Polkadot Patch Baby Boutique: Great baby gifts and more

We are very excited that yet again…we did not see our story in the Times Argus newspaper. That should mean that we’ll have a story tomorrow in the Sunday paper which would be great press for us in Vermont. We have been waiting what feels like forever even though it’s only been a few days. We’re really hoping this article is the first of many in local Vermont newspapers and maybe even a national paper to run a story. But hopefully it will help spread the word about Polkadot Patch Boutique in Vermont and also help artists to find us.

While I am working on links tonight (ah…my life seems to be about link building….) my business partner is working on uploading our newest arrivals. We can’t “officially” announce the line until tomorrow (due to an agreement we made with this vendor) but we’re excited to get these items listed. Let’s just say they come from a designer who has had a very successful career in the children’s boutique clothing world and now has launched a new company. Stand by for details….

So our newspaper article hasn’t been printed yet and we’re just waiting with anticipation to read our story. The journalist said that the editor was going to put it in Business Thursday and well…that came and went. And nothing today either. We’re holding our breath that we’ll be in the Sunday paper. That would just be great because that paper circulates all over Vermont and because the story is going to feature our interest in Vermont artists, it would be great if other artisans could find out about us via the newspaper story.

The other news is that on Thursday, we had a really great day. We had a radio spot on a local am station with our friends Prevent Child Abuse Vermont and discussed our partnership with them. We are donating 1% of our gross sales (not profits!) to this wonderful organization and this opportunity allowed for us to discuss why this partnership is important to Polkadot Patch Boutique. I actually missed the broadcast, but my partner who did it was very excited!

In addition, we met two new Vermont artisans who have decided to come aboard and sell their products with us. One artist creates fabulous handpainted wooden letters, frames, and other children’s products. They are fun, whimsical, and very unique. And we can’t wait to introduce these products. We are finalizing with her how everything will work out and then we’ll introduce her.

The other artist makes the most incredible teddy bears. These bears would rival any teddy bear company in Vermont, not to mention the world. They are expertly crafted and have the most wonderful faces, soft bodies, and posable bodies that children love. It was hard choosing which bears we wanted to sell…there were easily over 75 to choose from! As soon as we have her products up, we’ll talk about her more here.

We are so excited! We just had an interview with a reporter, Mel Huff, for our local newspaper, The Times Argus. It was really fun to talk about Polkadot Patch Boutique and have a journalist ask questions regarding our experience creating our new store. We spent a lot of time talking about our Vermont vendors and how special their products are. The reporter asked about our background, the business, the clothes, our site…it was all so very exciting. We can’t wait to see the article which she plans to write on Sat. Hopefully it will go to press on Sun. and be in the Sunday paper which goes all over Vermont! We are hoping this article will really get the word out about how we are supporting Vermont artists and featuring Vermont made children’s products on our website. We even had a photographer come and take some pictures of us! (Yikes!)

Hopefully the artricle will go on their website as well and we’ll be able to post a link. If

not, we’ll just try to reprint it here!

We are thrilled with our addition of Western Chief raingear for children. This rainwear is colorful, fun, and has wonderful characters that all children love! So far we have included the blue dinosaur, the green frog, the spotted cow, the spotted dalmatian dog, and the red ladybug with raincoats, rainboots, hat and mitten sets, slippers, slippersocks, fabulous outdoot moccasins and rainclogs, and of course what would be raingear without umbrellas? We will be adding more Western Chief inventory including the bumblebee, spider, strawberries, and more!

We love Western Chief because the raingear epitomizes what we at Polkadot Patch Boutique love about children’s clothing: fun, functional, and colorful!

We just uploaded our new inventory of Sense Organics. This is great 100% organic cotton which is a fair trade product. One reason we are attracted to this brand is because it’s raising social and political responsibility. We know most parents want to have only the best products for their babies and children, and organic clothing couldn’t be better.

Not only are the Sense Organics products better for the Earth and helping rural Fair Trade projects in India, these clothes are adorable, unisex clothing. For both babies and toddlers, these clothes are super soft, classic baby outfits. The blue or red stripes easily could be worn on either a boy or girl. The stripes look great mixed and matched too.

We hope to carry more Sense Organics items in the future because we at Polkadot Patch Boutique support their cause and love their clothes.

Our new website is getting great feedback from friends and visitors alike! People say they love our children’s clothes and especially the colors of Polkadot Patch Boutique. We sure love the colors too, they are so fresh and fun and we choose them because they represent the clothing that we sell. Our main colors are turquoise blue, tangerine orange, and spring green–a nice change from the typical primary colors. We think they look great together and we love hearing that other people do as well.

One piece of constructive feedback we received was that we needed some sale items. We are in the process of adding sale items and have about 20 we hope to upload in the next few days.  Great suggestion from a shopper who loves a bargain!

Another suggestion we received is explaining in detail our background a little more. Many people have liked our about us page, but one person suggested that we detail our careers a little more. We hope to make those changes in the next week or so!

So….we hope to have more. We’ve only really been online for less than a month, but we are proud of the direction we’re heading and hope our customers will as well. Making a store that meets our customers needs is what we are striving for!

We are learning that much of what makes a website successful is the amount of links coming to a site. We spend a great deal of time creating links to Polkadot Patch Boutique that will be valuable resources and also to simply build links. It’s dreadfully boring work, but we hope with perserverance and time, it will pay off.

We decided to take the day off for Mother’s Day and enjoy time with our family and friends. We did submit an article to ezine and hope it will be published soon. I’ll give an update on that as soon as possible. It was all about Vermont made children’s products.

As we’ve been changing things around on the website, it seems sometimes that we create more problems! After a meeting last week with a friend, we learned that some of our HTML tags weren’t properly closed and as a result made the designer’s work look really wierd. Of course the website designer told us to go and fix the tags, but since we did not see any visable reason why it was so important…it was put on the back burner. That was until we viewed the site on Firefox and Netscape which the awful mistakes stood out clearly. As a result, we are trying to go in and fix all the tags to make sure they are properly closed.

In addition, as we are changing pages around, we’re noticing glitches with our inventory showing up in all the right places. Who knew this would be so complicated? We’re learning more and more each day. Hopefully by the time our next order arrives, we can have the process run smoothly!

We are so thrilled with the look of our new website…Polkadot Patch Boutique. We are working on some little glitches and then it will be just as we want. It looks amazing…so much better than the version that we made. We are ready to celebrate and we can’t wait to get the remainder of our inventory on. In fact, we just received another shipment of Lil’ Jellybean clothes that are so fun and colorful for kids. We’ll post some pictures in the next few days to show how cute they are.

Of course in the meantime, we are proofreading, editing, making subtle changes, and trying to create links to the site so that the search engines will find it.

We’ve been waiting two weeks for our website designer to finish our site and tomorrow is the day slated for them to finish. We can see them working behind the scenes and we are optimistic that they will be completed when they have said they will. We know that this is a big job…but it’s already been four months so we are ready for them to finish. We can’t wait for our site to go live with its new look and we are so encouraged with links we’ve been receiving and how we can see search engines beginning to notice our store.

SO….until tomorrow we are busy adding more products, writing articles, obtaining links, marketing and all the wonderful (and stressful things) that a website must do!

So behind the scenes at Polkadot Patch Boutique we see our website developer is starting to put our “real” site up. Yeah! Finally….we have been anxiously awaiting this day for over a month! We are shooting for May 7th to be the grand reveal of our new website look. Although we have received compliments (thank you!) from a number of people on our current homepage, our about us page, and our great colorful clothes…we aren’t ready to brag about how wonderful we think our site is.

As I type, my partner is loading on our Western Chief Kids raingear that we just love, love, love! The colorful characters and fun bright designs are sure to make every adult smile and every child want to spend the day in the rain. What would make splashing in puddles more fun than the funky dinosaur boots or bright red ladybugs? We are seriously considering purchasing these in adult sizes because they are so great!