How I adore the Wild Web Women at Web Marketing Therapy!  They’ve helped us optimize our web presence, so I was crazy mad for them even before they blogged about…um…me.  If you’re so inclined, you can check their blog out here.  They’re also offering a FREE 30-minute tutorial called “The Power of Web Analytics.”  Yes, I said FREE!  Just sign up here.

No matter what you do, though, you really should sign up for their almost-daily e-newsletter.  I learn something new every time I read it.  We all need to know how to work the web, and these women have all the knowledge about it anyone could ever possibly need – and then some.  Plus they have fantastic senses of humor and are lead by the fabulous Lorrie Thomas, who models one of our Rebagz Jasmine Cinchy Totes here:

We’ve been working with them for the past few months and I can’t rave about them enough.  I actually enjoy blogging now and am getting into the whole social media thing, and it’s all thanks to their inspiration.  They’ve really simplified and clarified things for me, and I’m so grateful.

Whether it’s blogging, tweeting, managing LinkedIn, Facebook (I call it f’booking) or any other way to socialize and market online, they are the experts.  I bow down and kiss their pedicured cyberfeet!

XOXO Marty

Rorey (our fantastic operations manager) and I are having a great time at the New York International Gift Fair.  Everyone’s in a great mood, buyers are responding really well to our two new Rebagz shapes – our new Sling Back Bags and Mini-Messenger Bags.

But what I’m most jazzed about is how people are going crazy about our upcoming “Statement Makers!”  They’ll launch at the end of September and will be the third branch of our Rebagz line.  Here are our QVC liaisons Diana Urbine and Pat Wagoner modeling two of them in our booth:

You’ll be hearing a LOT more about this new line in the coming weeks.  And just to give you another peek, here’s one of our new customers Bohumila with another “Statement Maker”:

We’ll be packing up our booth tomorrow – and I’ll actually be squeezing in 3 days of vacation!  But I’ll be back in the office next week and will start filling you in on the story behind “Statement Makers.”


XOXO Marty

This is going to be one of those news-y blog posts where I fill you in on where we’re going and who’s been saying really, really nice things about us.

Thank you thank you thank you!

LA Splash included our eco-chic handbags in their “Handbags Collection 2009 – Hot New Handbags for You to View” (scroll to the bottom of the page) and they also included my friend Sarah Shaw’s Handy Hold-All’s, which are fantastic handbag organizers. You need to scroll down a ways to find us, but given that the bags ahead of us have names like Badgley Mischka, Iman, Ariat and Guess, we’re just amazed we made the list.

Also, my friend Ana Caban featured one of Rebagz Small Cinchy Totes as a giveaway a week ago on her wonderful website La Buena Life. Yes, my bad for not alerting all of you – so sorry! However, check out her site because she does great giveaways every Thursday – they’re called “Tentacion Thursdays” – and it’s really, really easy to enter.

Over on Eco-Artware, long-time Rebagz customer Reena Kazmann gave my book “Altered Shoes: A Step-By-Step Guide to Making Your Footwear Fabulous” a lovely review. Thanks, Reena! If you’re into art, craft and design, you may want to head over to my official Altered Shoes website to sign up for my monthly Eco-Art Ezine.

We’re on Our Way To NY!

The New York International Gift Fair starts August 15th, and we’ll be in the juried Handmade Division (booth #122, if you’d like to drop by for a visit). Our operations manager Rorey got the components of our booth all packed up and ready to ship out. She then walked into my office with a large role of palette wrap – the thick plastic sheeting used to hold all those enormous boxes together on the palette – and basically announced it was my turn. So…

…around and around I went, while Rorey snapped photos, thank you very much. (Like the caption says, at least she didn’t shoot me from behind.) I actually hate the palette wrap because it’s a huge amount of plastic to use, but for now it’s a necessary evil if we want our booth to arrive in New York intact. Plus we do reuse it, since we have to stuff our Rebagz to make them look pleasingly plump for our buyers.

I’ll be sure to keep you apprised of all the comings and goings in New York. In the meantime, we’re grateful to Stu Stockelberg and the folks at Service By Air for taking such good care of our booth as it makes its way cross-country.

XOXO Marty

I admit it may seem a stretch to see designing and selling handbags as a means of bringing peace and justice anywhere, much less around the world. But I always feel that even small gestures can add up and make a difference. And that’s something you’re helping us do because whenever you place an order for our Rebagz Eco-Chic Handbags, $1 from that order goes to Global Exchange.

I worked with Global Exchange when I did humanitarian work in Chiapas, Mexico and I really like what they’re focused on – “Building People-to-People Ties.”
I first went to Chiapas on one of their “reality tours,” where “travelers are linked with activists and organizations from around the globe who are working toward positive change.”

They go to all sorts of different countries, and I know my journey with them was a life-changer. That’s a big term to toss around, but in my case it’s no exaggeration. It’s one of the big reasons I do business the way I do and make sure the people who make our eco-fashion handbags are treated and paid decently.

The reason I bring all this up is because Global Exchange’s membership coordinator Natalie Mottley recently sent us a very kind letter after getting our most recent check, courtesy of our generous customers:

Thanks so much for yet another generous donation to Global Exchange! We really appreciate your support and your partnership in our work for peace and justice around the world.

Really, she’s thanking you, and I thought you should know that. Every bit helps – even handbags.

Thank you for enabling me to give back to an organization that was so important in my life.

XOXO Marty

Yes, it was 2 summers ago when we first launched our eco-friendly Rebagz at the California Gift Show in Los Angeles. The buzz around eco-friendly fashion was just beginning to build, and it’s amazing to think how far it’s come since that July 2007. Granted, I’d been selling our bags at a few events a couple of months prior to that, just to see what kind of response I got. But I consider the opening day of the gift show as our true launch.

I have to laugh when I think back to it because I went into that trade show with what I thought was a very down-to-earth, realistic attitude. Given that this particular show had been shrinking in attendance and that we were a brand new exhibitor there, I knew it was a distinct possibility that, though we might meet a lot of interested boutique owners, there was a chance we might not write any orders for our eco-friendly handbags during the show itself.

The show ran from a Friday in mid-July through the following Monday. I figured if we were going to write any orders, it’d probably be on Sunday, though I hoped maybe, just maybe we might write one or two on Saturday.

So what happened when someone wanted to write an order on opening day, after we’d only been open for business for a few hours? Justin Bird, an amazing college student who was a godsend that summer, looked at me and I looked at him – and we realized we had everything in place except a procedure for taking orders. Oh, we had the order forms, catalogs, price lists and all that. But we hadn’t yet actually thought through the order process or practiced it.

Our first order was a comedy of errors and I’m forever grateful to Gesture Boutique for being patient with us while we worked through our mistakes with them. I even had to send Justin chasing after the buyer – twice! – because we’d forgotten key bits of information, like their telephone number, shipping address – tiny details like that. It’s a good thing you can’t see how red my face is, even now as I think about it 2 years later.

We also did the Accessories Show in Vegas a month later – that’s where that booth photo was taken. Got a good response there too. So, much to my relief, I realized I was onto something.

Last week we took some time out at the office, went into our warehouse and popped the cork on some champagne. There was chocolate cake too, ’cause what’s a birthday without some cake? Justin went back to finish up at Cal Poly up in San Luis Obispo but we still keep in touch. He even built a beautiful eco-friendly bike out of bamboo! Take a look at this beauty -

I’m so grateful to so many people -

- our current office staff (Rorey, Shasta, Bonny and Laura)

- our sweet broker Malu over in the Philippines

- all of our weavers and sewers

- my brilliant publicist Lisa Elia

- the Wild Web Women at Web Marketing Therapy for helping work on my web outreach issues

- and, of course, all our wonderful customers and supporters like you. (I have to give a special shout out here to the folks at Gesture who were so tolerant on our first official day in business.)

Thank you thank you thank you from the bottom of my eco-happy heart.
XOXO Marty