Do YOU have a few hours a week to spare?

Yes folks, we’re finally admitting we need some help. There just aren’t enough Della and Becky hours in the week to get everything done that we need and so we are looking for some very special people to come and help us. A lot of the volunteers we have worked with have been people who we have been very happy to support, but we now really need people who are already capable and confident and can help support US.

We’re looking for people to be Committee Members, Office Support, Stylists, Photographers and Press Assistant.

Committee Members

The very basics here are that we are looking for people with professional experience in B2B and B2C retail*, finance, industrial production/manufacture. We need a minimum commitment of six hours work on your expert area and attendance at one meeting a month (last but one Friday of the month in Southampton).

Office support

The very basics here are that we need someone who is office and computer competent, can give time three times a week, who is unflappable in the face of sudden bursts of activity, has excellent professional English and who is not job hunting – we need someone who will stay with us for a good long while and provide stability. Our training seems to be very good – we have found that taking people on for a few months means we spend a lot of time training and then they leave us to get jobs! Great for them, but less so for us, really. Maybe this means this would suit a retired person?

Stylist/Photographer

This might be one role, it might be two, depending on experience and ability. We are looking for someone with an eye for a good fashion photo and, ideally, good camera equipment to take shots of our new products and gift sets and make them look really appealing. This will be ad hoc but will require up to half a day a month. Photos need to be web and print quality. Out of pocket expenses can be covered.

Press Assistant

We need someone to help us build a list of press contacts in both local and national media – TV, Magazines, newspapers, radio – and online. This is primarily a short and focused research role initially but there is scope for it to broaden. We are supported by two fantastic PR companies -Swarm Communications and Awesome Communications – so you will be working with experts and this really will be great transferable experience.

We can offer a fun, busy and unique working environment (come on, how many pants co-ops are there?!), lots of tea, often a free/communal lunch, all kinds of learning – you can join in massage and other classes, and I’ve learned loads about Chelsea football club from Della – free parking and a discount on pants. Reasonable travel expenses can be paid depending on distance and post.

Proper post descriptions are being written up but if you have any questions in the short term, please let me know. We really do need some support and as yet can’t take on paid staff, but we love volunteers and the ones we have seem to love us so please, join us!

Becky
x

*(if you don’t know what that means, it’s business to business and business to consumer. But if you don’t know what it means, it’s probably not you)

Filed under: Uncategorized, 2011, Tea, volunteers

Ab Fab darling, Ab blinking Fab

Hello there pants people!

What a smashing and busy time it’s been! How are you all – well? Warm? Happy?

I last write on the 10th January so I’m within a month of my last post but not within a week. I plan to write more often as we move into this year, but at the moment we are still deep in the planning and sorting. There’s so much to tell!

We’ve had a wonderful visit from Emma, our lovely designer recently. She and I went out to dinner and talked and talked (well, I did) and we came up with lots of exciting plans. It seems that I jumped the gun a bit with our ivory and pink lace – it’s so different from all our other aces in width and stretch that it won’t be ready for Valentines day but we are building a realistic and achievable plan of what we can make and sell when and I’m looking forward to being able to share that with you.

I’ve been out of the office in London quite a bit recently and it’s been brilliant fun – tiring but fun. I actually met, albeit briefly, Lynne Franks! (google her if you don’t know and then feel your jaw drop. I never expected to live in THIS world!) There’s some hugely humbling news on the cards but I want to stay a bit quiet about that at the moment. I had a lovely lovely time talking to this years intake of UnLtd Level 2 award winners. Part of me is really jealous of them – they have whole year of support ahead. But the joy of UnLtd is that the connection doesn’t go away and I am still feeling part of their family. I was filmed for a little video piece which I hope we can share soon. My mum would be amazed, me in front of a camera, smiling! They did this thing where I had to stand sideways on so they can show a profile shot of me and then my stats. And I had to do funny things, imagining I was dragging photos on a giant ipad. Fun

I’m starting to talk to more people about wholesale stuff recently, people and shops are interested in having our products and I am interested in helping them do so! If you’ve a local shop you think would like to sell our pants, do let me know – the more the merrier and personal recommendations really are the best.

In the office and factory, things are good and busy busy. the Committee has, brilliantly, agreed a salary level for me and agreed that we can actually employ Della – albeing part time – and pay her through the business too. We’ve been paying me what we can, and Della has been paid as a self employed contractor so she’s had no security from us in a long while. This is a huge milestone and I am proud we’ve made it and ever grateful to Della for her faith and support all this while. VERY glad we can officially have her now! We’re both still earning way less than our payscales say we should but it’s a very good start.

Della and the workers love it when Emma come in, she is so full of knowledge and passion, and I know Della’s brain bursts a bit with all the new stuff but it’s great. Plus we got to finally open the biscuits Emma brought us from Italy! We may be losing one of our volunteers, at least part of the time, which is a shame but the way things are at times. Oh, and we plan to take on a sales person – just a little bit. Two half days a week. I’m out and about generating buzz and interest and then haven’t enough hours in the day to sort all the stuff out back in the office, which is Not Good Enough. So – if you’re a woman in Southampton (we’re covered on this legally, we would not be able to operate if we had mixed staff as women may not be allowed to attend), want 2 x half days a week work and have sh1t hot sales experience, drop me a line!

I’m going to end here for today and do my best to write another shorty this week. I’m working from home as I’m having some tests done on my skin and am a bit immobile. Nowt unexpected or to be fearful of, I hope – mad mad eczema has to be resolved – it just means I’m confined a bit. So I may ramble with the stircrazyness!

Hope you’re all very well

Becky
x

Filed under: Uncategorized, 2011, Designs, Emma, London, Products, wholesale

2011 pairs of pants on the wall, 2011 pairs of pants…

Good morning good morning good morning! Well, I know it’s not really morning but January is like the morning of the year, isn’t it?

So, here’s my first proper blog entry for 2011. I’m going to tell you all about or exciting plans and hopes, and then ask you if there’s anything you’d like to hear about that I don’t talk about.

Before looking forward, I need to look quickly back. 2010 was hard. Very hard. I always tried to pull the good out and into my blogs but there were times when it was tough, times we thought we might not be able to move on, or even continue. We are now streets ahead of that – we have a product we know works, and we have £50k committed funding for 2011, and £40k committed for 2012. That makes a huge difference to everything, including my personal stress levels (which themselves make a huge difference to everyone else’s in the office… ) This means that we have a really strong and solid base to plan from. And that feels good.

So. 2011. Our plans fall into two main areas – external (raise our profile, sell more, communicate with funders to report on progress and raise more funds) and internal (tighten up on what we have started to do well; formalise all our admin/finance/HR/legal procedures; begin to monitor and measure the social impact we are having, build on co-operatives training and encourage active membership of the co-op itself) Doesn’t sound much but I think it will keep us busy!

The external stuff falls mainly to me. I’ll be working with the wonderful Chris Smith and Janet Awe on PR, working out how to get us good coverage and encourage people to support us. I’ll also be out and about at events, maybe festivals, selling pants and spreading the word. We’ll be looking for a few more retail outlets, and will be asking you to help us – which shops would you like us to be sold in? Another thing I’ll be doing is working with our fundraising volunteer on a proper fundraising strategy (our current one has evolved quite a lot from the ‘go for everything. EVERYTHING! model I started with but it’s still not what I think of as a grown up strategy) , which I am, nerdily, enormously excited about.

Regarding products…We plan to build on the strong foundations and high levels of confidence the team have developed in being able to make our Aimee style for women for the whole year (introducing a second women’s style in 2012), and will introduce variety by introducing loads more colours and gift sets. We have some scorching burnt orange, laced through with bonfire night yellow and red threads; a gorgeous petrolly blue; a forest green lifted by a touch of reddy orange here and there; some icy ivory with pink, and blue; a new red… We’re planning gift sets themed to occasions – imagine, for example, a lovely ethical Valentine’s Day gift set of our red Aimee trimmed with sassy black lacking down the back, nestled in a pretty box nest to a black Aimee with red lacing, and an ivory and pink Aimee, all pretty, wrapped by us, with a little something extra thrown in. Being a Welsh girl, I’m already thinking that the green with reddy orange that I mentioned above would be a fab St David’s Day knicker! We’ll be launching men’s pants by Christmas 2011 (all being well, we are starting design in spring, will be making up samples for wear tests in summer and producing in autumn)

We’re going to introduce really simple ways of measuring how much social impact we are having as it’s hugely important to be able to show that we are doing a good and useful thing. WE know we are, the women we work with know we are but it’s nice to have some proof. (To that end, by the way, I’m going to be asking supporters for quotes that we can use in publicity materials – if you’d be prepared to give us a quote, we’re looking for short things, two sentences, about the impact and value you think we have – email me?) . Traditional metrics are a bit tricky here but Steve Coles of http://www.intentionality.co.uk has given me some brilliant advice and support and we’re also hoping to work with http://www.globalactionplan.org.uk on assessing environmental impact and looking at how we can maybe do more.

Internal processes may sound dull but for a policy wonk like me they are fascinating and, of course, critical. So much of everything we did last year could come under the rubbish business term of ‘fire fighting’ – we developed stuff when it was needed, not before, as we had no time to be strategic. This year we are going to start with a review of pretty much everything – legal, HR (this is huge for us as our employees are, and will be, refugees or wives of refugees, so we have to be certain every bit of immigration paperwork is totally correct) suppliers of everything from our fabrics to our paperclips, production processes including how to predict when we will need to buy new stuff, reporting.. it goes on and on but I’m ecited by it. It feels to me that we have a big thing to tidy up and organise and that makes me VERY happy (Della may have a different feeling about my excitement, I know! Della, I won’t try to DO it, I’m just looking forward to us planning it!)

Anyway – you probably get the feeling, correctly, that I could go on about this for ages. So I shall stop. I am hugely happy and optimistic at the moment and I hope you agree with me that 2011 looks set to be a lot of fun. Now we are properly up and running, please, do tell your friends. My twitter feed is where breaking news tends to break – http://twitter.com/beckypants – maybe see you there.

A very happy new year to you all – let’s make it a good one, without any fear

Xx

Becky

Filed under: Uncategorized, 2011, Co-ops, Funding, Materials, policy, Products, Social Impact

2010 in review – by beckypants and wordpress stats monkeys

Happy New Year pants fans! I hope you had a splendid festive break with lots of eating, sleeping and resting, good and bad telly, and all the people you love best. I started my 2011 with friends and have already fitted in a trip to fix the the Hubble Telescope (well… the IMAX film of it at the Science Museum) and more domestic pursuits like making a very very bling carrier bag holder for my kitchen.

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and have sent me through a high level summary of its overall blog health. Not bad I think! :

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 3,300 times in 2010. That’s about 8 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 25 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 55 posts. There was 1 picture uploaded, taking a total of 203kb.

The busiest day of the year was July 28th with 137 views. The most popular post that day was Brown eyed girl… (and why we don’t yet do man pants).

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, whomadeyourpants.co.uk, twitter.com, stumbleupon.com, and mail.live.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for whomadeyourpants, who made my pants, whomadeyourpants? + website, and interestingly amina@’whomadeyourpants.co.uk, and andrea allam.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Brown eyed girl… (and why we don’t yet do man pants) April 2010

2

We don’t want your money. Yet. (New pants, special offer. Woo!) July 2010

3

I know who made my pants… January 2010
3 comments

4

Oh the weather outside is frightful…* January 2010

5

Pants closed Thursday 8th and Friday 9th April April 2010
9 comments

Filed under: Uncategorized