Freedom Summit 2013 Prep

We’re in the thick of getting ready for the Freedom Summit here in the Simpson household.  Charlie was cutting soap until 10 last night.

Charlie’s term for our tags is “high-touch”.  It’s really true.  Until we can afford to do custom tags, we’re doing them all by hand.  I’m stamping each tag, threading the twine and putting a label with the ingredients on the back of each one.  I’m happy to do it, but they are time-consuming.

Here are the bags from Distant Village.

We also have a new custom stamp to stamp on our recycled brown kraft bags.  I chose the stamp because I liked the look and because it was economical.  Custom recycled labels are expensive.  We’ve had some technical issues with getting the stamp to work correctly.

Before:

Can you see that it’s printing the rubber material around the stamp and not just the logo?  Plus the coverage is spotty.

I asked my friend Karin for advice.  She’s super awesome artistic and beyond crafty.  She suggested that we use an exacto knife to cut away the excess rubber.  Charlie never misses an opportunity to use his dremel tool, so he went to work, and here’s where we’ve landed.

After:

We still have to be very careful, and it doesn’t work every time, but it’s certainly better than where we started.  We’re going with it for now.

It’s our first time doing an event where we’re selling soap, so we’re figuring it out as we go.  I tried to find some fruit crates to repurpose for merchandising.  When I looked for new merchandising materials on-line, I didn’t see anything I liked.  Plus, I really don’t want to buy anything new for this if I don’t have to.  I actually like the rough repurposed look, and I think it goes with our brand nicely.

Charlie has the credit card swiper that attaches to his i-phone working.  We purchased a cash box.  We have a banner that we’ll use this time around.  We don’t love how it turned out, but it was the cheapest environmentally friendly banner that we could get.  The alternatives that looked great were hundreds of dollars, which we can’t do right now.  Other than that, my friend Jacki is writing copy for marketing collateral that we’ll distribute, and I have recycled business cards printed.  Signage for prices will be forthcoming later this week.  Phew!  Pray that we sleep.  I’m not an all-nighter kind of girl.  So, we’re working all week to try to prevent that.

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