My Absence! My Return! - II

It has been a bit busy around here since I posted the Part - I of this post. I had planned to post the second part within a day but I am getting back to Part - II after more than two weeks. I am still struggling to organise myself and be a little regular in posting on my blog and communicating with my customers - trust me I am trying.

Being away from work the whole of January and February was a challenge but I was determined to find out more about the traditional leathers I had in mind since the last couple of years. In fact I had tried to find out more about them but it lead me to nowhere - now I know the best way is to get out there and try your best and things will slowly come out in the clear and you will get answers to your questions.

During my journey I met some great and some not so great folks, and have formed some friendships and business relationships during this time. I am so grateful to all those people who were patient enough to listen to me and did everything the could to point me in the right direction. I finally  met a gentleman Durga, who's family has been doing this for generations and he was so kind to share all his knowledge with me, and in a couple of days I learnt so much from him - probably what would have taken me forever on my own with trail and error projects.

I came back to Delhi with a couple of different goat skins that Durga was kind enough to sell to me; I started working with them on a couple of different designs. I made a few errors and was stuck a few time but Durga was always a phone call away and always more than willing to help and see me move forward - it is very rare to see this kind of people in India these days.

I was finally able to get a regular lot of the leather and the second part of doing, perfecting and finishing a few designs and have them listed in my shop took another month and I was only to do this by mid April. My absence has been long but I have been able to accomplish what I had in mind and return back with what I had wanted is a great feeling. It is still a work in progress and I am working on a few more designs and different sizes for the designs that I already have.

My Absence! My Return! - I

Well this is not the first time I have been away from this blog for weeks - it has happened a couple of times in the past 15 odd months (since I have this blog). The first time it happened I had fractured my wrist and was away from a whole lot of daily worldly activities for almost a month. The second time, it was sheer procrastination, I was waiting for the tomorrow, which we all know never comes.

The last I updated this blog was on 7th November of 2011, that is a whooping 162 days ago (if I have my maths right). I have been absent for a host of reasons; First after I opened my shop in October things were really slow and so was the money and I kept on doing small projects just to keep my everyday life rolling and committed myself to work on them till December. Suddenly in late November early December it just picked up in a flash and I had orders coming in on a daily basis. I did not know or expect this kind of a rush as I had no experience with shopping patterns for Christmas. I had to say No to a few buyers who wanted to know if I could ship it immediately, had I known or researched earlier I could have made some bags and kept them ready for the busy season.

I had been working almost 16-18 hour days right till the 30th of December, I am not complaining of the long hours - it is good to be busy but the stress of sending orders out in a timely manner gets to you specially when buyers start asking and you know that you are behind. Had I not committed myself for these other side projects I would have been able to do more for my shop and also make more money for myself than what I got working half of the time for someone else. I have learnt my lesson and will be ready for Holidays 2012 well in advance.

In early January I closed my shop as I wanted to change my direction a little and concentrate on learning certain thing I did not know. I wanted to start using a traditionally tanned goat leather that has a real vintage look and is processes in the small towns in the northwest of the country. I set out and travelled to a few towns to learn more about it and find suppliers as this is not a commercial product and regular shops do not carry it.

It proved to much tougher to find out everything about it, initially I had planned to be away for 2-3 weeks researching and learning but it took me almost 6 weeks to find out some of the things that I had set out for. I now know how easy life is with the Internet what took me 6 weeks can be done in a few hours, but I had to spend that time as there is nothing much documented about this leather and there are very few people who would share there knowledge with a stranger. Luckily I found some strangers who took me under there wings and now I know way more than what I had set to learn.