is more important than ever before committing financial resources. You might even get last year’s exhibitor list and call a few of them to learn about their previous show experiences. Experiences can vary widely between vendors depending on what they sell, but you can still get a very good idea of the overall trends by talking to a few of them.

We got lucky and broke even only because one show’s gains covered the other show’s losses. Once again, we did not follow our own advice about researching the shows (we had not yet devised our own advice at that time). However, given what other veteran vendors were saying at these shows, I don’t think our research would have done us much good. 2007 has not been a good year for most vendors, regardless of their successes in 2006, and most of them indicated they did quite well in 2006.

Our big learning experience was that attendee entry fees are an effective barrier to public purchasing. One show’s entry fee jumped from $7 in 2006 to $12 in 2007. The second, smaller show charged $14 per person. We heard from many attendees that this dampened their buying enthusiasm. So, the combination of economic downturn, a dour public and ridiculous entry fees did not bode well for our 2007 experiences.

Our second lesson was that our previous market research was reflected in these shows. When researching future shows, we will take a look at the typical attendee and see whether it fits our target demographic. Restated in English, we will take a look at whether the types of people attending the show are those who would normally be interested in our product. Despite the fact that these shows draw a lot of people, the show’s location, where and how the show is advertised, and other factors influence the type of attendee. What’s good for one vendor may not be good for another.

With that, best wishes this holiday season and I hope you all go charging into a new year of great successes!

TRADE SHOWS - PART 3

Our resolve to do no more public shows lasted until July, when I participated in the West Seattle Summerfest, part of our local community festival. It sounded fun, it would be downright economical for the exposure we got, and I wanted to get out and do something other than what I was dealing with in the office. What fun! Long, sunny days, chatting with friends and acquaintances who happened by, being part of the local community, all in all, a very good time. The show cost $345 and about 15,000 people attended, so the ratio of attendees to cost was great. We made a little money and the show had no associated travel costs, so no financial losses to worry about. Even though we love what we do, the day-to-day grind can take its toll. I found this show to be a great antidote to the grind and a good way to recharge my batteries. I am looking forward to participating again this summer.

Even though we did not make a lot of money, this show had repercussions later on in November and December, when people would stop by the booth at other shows and remember us. We love hearing this. It is said that it takes seeing or hearing about a product seven times before a person thinks about buying it. For now, I am thrilled with two times!

For larger shows, the applications can be found online and submitted usually 11 months in advance (for some very popular shows, you need to apply this early), and fees are due for many at least six months in advance. For a startup, it is difficult to gauge what will happen a week from now, let alone 11 months from now. Most street fair applications are not available until January (I will start collecting and processing online applications the first week of January this year). All monies are due usually only a month or two before the show. Besides the fun in the sun, the fees are lower, the time frame is more startup-friendly, and there are numerous street fairs to choose from in the summer months. In addition to your booth display, most of these shows require you to supply your own canopy.

So, if you are thinking about a relatively low-risk way to economically introduce your product to the buying public, do lots of convenient market research, and practice your sales techniques, you might take a look at summer fairs in your area.

TRADE SHOWS - PART 2

Our products have pretty broad appeal. When we first started thinking about trade shows, we were quite excited about the prospect of selling our wares to the public at such a venue. The public would love our products! We would sell out of stock! It would be great! What’s not to like?

So, we manufactured lots of stock, rented a truck to hold it all, reserved three hotel rooms for ourselves, and spent five days selling, uh, enough to make back about one-third of what it cost us to attend the show. Needless to say, we were not sold on public trade shows after this experience.

Using the analysis points mentioned in the previous posting, the analysis went something like this:

1. The “price per hour” was $23. That was sales approximately one unit per hour or so to try to cover costs, which sounds doable. The show hours were good—morning and evening hours, weekday and weekend dates.

2. The “attendance per dollar” was good. We had been told that approximately 30,000 people usually attended the show and the booth fee was $1,200.

3. We did not ask for vendor return information from the show management.

4. Advertising for this show was via several main channels. Additionally, this show was a popular one that had been going for many years.

5. The show location was great—easy to drive to and park, but also reachable by light rail and bus.

So, we should have done better than we did, right? Our Bin Buddie product was very popular with campers. This was a Sportsmen’s show. The analysis was pretty good. So where did we go wrong? The following:

1. We had a good grasp of our target audience, but we learned it was more narrowly defined than we thought. This show was in Portland, Oregon, and drew from southwest Washington, Portland and northwest Oregon. We have learned that this audience’s income and education level was not our ideal demographic, regardless of the fact that they all participate in outdoor activities. Our other efforts to date have borne this out.

2. Wrong gender. Our product is an “organizational” product. Most, but not all, men run from it at the first sniff. This was a show where men were the major purchasers. Women were present, but women shopping with men usually means that men will make the decisions, and it won’t be to look at Bin Buddies. We encounter this dynamic with all public venues at which we sell our products.

3. People come to these shows to look and score freebies, not necessarily to buy. If they do buy, intuitive, impulse-buy products do best.

We limped home from this show, licked our wounds, and reviewed our lessons learned. We resolved to do no more public shows—we could not afford any more major financial losses like this. There were, however, several positives that came out of this show:

1. As time passed, the information gleaned from this experience was most valuable when refining our sales and marketing efforts.

2. Approximately 30,000 people were exposed to our products. We got some into the hands of the general public, which is always good.

3. We made some price adjustments based on feedback we received. The adjustments have proven to be a good move.

4. We got a lot smarter about attending public shows, smarts we would not have developed had we not attended this show.

I will discuss our next effort in the next installment of my Trade Show series.

Our resolve to do no more public shows lasted until July, when I participated in the West Seattle Summerfest, part of our local community festival. It sounded fun, it would be downright economical for the exposure we got, and wanted to get out and do something other than what I was dealing with in the office. The idea was met with heightened skepticism, but I smiled sweetly and got permission to go despite misgivings.

TRADE SHOWS--PART 1

I have read about other people’s trade show experiences, and I have now had enough of my own to have actually have some information to pass on. The first installment is general information about shows—how to find them, when to think about them, costs, questions to ask, and any other general information that comes to mind. I will save my personal experiences for the second installment and beyond.

First off, just what is a trade show? I define them rather broadly to be a temporary marketplace (other than a weekly market) at which products are displayed and sold. The audience can be either the general public or a subset of the general public (street fairs, holiday shows, hobbyists, crafters, ski bums, etc.) or non-public shows open only to industry buyers (every industry has at least one show per year).

PUBLIC SHOWS

Why participate in a show open to the public? Here are just a few:

1. Participating in trade shows is a viable business model, and many businesses at public shows do just shows all year long. These are the vendors you see regularly at state and county fairs, and they travel the country selling at public shows of various kinds.

2. To gain exposure for your product(s) and to introduce the public to your company.

3. To do market research, practice sales skills, etc.

Shows open to the public require stock on hand to sell, and require that you have it with you in the booth or can easily be restocked. We only do local shows that allow us to restock easily if needed. That way, we do not need to rent a truck to store stock on the show premises. We learned this hard way, which will be more fully covered in the second installment.

We participate in public shows in the local area in order to 1) make a little extra money; 2) to gain exposure and introduce the public to our products; 3) to conduct market research; and 4) so that I can develop my sales/people skills. Nowadays, our goal is always to break even, and we don’t always make our goal.

We have participated in four public shows so far, three of which we have been invited to after an event manager saw our booth and products at another show. Beware that it is the job of these people to fill the booths at their show, not to make sure you have a good or profitable experience. There is a great deal to consider prior to putting down money for a show to which you have been invited. Put aside the pride and go into it with your eyes open. I list some questions to ask below.

NON-PUBLIC (BUYER) SHOWS

We have decided to participate in non-public shows open only to buyers in order to 1) introduce retailers to our products and 2) to generate orders from these retailers. No product is sold during the show; only orders are taken. There are some non-public “cash and carry” shows throughout the year, but these are less common.

Buyer shows require a completely different booth design and configuration for us, but they do not require stock on hand at the show. Our booth design for these shows is portable enough to fly around the country, and for 2008 we have several of these shows lined up in different parts of the country.

RESEARCHING SHOWS

When researching shows, I head to the two websites listed on the right, www.tsnn.com and www.tradeshowweek.com. I have found these two to be pretty comprehensive listings, and I always check both of them because their categories are a bit different and they don’t contain exactly the same information. To use the tradeshowweek site, click on Directories and then Tradeshow Directory.

When researching local shows not listed on the two aforementioned websites, I rely heavily on the web, especially listings in the local newspaper or a site that lists community events throughout the year. For fun, I like to participate in school bazaars, and I have to contact individual PTAs to find out about these opportunities. Other local shows in which I participate or plan to participate are local summer street fairs in different neighborhoods, a weekly Sunday market, the annual women’s show (bigger show than most local ones) and local “specialty” shows such as hobby shows, recreational shows, etc.

BOOTH DESIGN AND COSTS

Keep your booth design simple and inexpensive. You can do a lot with what you have around the house to begin with. Tablecloths from discount stores are a great bargain and hide just about everything. You want your design to be easily portable and easy to set up and take down. We design our own booths for both public and non-public shows. Fixtures for our public show booth have cost about $75 so far, and we have contributed some items from home (card table, chairs, tv trays). I can fit the entire booth and stock in the back of my Toyota pickup.

We do outdoor events regularly (weekly markets) and those tents you see run about $100-$200. Side panels for the tents, essential for inclement or very sunny weather, run around $40 per panel. In addition to side panels, you will need weights to hold the tent down in case the wind picks up. You can make weights (Seattle can get windy, so I use 20 lbs per leg) out of just about anything or buy them specifically for the tent. My weights are bricks held together with and wrapped completely in duct tape because they are cheap to make, compact and easy to transport.

I recommend a sign for your booth for public shows. Our 8x2 vinyl signs have cost us approximately $125 and $175 each. We use them for both indoor and outdoor shows. If your sign is handmade or smaller, it will be probably a good deal cheaper.

We are now designing and constructing our booth for the buyer shows we will participate in this year. We have budgeted $500 for this booth. We will be using a lot of materials from the local kite shop, which will save us tons of money. When in need of supplies and fixtures for something, we brainstorm to consider how to get what we need most economically. We get ideas from the most unusual places!

So, you have looked up some trade shows. Now what?

Booths cost money. Sometimes lots of money. My lowest so far has been $250 for a weekend I will be spending with hobbyists. Our highest fee is $2100 for a non-public show. Buyer shows are more expensive than public shows. Our average for public shows so far is $900 and for buyer shows about $1900. A buyer show in New York City will run you at least $3,000. These fees must be paid well in advance, so you need to plan for them.

You need to sign up to exhibit at a show well in advance, usually at least six months in advance, which means you have to be on the ball and perhaps start researching and planning shows during the development phase. We did not research buyer shows or sign up for any for our first year of operation. We probably could have exhibited at some buyer shows this year instead of waiting. However, this first year has allowed us to work out early operational bugs, work out manufacturing, and to gather information and knowledge we will need to play with the big boys in 2008.

One piece of advice I see is to attend the show in which you want to participate sometime in the future. This is not always possible or, in our case, not always economically feasible. If you can do this, by all means do it. If you can’t attend a show in advance and talk to the vendors, or even if you do, I recommend posing the following questions to the event managers when signing up for a show:

1. What has been the attendance the last 3-5 years? (or whatever attendance figures you can get) The show managers like to fudge these numbers.

2. What percentage of the vendors return from year to year?

3. What are the hours the show is open?

4. What is your advertising plan/strategy for the show? You are paying these people to drive traffic to the show, so you want a strong advertising strategy on their part.

Once we have the answers, we consider the following:

1. For public shows, booth fee divided by total number of hours the show is open. Kind of a “price per hour” measure. So far, our “price per hour” has ranged between $11.50 and $28. This give us an idea of how much stock we have to sell to break even. Typically, the more local the show, the more bang for your buck (street fairs are cheaper than regional shows). Additionally, we look at whether the show is open a variety of hours, midmorning to past dinner time to allow the greatest flexibility.

2. Total past attendance versus booth fee. We compare between shows. One show wanted $800 for an audience of approximately 600 attendees. Another show wanted $675 for what turned out to be 8,000 attendees. You need to know when you are getting took. I utilize a little formula that gives me a ratio for quick, easy analysis.

3. Vendor return percentage. This tells us how satisfied the vendors are with the show management and attendance. Other vendors are also a valuable source for this kind of information, and we get friendly with those around us when at the public shows.

4. Advertising—Are multiple mass channels being utilized (local newspaper, radio advertising, billboards, television)? This is extremely important for driving traffic to the show.

5. Show location. Is the show in a venue that is easy for people to reach by car and public transportation? Is parking convenient, free or reasonably priced? We have discovered that downtown Seattle is no place for a public show. The location (convention center) is inconvenient to drive to and parking is expensive.

6. Entry fees. Fees charged to the general public have been getting quite steep. Too steep and the public will not come, or will come and not buy because they have spent all of their money on entry fees.

That’s it for the first installment. I will be recounting some of our experiences, mistakes we made, and lessons we learned in the second and further installments.

MORE SOURCING-INFO YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS

Now, started this blog, but I know little about blogging, and I truly thought that I was the only one who knew about it or read it. I noticed a comment the other day, however, and when I read it, it appeared to be from the goddess of apparel design and manufacturing, Kathleen Fasanella.

Kathleen wrote a book that is considered the bible of apparel manufacturing. I did not get the book or read it because we do not manufacture apparel. My email buddy, Audra, did not either, until very recently, after she had already gotten her product, a nifty new baby sling, to market. She informed me that we had been missing a great deal of very useful information, even for us, by not having read the book.

Kathleen also maintains a blog and a forum (need to buy the book to get into the forum), and for anyone thinking about manufacturing any sewn product, I highly recommend utilizing all of Kathleen's resources. Her main site is Designer-Entrepreneurs.com, but it's the Fashion Incubator site that is the nuts and bolts.

Kathleen's is the most popular book, blog and forum out there for manufacturing sewn products. Give her a look!

Sourcing Your Materials

This blog devotes itself to a topic that can be utterly depressing, ecstatically exhilarating, and everything else in between. Raising children? Formulating a successful vaccine? No, sourcing your materials! Remember earlier when I talked about the time interval between actually hatching the idea of your product and then coming up with something resembling a workable prototype? Keep that interval in mind when determining what materials you need and where to find them, and learn to let go and find inner peace.

In the beginning, you know approximately what kinds of materials you want to use. You think that it should be pretty easy—after all, you’ve seen the same materials time and time again at Target or True Value or somesuch. Ya, we thought the same thing and soon learned one of our early lessons—you can grow old and die trying to source the materials you want, especially when you need them in very small quantities, and especially if you are trying to find these products in the good old USA.

We utilize recreational fabrics, webbing, etc. in our products—pretty much anything that you can use to make a backpack. and I knew that Seattle Fabrics was the place to get them. So, for the 18 months or so I was playing with prototypes, I was a regular visitor to Seattle Fabrics. I did not think about the future much, when I would need quantities of these materials at a much lower cost for initial domestic production. After all, Seattle Fabrics managed to get them, so it must not be that difficult. Boy, was I ever wrong!

We did eventually find everything we needed initially and in doable quantities. Every time we think up a new product, however, it brings with it some difficulty with sourcing materials. Initially, I found these sources to be the most helpful:

1. Knowledgeable sales people and those who sell handmade products. They often will have the information you want, or have information that will get your closer to your goal. Street fairs and craft fairs are often a good resource for this information..

2. The information our prototype person provided to us. He had been in the sewn product industry for a long time and provided us with our first source of fabrics and contact information that led us to our webbing/buckle distributor. Our second prototype person (RHF Apparel) was also extremely helpful, having previously owned her own commercial shop for many years. I still utilize her as a resource.

3. The Internet. We found this to be of limited value at first, but if you don’t have actual people who can help you, it comes in handy. Plan to spend some time with your computer. You might check out McRae’s Blue Book and ThomasNet for starters. Make sure when you call or email that you encourage the respondent to refer you somewhere else if they can't provide the information you need. These people are on the inside track and a small tidbit from them can rock your world!

4. Friends and family and friends of family and friends of friends. One of them helped us tweak our final design, helps us iron our our current design flaws, helps us source materials, and we can’t say enough good about her. People want to help you, so don’t’ be afraid to broadcast your needs.

5. If there is a specific industry into which you fit, check out industry associations. You might even call them to get some general information about sourcing materials. I find that most people at industry associations are pretty helpful.

6. The Mom Inventors forum. Full of people just like me when I was even more clueless than I am now.

Now that we are up and running, we rely heavily on the following:

1. Our fabric company’s sales rep, our notions company sales rep, our sewing contractor, and our sourcing agent.

2. Forums forums forums! They are loaded with good people wanting to share information. I love this resource. Not only the one or two that I spend time with (check out the Mom Inventors website and join to access the forum), but also the information I retrieve from individual postings when I do google searches (rather like following a trail of breadcrumbs). They are one of the great networking tools of our time. One of my searches recently led me into kite-making forums and then ultimately to what we really needed—a wholesale source for fiberglass rods, something with which the people in number 1 above could not assist us.

The most important thing to remember is that sourcing takes patience and resourcefulness. Think of it as a treasure hunt. I would also advise you to take some time to sit and do nothing, or go for a run, or take a nap, or put a jigsaw puzzle together, or just daydream. You will be amazed at how much information comes your way.

Good luck and have fun!

Product Research

My previous blog concentrated on how I got started. One of the things I did during that time was some initial market research, not to determine who would buy my product, but to determine, before I took giant leap into this process, whether the same product was already on the market. I had never seen it if it was, so I figured initially that I would be okay taking the process further.

So, how do you take the process further? Lots of different methods can be used, and I recommend taking a multi-pronged approach to be as thorough as possible. In a perfect world, I would have been able to fly around the country, visiting every kind of store I could think of to search their aisle. Also in a perfect world, I would have been able to determine with utter certainty that I was indeed alone in the manufacturing universe with my product. Neither of these happened, of course. I was not then independently wealthy I'm still not), nor would it be possible to reach 100% certainty. I have been asked if it was wise to move ahead without that 100% certainty, but, hey, life is mostly uncertain and I am not very risk averse. I think everyone needs to assess their own risk tolerance before moving ahead. I look upon this entire process as a grand adventure, and I am a person who loves a good adventure.

There are a great number of books and online resources that discuss using the public library. The library has so much information and many of its resources are so large (one database resource can have millions of entries) that one can easily be overwhelmed without the help of a good reference librarian and a dose of practicality about collecting and using the information. Reference librarians are great for letting you know what kind of resources are available for business research and guiding you to those that might be most helpful (I think librarians are the universe’s gift to humanity). Overall, I think the public library is great for general knowledge and information, perhaps learning about resources that you might want to utilize initially or down the road.

If the library is good for general knowledge and information, the Internet is great for narrowing the search to specific products that might be similar to or the same as yours. If you are not comfortable using a computer as a search tool or don’t know how, get comfortable and visit your local librarian! They can help you learn how to search for information using a computer and how to tailor your search accordingly. Like everything else, the Internet has some drawbacks. First, if you don’t know the name of a similar product that might be out there, you can easily miss it in your search. Recently, a couple of people have brought companies to our attention that produce similar products to some of ours that I had not found in my computer searches. Second, if you don’t have some kind of defined search plan (patent office first, large product listings next, etc.), you can quickly get overwhelmed and lost in it all. Third, it can be rather time-consuming and a lot of guesswork is involved when formulating search terms. Choosing search terms can be exercise in letting go—you will never know whether the terms you choose are the “best” ones. My business partner is a genius at choosing search terms. I am not. The Internet is the resource we use the most.

Get out there and window shop! Walk the aisles of every relevant retail outlet within 25 miles of your house, Twenty-five miles is completely arbitrary—do whatever you can manage. You will be amazed at what’s out there, and it will either make you feel really good about your idea or really bad. It’s also fun to walk aisles from a research angle instead of a consumer angle. We spend a lot of time in local stores looking at complementary products, color combinations, endcap displays, shelf displays, and any manner of various other things.

I am sure there are other search tools out there, but these are the three we use the most. They are convenient, free, offer lots of good information, and we have learned how to utilize them to best meet our needs. Good luck!

How Did You Get Started?

I started this blog thinking that I would not have a great deal to write. Being a female, I tend to be rather collaborative, networky and cooperative by nature, and I now find myself wanting to share every moment with fellow entrepreneurs and anyone else who is interested. Sigh. Where to start? I will try to start from the very beginning.

First, a little background: Our company, PacEasy Inc., (www.paceasy.com) “designs and manufactures innovative storage and organization solutions to make life neat.” Pretty catchy, huh? I can't take the credit. Our flagship product is a really my awesome nylon fabric insert for plastic storage bins that has pockets in it. This keeps small items from getting lost in the big items, and Bin Buddies are great for any number of uses.

The idea for some kind of bin organizer came to me in a moment of utter despair on a camping trip. The first day, my husband and I drove 10 hours to our first night’s campsite. When we reached the campground, it was dusk and raining, the tent’s rainfly had not been packed, and I was hungry, tired, and wanted some dinner regardless. I opened my kitchen box and salt and pepper were everywhere. I remember something about raising my voice at the hapless husband and wanting to head back home. Luckily, we did not go home, and the rest of the trip went very smoothly.

How did you get started? Where did you get the idea? These are questions I am often asked, and I tell the camping story. What I don’t convey and what is more important to the journey is the time it took between the camping trip and the final prototype. I set out designing Bin Buddies with no real thought as to timeframes. After all, I had a very definite idea in my head, so what could be so hard about turning it into something more concrete in a couple of weeks? My first prototype took me three weeks to complete, and it looked nothing like the products that we sell today. About 18 months later, it all finally came together, even though I knew what I wanted when I started. During the process, I ended up going a number of different directions, some very far out there, before I circled back to my happy ending.

I busied myself with this project most evenings. Some days, I just could not bring myself to sew another stitch. Midway through, I started a new job and only worked sporadically on the prototypes. A lot of time was spent searching the market for products similar to mine (there weren’t any, thank goodness), thinking about the materials I needed and then attempting to source them (a very time-consuming task—I will cover this extensively in later blogs), and simply figuring out how to sew things together (my mother taught me to sew, but I am no professional), as I had no patterns to follow except my own. Along the way, I sought advice and assistance from many people, and I found that all of them were happy to help me. Get over the fear of asking those close to you for help, guidance, and expert advice.

I think the thing that kept me going for those 18 months was the fact that I so enjoyed what I was doing. My brain loved the stimulation and challenge of creation. I loved the feeling of accomplishment when I successfully completed a task, be it finding the right materials, designing the next prototype or finishing sewing it up.

It’s this time spent on numerous trials and errors and triumphs that you never hear about in most books touting the clueless entrepreneur's or inventor's life. You open the book’s cover and begin reading, and it seems that the product idea was hatched one night, prototyped the next, produced in a week or so overseas, and then successfully marketed to big box stores the following week. If this is what you are getting out of the book, its pages are best used to start campfires on your next camping trip. They are much better for toasting marshmallows than for providing any kind of usable advice. For some, a great idea takes little time to develop and bring to market, but for most, I think you will find it will indeed take some time, and it will be time well spent. You can check out books that I found useful for myself on the book list on this site.

Why This Blog?

I read my "little corner of the world" blog pretty regularly (www.westseattleblog.com), read a few others occasionally, but I had never considered writing my own blog. I am a small business owner. Why would I complicate my life and eat up even more of my precious little free time with a blog? Because I found myself part of a growing informal email network of fellow startup manufacturers, many of us "mompreneurs" and women entrepreneurs, all of us seeking the same bits of information about the small stuff but finding nothing that could really help us beyond a certain point or fill in the fine details. There were a few excellent starter books, tidbits on the web, a couple of bulletin boards, and "small business" help sites whose creators wrote as if Microsoft were a small business, but not much for the likes of me and the people with whom I was corresponding. So, here we are.
I am hoping to have the time to post something every couple of weeks regarding my romp through my experiences with entrepreneurism and building my manufacturing business. I hope that those who read the posts will find something interesting or that they can use. My business partner, Thomas, and I, are somewhat unusual in that we love to share information and spread the word so that others can climb their own ladders to success with fewer rough spots along the way.
Our first break from the usual model is our partners page on our company website: http://www.paceasy.com/partners_pe.html. We can't grow in a vaccuum, and we are eternally grateful to these companies and individuals for their support and willingness to work with us, clueless as we are. I encourage all of you clueless entrepreneurs to take the time to recognize those of your partners who are helping to make your company a success.
Stay tuned!