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amphtaminedreams · 3 years

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Why Ethical Fashion Doesn’t Need to be Boring (In the Words of a Shopping Addict): Lookbook no.14

Hi to anyone reading,

Arghhhh.

I never know how to start posts when I literally just uploaded the other week because I tend to follow the very formulaic approach of summarising what I’ve missed due to sporadic posting…I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m still posting sporadically, it just so happens I’ve had more content to get up recently-sometimes lightning strikes twice, ya know, and I have a brief, if chemically fuelled, reprieve from the permanent state of exhaustion. It’s not like there isn’t stuff to talk about- the last month has seen a horrific murder and public outcry in response. There are a lot of important conversations going on about women’s safety and misogynistic violence that I really cannot do justice to in a paragraph and feelings that have been brewing for a long time that I can’t articulate yet and will not attempt to offhandedly do so in this post. Right now I just wanna say that I stand in solidarity with all those with histories of experiencing violence at the hands of men, those who aren’t here with us anymore as a result of that violence such as Sarah Everard, and those marginalised women whose stories don’t make national news. It’s very telling the way Sarah’s vigil was responded to by the same police force that have allowed mostly male anti-mask protests to go ahead with protestors unscathed, and solidarity with the women who were treated with such an unjustifiable amount of force at the vigil too.

That being said, women’s rights are something I wanted to talk about in this post, with regards to the way it ties into ethical fashion. None of us are perfect and it’s easy living in a first world country to detach yourself from the issues stemming from fast fashion, especially when you don’t have the time or money yourself to be selective about where you buy from. Don’t get me wrong, I do treat myself to some new clothes from fast fashion companies like ASOS and Urban Outfitters a few times a year so this is NOT coming from a place of preaching, but I have drastically reduced that to buying about 90% of my new clothes either second hand from Depop or charity shops or clothing stores that are upfront about their outsourcing practices. I love putting outfits together and updating my wardrobe and I don’t want to abandon that as a medium of self-expression because it does bring me joy, but to continue to update my wardrobe with the frequency I do by buying from fast fashion retailers on such a regular basis I accepted was going against the things I care about; around 80% of textile workers on poverty wages in developing countries are girls and women (opensocietyfoundations.org), and whilst fast fashion companies in the West continue to outsource manufacturing to said countries to cut costs and there is little regulation enforcing employers to pay women the same amount as men or even adhere to a minimum wage, they will continue to be forced into these roles where they are subjected to horrific working conditions, impossible production targets and frequent abuse (according to an article published in the Guardian in June 2018, 540 incidences of abuse, often of a sexual nature, were reported by women working in factories supplying the retailers GAP and H&M when they were interviewed on the subject). There is no denying that the fast fashion industry depends on and perpetuates the subjugation of women and systematically prevents them from making steps towards gender equality in their countries, be it through greater financial independence or the freedom to pursue higher education; the popular current practice by western fast fashion companies of outsourcing manufacturing to factories unhindered by workers rights and gender equality laws by association condones the sexual and physical violence that occurs as a means of punishment for not meeting targets, the exploitative pay which affords women little independence from husbands and families dominated by patriarchal values, and the long, exhausting hours which women have little choice but to take in order to avoid their contracts being terminated and to put food on the table. No, one individual completely abandoning fast fashion isn’t going to put an end to these unethical practices but if all of us make a conscious effort to reduce our consumption at least a little and make it clear why we’re doing so, we put greater pressure on fast fashion companies to act in a more responsible way. There isn’t going to be any kind of miraculous change of heart, so to force them to change we have to hit the industry and the people at the top who benefit from such practices where it really hurts: their profit.

SO, for this post I thought I would highlight some of my favourite more ethical online clothing companies to buy from; the more popular these more socially responsible brands become, the more apparent it becomes to fast fashion companies relying on an exploitative business model that how they treat their workers is of growing importance to consumers. It’s all very well and good Missguided and PLT talking about empowering women and making “girl boss” slogan tees but we need to make it clear that we’re aware of the hollowness of the gesture, and that we want less hypocritical talk and more action to actually enhance the lives of the women that work for them, not just the ones they show in their flashy offices on TV. I’ve included my favourite Depop shops too, because if you can shop second hand, that’s even better; though I like to treat myself to new clothes now and again, I’m aware that the impact the manufacturing process in general, whether or not the company acts in an ethical way with regards to their employment practices, has on the environment is more often than not detrimental. Depop has really been my saving grace this past year-if you know what you’re looking for and have the time and patience, you can find so many gems, and at this point the balance of my wardrobe is tipped firmly in the favour of the reuse and recycle approach to shopping. In the vein of reusing fashion, I thought I’d also include a mini lookbook for a cardigan I got from one of my favourite online retailers, The Ragged Priest, just as a reminder that 1). The best way to be sustainable is to rewear and 2). That with tweaks, one piece alone can give you multiple completely different outfits. Like honestly, outfit repeating doesn’t have to be a literal repeat. Sometimes it’s worth spending a little bit extra on something that looks good with everything, and making that investment into your ability to fool people that you’ve got your shit together by wearing something cool as fuck.

Quickly before I get into it, I’m aware that some ethical companies are a bit out of the average consumer’s price range, and so I wanted to sort them into price point categories which will work as follows:

£= most of their stock is £40 & under ££= most of their stock is between £40-£100 £££= most of their stock costs upwards of £100

Now, in no particular order (and starting with online retailers before moving onto Depop shops), here’s the list!

1. THE RAGGED PRIEST

PRICE POINT: ££

Using recycled fabric to construct their pieces where possible and releasing clothing in small drops designed to sell out rather than following the typical fast fashion model of outsourcing the production of vast amounts of clothing overseas, the Ragged Priest is my absolute favourite clothing brand out there. It’s *semi* affordable and because they are all about those bold, in your face, your-grandma-will-probs-think-it’s-ugly kinda pieces, just one can do SO much for your wardrobe.

I recently bought this cardigan from their The Simple Life drop and had so many outfit ideas for it that I thought I’d put a few of them together for this post just as an example of how you can take the same piece over and over again and still make it interesting, even when you don’t feel like straying too far from your personal style preferences. While we’re at it, I also wanted to use this mini lookbook to point out how fucking great Depop is! Literally everything in these outfits is from there apart from the shoes and the jewellery, the leather blazer on the right I bought a few years ago and then the top and skirt in the outfit from the far left which are both from Ebay. The shoes with that outfit are from Koi Vegan footwear-I didn’t include them in this list because I wanted to keep it consistent and focus on ethical clothing companies rather than retailers that focus on one specific thing such as shoes or jewellery, but they are my favourite place to buy shoes from and focus closely on ethical production too so definitely recommend.

2. MINGA LONDON

PRICE POINT: ££

Towards the lower end of the ££ price point, Minga is probably the closest you’re gonna get to an ethical version of the Dolls Kill Deliah’s range. Their focus on being a socially responsible business is a huge part of their ethos and their pieces are put together in Portugal, where they're based, by a small in-house team; the majority of their fabric is sourced from local Portuguese businesses and even more amazingly, they recycle the fabric of the pieces they don’t sell in new designs. They are just a generally amazing company and I wish more people knew about them because their pieces are fucking adorable and wouldn’t be out of place (or overpriced) in your local UO.

3. ELSIE & FRED

PRICE POINT: £

A small, black owned business set up by 3 siblings from Coventry, Elsie & Fred have earned themselves a reputation as a staple provider of the festival season wardrobe. Being an independently owned business, they have strict standards that their manufacturers must adhere to and a close working relationship with the owners of the two factories who oversee production in Guangzhou, China, to ensure fair wages and a safe working environment. On the environmental side of things, Elsie and Fred are working to incorporate recycled fabric into their designs as much as possible and have this year introduced compostable mailing bags.

4. HOUSE OF SUNNY

PRICE POINT: £££

Follow enough British instagram fashion influencers and you are bound to have heard of House of Sunny in 2020-snagging what is probably my all time favourite coat from there in 2019 before all the hype is a humble brag I will allow myself on the basis that I haven’t been able to afford anything since, lol. Along with kooky, one of a kind designs, being decidedly anti-fast fashion is a huge part of their branding; HoS only drop 2 collections of limited stock a year, thoroughly screen suppliers and on their website you can find a tonne of information on how they’re working to offset their environmental impact too. If you can treat yourself to a piece from there at any point, the quality of the garments truly make the price point worth it.

5. JADED LONDON

PRICE POINT: ££

Similarly to The Ragged Priest and House of Sunny, Jaded London go the route of dropping limited collections on a less frequent basis intending to sell out (particularly popular pieces are occasionally restocked) rather than needlessly manufacturing vast quantities of garments to flog for whatever they can get and cutting corners with fair employment practices to offset any losses. By employing independent staff in the manufacturing plants with which they liaise to ensure fair, dignified working conditions and also by working closely with charities such as the Trussel Trust and Stand Up to Racism, Jaded London demonstrates a level of commitment to corporate responsibility that set them apart from a lot of similar online retailers. They are at the top of their game when it comes to daring and experimental yet wearable pieces and so it’s cool that they recognise the need to conduct their business in a considerate way too.

6. THE HIPPIE SHAKE

PRICE POINT: ££

Owned by UK based bohemian queen Naomi Hession, the Hippie Shake is not only a great small independent business to support but is also the definition of slow fashion. With a limited number of opulent 70s style pieces, I have always wanted to purchase something from here. I’ve yet to do so but I’m gonna make it my mission eventually.

7. VINTAGE HEARTS

PRICE POINT: £

An affordable, gorgeous array of quirky handpicked vintage pieces that would probably take you forever to find in a charity shop or that you’d be charged a small fortune for if you found it in a high street second hand store, Vintage Hearts is where you should go if you want a timeless statement piece that may have otherwise ended up in a landfill. The added benefit of vintage clothing is that it is, by its nature, great for the environment, but you can also look fab and groovy as fuck as you do your bit for the planet<3

8. WE ARE COW

PRICE POINT: £

Offering both original vintage pieces and reworked pieces using recycled fabrics, We Are Cow has both basic branded second hand items but also handmade streetwear style original designs all for a fair price. You can tell that it’s all high quality stuff consistent with their modern, functional aesthetic and it’s clear that the team behind the shop has a real vision in mind when they’re designing.

9. OUT OF THE ORDINARY CLOTHING

PRICE POINT: £

In the words of Corrie Davis, founder of OOTO "I start with the belief that fashion will be always be worn differently by the individual that wears it. Every collection from Out of the Ordinary is different to the last but undeniably Out of the Ordinary. I champion flamboyancy and embrace the cultures I've experienced around the world, merging the two and creating popular style trends in exciting textiles, prints and techniques to bring to you something a little Out of the Ordinary." That pretty much sums up the vibrancy, vivacity and bold elegance of the brand’s aesthetic perfectly, which is reflected by Davis’ commitment to ethical manufacturing based on relationships forged between the founders and family artisans and the sourcing of fabrics from textile markets around the world. Everything you need for a boujie summer holiday in the Mediterranean-when leaving the country is finally allowed again, lol, EVERYBODY GET YOUR FUCKING VACCINE-is here.

10. WILD THING

PRICE POINT: ranges from £-£££ depending on the brand

Probs the closest thing you’ll get to an ethical ASOS, Wild Thing brings together a host of sustainable and independent clothing brands and puts them all in one place to present to us all a collection of the sickest festival style fashion out there. Whilst it’s super cool that this already exists and a slice of humble pie for myself to remind me that I am not in fact the revolutionary marketing genius I thought I was, I’m bummed to know that my idea of said ethical ASOS style website is already out there. Fingers crossed for the next grand money making scheme that comes to mind that I can use to distribute some wealth (yeah, there probably won’t be any because very few original thoughts enter my head, clearly, tehe) xoxo

11. SHOPFLUFFY

PRICE POINT: ££

I know it’s 2021 and we all kind hate the idea of girl boss feminism and the connotations of privilege and exploitation that come with it but can we bring it back when we’re talking about women who embody what it was actually all supposed to be about? Because the owner of ShopFluffy, @lulutrixabelle embodies everything good about the term. Somebody who genuinely does (cue Ramona singer voice here) empower other women through her celebration of powerful female friendship and free spirited sense of personal style that should inspire every one of us to wear whatever the fuck we want (clashing patterns and over-accessorising be damned), Lulu handmakes all the designs on her site and very much places an emphasis on slow fashion by releasing only a few collections a year which you can clearly tell a lot of painstaking effort and talent went into. ShopFluffy is on the pricier side but the adorable crocheted coords LuLu specialises in, reminiscent of carefree childhood days and picnics in meadows picturesque enough to be the backdrop of a Jacquemus runway presentation, are a bold and beautiful expression of playful femininity worthy of departing with a bit more than you’d usually spend. After all, if you are gonna spend that money on a piece of clothing, supporting an ethical, independent woman owned business clearly built on carefully honed skill, passion and authenticity is the way to go.

12. SHOPEASYTIGER

PRICE POINT: ££

It feels correct to follow up the ShopFluffy mention with ShopEasyTiger given the friendship between the former’s owner with Tigerlilly Winfield (is that not the most wonderfully storybook character sounding name of all time?), owner of Easy Tiger. Up there with my most revered style icons, Tigerlilly’s designs are as flamboyant and glamorous and daring and dramatic as her own personal style, and again, they are ethically made! If you want to get that psychedelic rock n’roll groupie that’s actually way cooler than the band itself kinda energy too, her shop is the place to start.

13. HOTTTRAMP

PRICE POINT: ££

Founded by the incredibly hot Belle_hott_tramp on Instagram, HottTramp is a collection of both handmade pieces and carefully selected vintage finds that blur the lines between 90s Courtney Love style grunge and 70s summer of love hippy that make me want to start my own all girl rock band and hire a camper van to paint black and road trip through the American desert. Given my complete lack of hand eye coordination, I’ll most likely never have the instrumental skills to do that but I never said it was a realistic fantasy, okay?

14. LAZY OAF

PRICE POINT: ££

Is it just me that always thought Lazy Oaf was within the same kind of price range as The Ragged Priest? Because it’s a lottt more expensive than I thought. That being said, if you’re going for a playful, toned down Molly Goddard kinda look, anything bright and youthful, Lazy Oaf’s clothes 100% fit that brief. You are paying more, but part of that markup is reflected in their transparency when it comes to their ethical code, which includes ensuring that statutory minimum wage laws are adhered to in the supply chain as well as that all workers are of the legal working age for their countries and that their working hours do not exceed the legal limit. They are also steadfastly committed to donating a portion of their profits to charities dedicated to improving mental wellbeing such as Mind, Rethink Mental Illness, and Young Minds, something that is hugely important to me given my own experiences and the line of work I want to go into.

15. NEVER FULLY DRESSED

PRICE POINT: ££

Similar in their aesthetic to Out of the Ordinary, Never Fully Dressed is big on colour, print, and elegance. They have both specially selected second hand pieces on offer and original designs too and the about us section of their website clearly states how passionate they are about their ethical manufacturing process, which takes place both here in the UK and in China.

16. TUNNEL VISION

PRICE POINT: ££

Offering the dreamiest, one of a kind vintage 90s pieces, Tunnel Vision could just as easily be a grunge girl band come the craft themed moodboard as it is an online retailer. If the 90s isn’t for you-I mean, I don’t wanna question anybody’s taste levels but…-they also have the option of shopping by era, which I think is a really cool feature I wish a lot of irl vintage shops would incorporate.

17. LOVE TOO TRUE

PRICE POINT: £

Everything on Love Too True is fucking gorgeousss and it is no surprise that they manufacture their garments here in London because I feel their brand totally encompasses that stereotypical 90s East End punk vibe perfectly with a shit tonne of chunky boots and show stopping plaid pieces that makes my heart ache for a riot grrrl renaissance. Yes, when it comes to feminism’s place in mainstream culture, making sure the political goals and structural changes we’re aiming for are visible to all is by far the most important, but let’s have a resurgence of the grunge girl’s armour along with that and PLEASE let’s leave athleisure in the 2010s. No more Kardashian nude leggings, I beg (I AM being lighthearted, wear whatever you want! We’re not policing women’s clothes in this neck of the woods).

18. NINE LIVES BAZAAR

PRICE POINT: £££

Eurgh. Nine Lives Bazaar. I want it ALL. Their clothes give me all the Etro, Zimmerman, Torey Burch, modernised Stevie Nicks vibes on a slightly more realistic budget, though unfortunately for me said budget just isn’t realistic enough. You would think pieces being ethically produced is just a given when it comes to clothes within this price range but that’s not necessarily the case and Nine Lives Bazaar is one of the ones you can trust to actually be considerate of their employees needs when it comes to their approach to business. To anybody who can afford to shop here, I am insanely jealous. The rest of us, for now, can just browse the website n feel the fantasy, channel a Valentina level of delusion and pretend it’s just the import taxes from Australia that’s holding us back from making a purchase.

-DEPOP SHOPS-

1. @HOUSE_OF_EROTIQUE

PRICE POINT: ££

Everything handmade and latex and form fitting to make you the baddest bitch in the room, I’ve got myself a few pieces from this shop over the past couple of years. Customer service is a bit hit or miss and there’s been times when I’ve had to wait a while for my purchases to get to me but because they’re all one of a kind and custom made to fit, it’s worth it, and when they have messed up they were kind enough to add something to my order for free.

2. @SACREDHAWK

PRICE POINT: ££

If you picture raiding the wardrobe of a biker gang, snatching the Coachella bound suitcases of the Revolve ambassadors at Palm Springs airport, and then jumbling all those clothes together, that’s probably your best bet at getting an idea of Sacred Hawk’s aesthetic. Formerly an ASOS concession, the brand is now available on Depop and is a collection of the most lavish glam grunge pieces, all vintage or reworked vintage. Some things are a bit on the pricey side but I would say they are all priced fairly considering how unique and ornate a lot of the pieces are, and I reeeeally wanna be able to say I own something from there one day.

3. @IDENTITYPARTY

PRICE POINT: £££

I struggled with how to categorise this Depop shop in terms of price point because although there are some fairly low-priced pieces, the standouts are the vintage coats which are understandably a lot more expensive-if you want to fully immerse yourself in the Almost Famous Penny Lane fantasy, you’re gonna have to fork out a little bit.

4. @RETRO_RAIL

PRICE POINT: £££

Retro_rail is of a similar vein to IdentityParty, in that the standout pieces are the vintage coats which are usually upwards of £100-if you’re looking for one-of-a-kind statement outerwear to invest in, I can’t recommend this shop enough. If you’re like me and you’re looking for something more within the £ to ££ price range, Retro Rail is still worth a browse as inspiration for the kind of styles you might wanna try and find elsewhere on Depop.

5. @5THSEASON

PRICE POINT: £

Most of the quirky vintage pieces you’ll find on offer on this Depop shop are within the £25 to £40 price range and though you’ve got coats similar to those you’ll find on Identity Party and Retro Rail and they are sill slightly more than the tops and trousers and dresses on sale etc., they are more modestly priced than the other 2 listed.

6. @DREAMERSREBELS

PRICE POINT: £££

Another v pricey one, dreamersrebels specialises in the daintiest, most whimsical 60s style co-ords I’ve ever seen. Handmade upon purchase, which in turn guarantees little textile waste, you can find the kind of pieces you’d expect to see on a 21st century incarnation of Audrey Hepburn, all the soft pastels and timeless, retro silhouettes you could possibly wish for. I mean, wishing is pretty much all I can do rn but anyone with a near minimum wage retail job knows you need something to aspire to, lol. I managed to budget enough to treat myself to a Selkie dress so I’m manifesting that same level of self-discipline to get me a dreamersrebels piece next.

7. @AWKWARDPHASE

PRICE POINT: £

Very affordable vintage pieces that range from cutesy mid-century style dresses and coats to grungy 90s jackets, perfectly styled and presented too in a way that will have you wanting to order something for yourself to replicate that modern spin on old staples and give them a second life.

8. @EVIEHALLOWS

PRICE POINT: £

Another Depop shop where the clothes are styled so well, it’ll have you thinking you can make anything from a floral 1950s housewife style cardigan to a lycra jumpsuit look very intentionally on trend.

9. @JAHOOLI

PRICE POINT: £

There’s also Jahooli, which I will just say ticks all the same boxes as the other two aforementioned stores to avoid repeating myself.

10. @LOVELYANDLOVELESS

PRICE POINT: £

In terms of price, I would put Lovely and Loveless into the same category as Jahooli, Awkward Phase and Evie Hallows, the difference being that the clothes available are more on the dainty, classically feminine side. People who have a Pinterest board dedicated to the cottagecore or light academia aesthetic (whew, the gen Z is showing), this one’s for you.

11. @CHLOESTJOHN

PRICE POINT: £

Finally, we have the ChloeStJohn Depop shop and it’s definitely a good one to end on; picture the wardrobe of Carrie Bradshaw if she’d lived in Camden instead of New York in the 90s and hung out with a slightly edgier crew than Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha and there you have it, the vibe of the pieces on offer. Does it belong to a girl who probs lives near Primrose Hill and has access to all the boujiest second hand clothes shops available which she most likely routinely raids to resell on Depop? Potentially, but hopefully not because I am very here for this whole red wine in one hand and a cigarette in another back when people were allowed to smoke inside bars aesthetic. I’m sorry that the gen Z part of me once again jumped out in such an aggressive fashion with that last sentence, but I know you know what I mean.

And that’s everything!

I did wanna close off the post with a reminder of how nuanced a discussion this is-having the time and money to be more conscious about your ethical footprint when you’re buying clothes is in itself a privilege; fashion shouldn’t be an interest reserved for only those who have the means to pay extra or spend time scouring the internet. It’s also important to be aware of the lack of size inclusivity-a lot of the “trendy” sustainable fashion brands tend to not stock anything larger than a size 14 and attempt to deflect attention away from this by categorising clothes as either XS, S, M, or L, which is in itself a bit of a pisstake considering that 12-14 is the average clothing size here for women in the UK, and so in no way large. Shopping from Depop and Ebay is hard too when so many brands fail to understand how to fit a non-straight size body which in turn necessitates trying stuff on before you buy it, something that isn’t possible when you’re shopping second hand. A lot of Depop shops fail to offer returns and even with those who do, chasing up that return can be a time-consuming and generally all round frustrating process.

Basically, when we’re having these kinds of discussions it’s important to consider everyone’s situations and avoid sitting on some kind of high horse. I feel like things have become even more complicated lately- with the recent closure of once popular high street stores such as Topshop and Miss Selfridge, it has got me thinking a lot about just how many people’s income here in the UK is dependent on fast fashion retailers too and their popularity. The job scarcity resulting from these kind of closures, which are often all that is available to a lot of people with the demands of the job market seemingly becoming more and more impossible each day even for those who have been in higher education, is clearly an issue when the kind of support you can expect from the government as someone out of work is so woefully inadequate and likely to become even more so as the conservatives push for further cuts to UC and PIP. The past year has really shown us just how shaky the ground that an intensely capitalist society stands on is and how quickly everything can go tits up when we don’t invest in a safety net for those who are struggling. People seem to have realised more than ever the extent to which those whose jobs we deem “low-skilled” are actually the backbone of society, and yet even here, whilst the situation may not be quite as desperate as it is elsewhere, we still haven’t seen pay rises that reflect that. Turns out all the clapping WAS an empty gesture, who’d have thought it (for fuck’s sake)? Fair wages really are a global issue that starts with paying people enough for them to comfortably live on and in time should lead to a shift in consciousness away from the concept of profit before everything else and towards an equal playing field for everyone, something we should take every opportunity to speak up about and demand from our “leaders”, however shit a job so many of those leaders do. It’s frustrating how the focus on making ethical purchasing choices is so often on the overconsumption of things that women historically are more actively interested in such as clothes and accessories and make up when the reality is that the wealth of every industry titan on this planet, NOT just the ones who dominate the fast fashion sphere, depends on them continuing to get away with exploiting people-we should be looking at how we can show our dissatisfaction in all areas. Maybe I’m perpetuating that with this post, since a lot of the online retailers I mentioned only sell women’s clothing, but that being said, I’m not about to do men’s work for them, lol-they should make the effort, if possible, to research into sustainable clothing alternatives too.

Anyway, that’s the end of this post! If you read to the end, thank you so much! If I’ve made any errors in my research or there are more sustainable clothing brands that I could’ve mentioned, feel free to inbox me them too, and I can add them to this post if Tumblr allows. It’s usually a little bitch when it comes to editing long posts but I’ll try my best:) Again, thanks for reading! And if you are, I hope you are safe and well!

Lauren x

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cindysmakeupfactory · 6 years

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Leading ECommerce Store Builders June 2018.

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Furthermore, we might reveal your personal information and various other information where we regard it suitable or needed to avoid a violation of our Regards to Usage and also Sale or other arrangements; to take safety measures against liability; to safeguard the civil liberties, home, or security of the Shop, any specific, or the public; to maintain as well as shield the security and integrity of our solutions or infrastructure; to secure ourselves as well as our solutions from fraudulent, abusive, or unlawful usages; to explore as well as protect ourselves against 3rd party insurance claims or accusations; or to assist government enforcement companies. Use our aesthetic control panel to tweak the products ranking based upon their appeal, reviews, earnings margins or any type of information that matters to you. In a lot of cases, social media networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, as well as Pinterest typically aren't used as ecommerce systems. 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( 1) The European Union is looking for to build ever before closer links between the States and also individuals of Europe, to ensure social and financial progression; in accordance with Article 14( 2) of the Treaty, the inner market comprises a location without interior frontiers in which the totally free movements of goods, solutions as well as the freedom of facility are made certain; the development of details culture services within the location without interior frontiers is important to removing the obstacles which divide the European individuals. Walmart made hundreds of countless things easy to order by voice on the Google Express eCommerce Platform, soon adding the ability to area orders for in-store pickup through Google Home. This Personal privacy Policy secures consumers and also job prospects supplying details via our web sites, stores or various other interaction networks and is not designed to safeguard company data. Not surprisingly, electronic platforms that deal with aspiring ecommerce titans like her are hustling to fine-tune their items for iPhone-only usage. Choose an extra-large T-shirts with a rounded neck or a fitted tee in your much-loved colour. When it come to personal information transferred under the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield, Permanently 21 will accept the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Details Commissioner for the resolution of such unsolved complaints. 5. Member States will motivate the interaction to the Payment of any kind of substantial management or judicial choices absorbed their area concerning conflicts relating to information society services and practices, personalizeds as well as usages relating to digital business.

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bestofshopping777 · 5 years

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Average eCommerce Conversion Rate: Is your store crashing it?

Understanding the impact of the metrics that affect your business KPIs and applying CRO strategies can positively optimize the Average eCommerce Conversion Rate for any online business.

Just when you have launched your new eCommerce store online and looked at people visiting your page, you realize that most of the people are just surfing your store online. Some of those shoppers may be adding products to their wish lists without making any purchases. This makes you wonder – “what could have gone wrong!”

The conversion from a prospect to a successful sale is one of the toughest purchasing funnels that today’s online retailers are trying to analyze. Digital marketing experts are racking their brains for the newest strategies to make conversion from every customer visiting your online store. However, it would be a little surprising to know that, statistically, the conversion rates are one of the lowest statistical figures today. Even when the reach and convenience is available at the click of a button, it is hard to convince the customers to order from your webshop.

Let’s pull this apart piece by piece and look at it as bare essentials so that you can formulate your own eCommerce conversion rates.

What do you mean by eCommerce conversion rate?

Simply put, conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who make a purchase (or initiate an intended action) online. Mathematically, eCommerce conversion rate is the percentage derived from the number of conversions divided by the total number of visitors. There are many metrics like traffic sources, new visitor and return visitor category, value per visit and so on to find the exact conversion rate.

This means if you are not converting visitors into buyers, then you do not have much of a game on your online store. You need to constantly keep track of the advertising dollars you spend and how much of that spending is converted into actual sales. By this, you’ll be able to understand how much a real order is costing you. This will help you shape up your marketing strategies.

Tracking the conversion rates also helps you to measure your online store’s performance. This will inadvertently lead to RFM (recency, frequency, monetary value) and customer lifetime value analysis. If you get the habit of constantly tracking these metrics, you’ll soon be able to realize which strategies are good for your business. Should you focus on acquiring new users or should you choose to ensure repeat sales by keeping your loyal customers on hand?

When conversion rate analysis is used along with RFM and CLTV measures, it can prove to be a useful tool to gauge the success of your online strategies and other activities used to increase business. It also points out the areas of improvement that are necessary to make your online retail store even more proactive and imitate programs that can increase revenue and growth.

Even an increment in the conversion rate can mean an increase in your sales, so you need to put an effort into reaching the best conversion rate possible!

What is a good eCommerce conversion rate?

There is no one true answer for this question. It varies from industry to industry and a matter of perception. In other words, if there is a scope of improvement to increase revenue then there is always a ‘higher’ limit to a good eCommerce conversion rate (compared to the current or previous rate(s)). A company may have 20% conversion rates but they would still aim for more; that is how businesses work and this goal happens to be one of the driving factors for a thriving and profitable venture.

How to calculate eCommerce conversion rate for your business?

The formula:

Conversion rate = (conversions / total visitors) * 100%

However, you can be specific about conversion rates to focus on a single aspect or get an overall view of your business success. Apart from overall conversion rate, aspects like marketing channel conversion rate, keyword conversion rate, campaign conversion rate, page-level conversion rate and a lot more can be analyzed. This in-turn provides a great way to predict the success of a strategy or the overall progress of a campaign making it a handy way to calculate the success.

Factors affecting good ecommerce conversion rate

At the same time, one has to understand that conversation rate is highly contextual. For instance, an online store selling stores will have a higher conversion rate as compared to a furniture store or a luxury brand. However, that does not mean the latter had less chance of making a profit on their investment. The following variable factors have an impact on the conversion rate too:

Product cost

Product type

Average order value

Traffic source

Device

Location… and a lot more

Conversion rates can be misleading too as, to put it bluntly, it is just the visitors who bought products from your online retail store; repeated customers purchasing the same product does not mean you have a higher conversion rate but a good click conversion rate which is a whole other topic.

Click conversion rate = (converting visitors / total visitors) * 100%

This means click conversion of visitors regardless of how many times they converted divided by the total visitors and multiplied by 100 to arrive at a percentage. Hence understanding the variable factors should give you an insight about your business progress without comparing it with others as well as providing peace of mind.

Improving your current eCommerce conversion rate

Conversion Rate Optimization or CRO is one of the most prominent ways to improve any existing conversion rates. The process in which you can optimize your landing page to produce more conversions from traffic is called Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO).

This strategy not only helps with new traffic but also monetizes old traffic that you already have on your retail platform. This means evening without an increment in traffic, you can still achieve a higher conversion rate with CRO.

Here are some tips to improve the conversion rate with CRO:

Dedicated Landing Pages

Dedicated landing pages are necessary, especially when you are doing paid advertising online. Imagine a Bing ad taking you to a random page where your item of choice is listed along with a list of other items; you would not probably look much further. But if clicking on the ad took you to a complete new page dedicated only for that product, the presentation makes it look important as well as informative without losing the interest of the customer. See where we are going with this – creating customer engagement for higher conversion rates with dedicated landing pages.

A/B Testing

A/B testing is splitting your incoming traffic into two or more variants of a page. This will prevent from losing traffic as well as freezing of your dedicated landing pages. This split of traffic into two makes it easy for people to focus between variant A and B; in other words, you do not lose valuable traffic for any reason. Using a CRO software will allow online retail stores to implement this test and improve the Average eCommerce Ratings.

For beginners, using Unbounce, Optimizely, Google Content Experiments, Visual Website Optimizer, etc. are some of the ways to go instead of investing in expensive CRO software.

Changing the Font Size, button colors, images, spacing, etc. can increase your Conversion Rate by 5%.

Use Hi-Def pics, update font size, provide time-limit discounts and lot more

Simple tricks like changing the font and pics can bring in new traffic. This means more conversion rate possibilities. Limited time coupons can bring in more customers; competitive pricing, easy checkout, live chat, trusted payment gateways, etc. can bring your conversion rates to a new high.

Creating hypothesis

Once you identify the elements that have an impact on your conversion rate, then creating a hypothesis can give you an edge in positive conversions. Creating a headline for a product, clear description, tweaking button sizes and colors, changing layouts, timely offers, etc. are some of the ways to improve / increase conversion rates. May sound a little unconventional but a changed layout with a little tweak here and there often brings in more customers and improves engagement time.

Remove distractions

Maintaining interest of a customer depends on creating a landing page with low distractions. Avoid putting similar products on one page; this often leads the customer to move around, create confusions and ultimately abandon a search.

The Global Conversion Scene – How much is it?

After talking a lot about improving the conversion rates, CRO and digital optimizations, it would sound puny if we hear the global conversion rate. Average eCommerce conversion rate by industry, globally, is at 2.86%. The 2018 cross-industry Google Ads clickthrough and conversion benchmark shows that the Average eCommerce conversion rate is 3.48% on mobile devices and 0.72% on the display network. It is important to take benchmark conversion rates of individual countries while formulating your own KPIs to understand the conversion rate you can expect from different countries.

The figures may seem small but it still covers a major chunk of people from countries like the US, Asia, Europe and Middle East. However, there is a huge scope of improvement by implementing strategies for a higher conversion rate.

Industry-wise Average eCommerce Conversion Rate

Real estate, B2B, auto industry, consumer services, health, finance, eCommerce, legal education, insurance, technology, travel & hospitality are some of the industries that have benefitted in the last few years thanks to the optimization of conversion rates.

However tracking every industry is not possible here, but we can shortlist a few and look at them as an eCommerce conversion rate benchmark.

Luxury eCommerce conversion rate

This area of business has seen an increase in conversion rates thanks to the optimization of eCommerce online stores that represent luxury products. In the past few years, luxury brands are not shying away from displaying themselves online instead of resorting to Amazon or other online retail service providers. Their highly optimized online platform has been able to ensure a direct connection with their customers and had seen a rise in average eCommerce conversion rate each year. Be it fashion or auto industry, each of these sectors has managed to create enormous traffic with good conversion rates which is likely to continue.

Furniture eCommerce conversion rate (1.19% average eCommerce conversion rate)

Statistically, the data available is miniscule for a good comparison. The furniture industry has taken a step towards digitalization and has greatly reduced the need for physical storage and inventory maintenance. However, such a move did not deter the public from purchasing from startups like PepperFry; instead the trend was positively embraced and the industry displayed a fascinating and valuable conversion rate in the market.

Conversion rate fashion ecommerce (1.41% average eCommerce conversion rate)

Fashion industry is a place where new trends emerge daily and even with the swift changes in the industry, the conversion rate has seemed to soar higher than before. Thanks to the eCommerce conversion rate optimization of online stores, eCommerce retailers are finding new and innovative ways to achieve a good ecommerce conversion rate.

eCommerce conversion by devices – Impact of mobile devices

As mentioned earlier, the conversion rate for eCommerce platforms are mostly made on mobile devices. The impact of mobile devices are huge and therefore optimizing online retail stores for mobile use including apps will prove highly beneficial for the Average eCommerce Conversion Rate. However mobile eCommerce conversion rate may be half that of desktop according to Monetate’s ecommerce quarterly which gives a figure of 3.85% for desktop and 2.03% for mobile.

Bottom-line:

Average eCommerce Conversion Rate is a clear factor in determining a profitable business. However, too many elements can confuse online retailers and end up losing customers, sales and eventually profit. Therefore understanding the impact of the metrics that affect your business KPIs and applying CRO strategies can positively optimize the Average eCommerce Conversion Rate for any online business.

To sum it up, there no one true way to compare two conversion rates, even for similar products. Creating a hypothesis and identifying KPIs in your business can be the starting point for higher conversion rates. From there on, timely tweaks and proper implementation of optimizing strategy can help to keep the Average eCommerce Conversion flowing.

The post Average eCommerce Conversion Rate: Is your store crashing it? appeared first on Cheap Store.

source https://cheap-store.website/blog/average-ecommerce-conversion-rate-is-your-store-crashing-it/

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thelonesgroup · 5 years

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11 Secrets to Geo Farming Success

Many real estate agents utilize geographical farming to build a strong predictable lead generation system. It is easy to send postcards to your farm and call it good but is that getting you the results you want? If not, then it is time to make some tweaks to build a strong PERSONAL PRESENCE.

When I started geographical farming, when I first started selling real estate, I began with sending postcards which was a great start but I sent out the same thing month after month. My message was okay, but it didn't get me the kind of results I wanted as I needed to get up and running fast. After learning what did and didn't work for my farm, I eventually had a winning formula. Here are the secrets to my farming success:

Mix It Up

I learned early on that sending the same size piece could become too predictable. My formula was simple, four times per year I sent an 11 x 17 large folded brochure type report for my Quarterly Report, six times per year I used an oversize postcard format and the other two times I used an 8.5 x 11 article type template. The key was to mix up the sizes to create interest.

Get Involved

I worked hard in all my farms to get involved with what was going in the area and to get home owners involved. One way I did this was to have a For Sale By Owner section in my larger newsletters that allowed people to advertise things they wanted to sell. This turned into an incredible community resource. It was a fantastic way for me to get to meet and talk with homeowners when they were placing their ads. Today's agents might consider utilizing social media for something like this.

Connect Connect Connect

When someone placed an ad, I then would use this as a great excuse to send them a personal card to inquire if they were able to sell their item and to just connect. I would find any excuse possible to send out a card.

Show Up

This is by far one of the THE most important things you must do when you have a farm. You need to show up to any neighborhood events, tour any new homes that come on the market (don't forget to leave your business card), and get inside every open house so you get to know every house in the neighborhood. Showing up also means that you show up with great research on an annual basis that gives every homeowner a very clear picture of how their neighborhood did during the year. I did this by creating an Annual Neighborhood Review, an intensive research rich document that every homeowner got. I wanted each homeowner to know that I was the expert in the area, and I proved it with very detailed and thorough research.

Use Neighborhood Events

As you show up to the local events, document those events. My farm area had a Christmas Light Decorating Contest every year and I photographed every home and then posted them in my newsletter. I even gave out prizes and had the neighbors vote on their favorites, this event proved to be an incredible business-building event for me every year. I got to meet so many neighbors and they loved having me photograph their home. And when I made photo books for my winners of the Christmas Light Contest I even had my brand and contact information listed prominently in the book.

Use Great Branding

Anything I sent out to my farm had my brand on it, I wouldn't mail anything without it. And I don't mean only my firm brand. I'm talking about a complete, consistent, visual style that is unique to my business and that memorably represents who I am. I want to be unique from the field of look-alike agents and show that I'm serious about my business.

Use Color

Color is by far one of my favorite ways to capture people's attention. Although I had the color palette that I developed with my brand, I used accent colors to match the seasons or a particular event. While I don't recommend going crazy with color, consider including a photo that represents the seasons or event and take your cues from the colors in that photo. For example, if your branding color palette is red, black, and gray, adding a summer photo with water and a kayak might provide an opportunity to include a light blue that can be found in the water so the whole piece feels cohesive, but different than what you sent the previous month.

Use Content

You will never win over anyone in your farm area if your content is not compelling. Compelling content include data, timely information on recent activity in the neighborhood, local, regional and national news that pertains to real estate locally. Find content that creates engagement. I had about 10 things that were my go-to pieces of content and I would mix and match – what sold, active and pending numbers, 10 year comparison, months of inventory, interest rate watch, median sales price watch, information from your local planning office, and more. What pieces of information are relevant for your area?

Keep it Research Rich

One of the smartest things I ever did was create what I called my Farming Bible. It included printouts of the last three years of sales, information on median sales prices, price per square feet, property taxes, etc. It was a robust binder that I brought to every listing presentation and open house and it showed anyone that came across it that I meant business when it came to research and I was clearly the local expert.

Be Available

You can do all the work to build a farm but if you don't respond quickly you will lose the opportunity to be interviewed for the job. I can't tell you how many times I won listings over my main competitor in the farm because home owners would call me after calling my competitor and they would hire me because I responded right away. Many times I would hear horror stories about other agents not returning sellers calls for days. I always responded immediately.

Signature Touches

I went out of my way to make every sale I had in the neighborhood memorable and I always did something very special for every neighbor that moved out of the farm. I had change of address cards made for them, I had their home professionally cleaned so their move out was easier and I always gave them a personal gift. The feedback I got was incredible and the other neighbors soon learned that I was a real pro.

If you want to dominate in your farm area, this is your checklist for success. Your farm area can be your consistent lead generation faucet for years with a little extra effort.

Follow Denise on Facebook

Follow Denise on Twitter

By Denise Lones CSP, M.I.R.M., CDEI - The founding partner of The Lones Group, Denise Lones, brings nearly three decades of experience in the real estate industry. With agent/broker coaching, expertise in branding, lead generation, strategic marketing, business analysis, new home project planning, product development, Denise is nationally recognized as the source for all things real estate. With a passion for improvement, Denise has helped thousands of real estate agents, brokers, and managers build their business to unprecedented levels of success, while helping them maintain balance and quality of life.

#branding #community #community events #community involvement #community resource #custom mailers #database mailers #farming mailer #geo farm #geographical farming #mailer content #monthly mailer #monthly mailing #neighborhood events #real estate #Zebra Report #The Lones Group #Denise Lones

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mrheyhellohowareyou · 7 years

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WWE-ECW TV MATCH BATCH #1

The worst part about the WWECW reboot wasn’t the logo, but Jesus is this shit is hard on the eyes.

The WWE vs ECW Tuesday special and One Night Stand 2006 are both things that I enjoyed a fair amount recently. I wasn’t a wrestling fan in 2006 so I don’t remember anything about the rebooted ECW, all I know about it is its less-than-stellar reputation. I figure if One Night Stand was the launch then the new show should have started with SOME promise so I’ve been combing through episodes to see what catches my eye.

Episode 2 (6/20/2006)

Rob Van Dam and Kurt Angle vs Edge and Randy Orton

RVD is your WWE and ECW champion and riding a HUGE wave of momentum, having pinned World Heavyweight Champion Rey Mysterio (maybe not all that impressive since Rey wasn’t very good at winning right then) in a non-title match at the aforementioned WWE vs ECW special, John Cena at One Night Stand ‘06 for the spinner strap, and would go on to successfully defend against Edge in a fuck-ugly match at Vengeance the Sunday after this show. Kurt Angle is “ECW’s Kurt Angle,” which seems like it meant that the guy was still an overconfident Olympic dickhole, the kinda guy who would slap people on the back of the head while they were covering up on the ground, but the crowd dug it because good guys who act like dicks are an ECW tradition.

Edge and Orton are representing RAW and sports entertainment as a whole if you listen to Joey Styles. Edge comes out first and says that ECW SUCKS, which we’ve heard so many times from so many different people that it ceases to be a controversial opinion. Commentary says this is the first time these two have ever teamed up.

Angle starts with Edge and throws him around a little bit, treating Edge like lumpy trash. RVD comes in to do his moves and Edge tags in Orton so he can take some punishment instead. Rob crotches Orton on the top rope and comes off the top buckle to kick him off, which is kind of a piece of shit move but Randy is a dick so no one cares. Orton and Edge take over when Lita pulls down the top rope and RVD falls to the floor, leaving the heels to take over with crisp tandem offense. Orton is pretty nasty in this match, really putting some malice behind his hits and displaying one of the few things I like about watching him. RVD takes a crazy bump through the ropes headfirst into the announce table and then gets kicked in the face with both of Orton’s heels on a crazy-high dropkick.

RVD creates some separation and tags Angle in, who throws both heels to the mat with German suplexes. Angle goes for Orton’s ankle but Edge pulls him to the ropes, which doesn’t put a full halt to Angle’s offensive tear. Edge comes off the top and gets caught for another German followed by an attempt at an Angle Slam, but he forgets about Orton lying in the corner and gets caught with a chop block to the knee. These bastards are nasty and their teamwork is super solid for a first time pairing, smothering Angle with their teamwork and not letting him breathe. Angle thrown to the floor by Edge and tweaks the chop-blocked knee on the way down, then is into the steps and rolled into the ring. Extreme Angle suprised Edge with a single leg from the ground and goes for a choke, which is broken up by Lita. Joey Styles doesn’t know what “the back” means, which is strange because he was just criticizing King for “not watching the product” very recently. Edge throws Angle into the corner and just gets kicked right in the chest on a charge, giving him an opening for another German and an opportunity for Angle to tag in RVD. Clotheslines and a kick to Edge, a blast to Orton on the apron, step-over kick to Edge and a tope to Orton on the floor. RVD grabs a chair but gets grabbed by Orton on his way back into the ring so RVD chucks the chair at his face (Orton takes a full five seconds to fall down) before getting blasted back to the floor by Edge. Angle grabs Edge’s ankle and ducks a belt shot from Lita then delivers the Angle Slam to her, which the crowd loves because you can take the fans away from the trash but you can’t take the trash away from the fans. Straps are down, Orton back in to RKO Angle, but he makes the mistake of gloating and gets kicked in the face by RVD coming off the top. He then goes for Rolling Thunder but gets kicked right in the face by Edge on the way down. Edge sets up for the spear, gets hit by Rob’s forearem, Five Star Frog Splash and that’s the match. Edge gets pinned clean (as clean as you can in ECW I guess) going into their match at Vengeance

Fun match, went by quickly. RVD bumped around like crazy and everyone had a little spring in their step.

Episode 3 (6/27/2006)

Rob Van Dam vs Kurt Angle

Edge comes out to sit at ringside so he can get a look at who he’s gonna fight at a later date. Taz tries to interview him but Edge calls him short so Taz shoves the mic into his chest. Edge threatens him and says “I know how to choke somebody out too” but I don’t think anybody believes him.

What I like about the build to this new ECW was that it seemed certain wrestlers took the cue of the new format to change their styles to something more appropriate for the audiences’ expectations. RVD’s style resembled the spot-heavy, ridiculously-athletic sprinting pace of old while Angle turned up the nastiness of his character while still playing to what a bloodthirsty crowd would want out of a good guy Olympic wrestler with an insane amount of self-confidence in his amateur skill.

This match… well, you would have no idea that any of this had actually happened by watching this match. Starts with Angle outwrestling RVD (obviously), with Rob showing enough skill of his own to avoid getting fully caught up in Angle’s submissions. Angle keeps on knocking Rob onto his back and killing his momentum and takes over the action. Rob tries going high risk, where he gets caught and gets thrown from the top rope all the way to the floor.

The remainder of the match goes something like this: Angle takes over with holds on the ground but stops fully wrenching away on them after awhile, leaving a little something to be desired in the punishment he’s supposed to be inflicting and the mean streak he’s supposed to be displaying; Rob creates separation a few times but keeps getting caught when he goes high risk, getting dragged back down to the mat. Rinse and repeat. RVD could bump like crazy but it seems like he doesn’t exactly do too well at selling holds. There’s nothing wrong with the formula, solid enough in concept but the two don’t seem to have much chemistry in this match.

After a few back and forths Rob starts to hit his signature offense. Rob eventually hits a tornado DDT off the ropes then anticlimactically climbs to the top rope for a connecting Five Star Frog Splash to end the match.

The biggest detriment to this match was the inconsistency it has with the character-building and stage-setting being done within the new ECW universe at the time as it’s worked like a standard WWE TV main event. Both wrestlers do their thing and have the match until it ends.

Episode 9 (8/8/2006)

Kurt Angle vs Sabu

Would you call this a “dream match?” Somebody has definitely dreamed about this match but I don’t think anybody has ever sat down and gone “you know who would be good together…” and then came up with this.

This shit right here is FAR superior to the RVD/Angle matchup, a lot more competitive with a lot more going on. Angle is smotheringly aggressive and gets a lot of shots in at Sabu, but the Genocidal One’s offense is so outside of what Angle is used to that he is caught off-guard on the regular throughout the match. This is almost the opposite of the last match, where it seemed Angle had RVD’s number until he managed to eek out a win with the high-risk offense, since the two go back and forth taking their best shots at each other and trading places as the dominant one in the match. This is a “non-extreme” match but that almost works into Sabu’s unpredictability: if he can’t use his chair then what’s he gonna try and pull out to gain the advantage?

(Unintentionally) funny bit early on when Sabu puts his feet on the ropes while trapped on the mat and aggressively tries to bring this to the blind ref’s attention. Angle keeps grinding down Sabu and smacking him around until he misses a charge into the ringpost and takes a gnarly bump to the floor after a second charge gets him tossed over. Sabu is pretty crisp here and keeps the action going, keeping himself in logical contention with the Olympic gold medalist, getting in WAYYYY more offense than Rob did in his ECW match with Angle. Sabu’s fists = underrated.

The two trade off spots of dominance, Angle grinding down Sabu and Sabu retaliating with some really “explosive” offense consisting of a mix of strikes, mat wrestling and high-flying craziness, both guys bumping inside and outside of the ring like the fate of the brand depended on it.

Sabu has Angle down and hits a Frog Splash for 2 and then gets his ankle caught, but before anything else can happen RVD comes down and smashes both dudes with a chair because, well, he wants a title shot. It seems like there are other ways to go about that but, y’know, ECW. So of course Rob gets what he wants next week in a ladder match against Sabu.

Almost disappointed this match had to end this way, it was very competitive and I was looking forward to seeing how one man would get the upper hand over the other. Both guys came at each other with purpose and nastiness, intent on cutting the other down but unable to gain a real dominance due to the style clash and the resiliency on display.

If you told somebody that never watched Raw in ‘06 that Angle’s last match for the ‘E would be against Sabu and that it was an actual fluid and entertaining affair, I doubt that anybody would actually believe you

#wwe #ecw #wrestling #match reviews

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laurelkrugerr · 4 years

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How a Chance Conversation in a Coffee Shop Launched the Multimillion-Dollar Vegan Clothing Company Om & Ah

Started in 2016 as a $500 side hustle by two English women, the ethically sourced company is expected to hit $10 million in sales by inspiring people with kindness.

March 25, 2020 10 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Claire Cooper and Charlotte Van Dyke weren’t exactly looking for side hustles when they met through mutual friends at a Los Angeles café one sunny afternoon in 2016.

A Yorkshire, England-born actress, Cooper was working steadily in television, recently appearing in mega-producer Shonda Rhimes’ Still Star-Crossed, History’s Knightfall, and 12 Monkeys, the Syfy series based on the 1995 Brad Pitt movie. She was also slated to leave for London to star as Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII, in a BBC documentary miniseries.

Van Dyke — also from Yorkshire — was a forensic neuroscience graduate with a successful modeling career. After working for brands like Banana Republic, appearing in Vogue, and walking Fashion Week runways around the world, she moved to California in 2014 to run operations for the investor and social media personality Tai Lopez.

But as they chatted over green tea and vegan cakes, both felt the serendipity strike. Cooper mentioned her dream of starting an ethically sourced clothing line that was fused with positivity and love, while Van Dyke was immersed in learning internet marketing agency and running online companies.

“I knew we could create something fabulous with our combined vision and know-how,” says Cooper. “What I didn’t realize was that I was also discovering a dear friend.” Struck by divine inspiration, she blurted out three words at the meeting that would become the company name.

Several days later, they met again with friends at Malibu Wines, and the conversation immediately reignited. After hours of animated discussion, 10 pages of scribbled notes and a cobbled-together $500 budget, the inspiring lUXury loungewear line Om & Ah was born: “Om” meaning the essence of reality in Hinduism, and “Ah” being the moment of clarity.

Struck by divine inspiration, Claire Cooper (R) blurted out three words after first meeting Charlotte Van Dyke (L) that became the company name: Om & Ah.

Image Credit: Alice Wint

A Steep Learning Curve

Several weeks later, the pair called in favors from two models and a photographer friend for their first launch of hoodies and tank tops, emblazoned with inspiring sayings that encourage virtues like compassion, gratitude and unapologetic self-love.

“We wanted to share intelligent, inspired clothing that people felt connected to and proud to wear,” says Van Dyke. The duo unveiled a website and spread the word on Facebook and Instagram. After a nerve-racking week, Om & Ah’s first sale registered. “We were thrilled — until we woke up the next morning to an email asking for a refund because it was a drunken purchase,” says Cooper, laughing.

The emotional roller coaster continued for 12 months because they just couldn’t get their numbers right. Cost of goods was too high, while ad spend and other marketing agency expenses weren’t being managed or targeted efficiently. They also didn’t run the deep math on taxes, refunds, exchanges, shipping, lost packages and payment processor fees.

Looking back, Van Dyke advises an entrepreneur in the same situation to run the math first with a finance expert. “Hawk-eye everything; hidden fees add up,” she cautions. “When running ads, know your CPA [cost per acquisition] and CLTV [customer lifetime value]. We now have a formula that tells us every daily figure we need, from gross sales and ad spend to staffing cost and net in the bank.”

Cooper taught herself Photoshop and design, while Van Dyke learned to code and build a website — all from an endless stream of YouTube videos. They tested different styles, determining what worked and what didn’t. “We pushed ourselves to the absolute limit; some moments were soul-destroying and in the next, exhilarating,” recalls Cooper.

As they devoted 16-hour days to their startup and began raking in hundreds of thousands in sales, neither woman drew a paycheck. Every dime went back into the business. They ran a lean operation, keeping most work in-house and relying on what Cooper jokingly calls “good old Yorkshire graft” — British slang for “hustle.”

“It was a constant cycle of making sales and reinvesting in new photo shoots, products and marketing agency specialists, running test after test to discover what worked and didn’t,” says Van Dyke. “Luckily we’re smart with money and had savings, so could concentrate on building the business instead of worrying about making rent.”

“It was tough,” admits Cooper. “I had to learn a tremendous amount and jump-start the left side of my brain, while the pressure of not making money was frustrating.”

Van Dyke also remembers feeling terrified about leaving an incredible wage and learning opportunity. “People beg Tai Lopez to hire them — even offering to work for free — and there I was handing in my notice,” she laughs. “Because Tai has such an incredible team and network, I feared that despite all I had learned, I wouldn’t be able to make things work alone. Leaving that job was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But I felt young and free enough to take that risk.”

Success Secrets: Love and Positivity

The co-founders took the plunge because they recognized “a calling” for the business. “I saw people reposting poetry and quotes on social media and knew this was something people wanted,” explains Van Dyke. “We see so much fakeness on social media and sadness politically and environmentally that we wanted to reintroduce some love and positivity into people’s lives.”

That shared vision and a deep values alignment allowed the pair to persevere through the steep entrepreneurial learning curve, helping them to redefine the brand and further sculpt its inspirational but down-to-earth voice.

“The initial sales proved that people around the world loved the brand; we just needed to recoup some of the back end. We stuck to our guns, remained strong, and supported each other because we knew the graft would ultimately pay off and our message of inspiration would transcend,” says Cooper.

And pay off it did. Van Dyke explains that the game completely changed when they hired a data analyst to review and tweak their advertising. “We began selling much higher volume while spending less, and with that volume came lower cost of goods. We finally got our numbers right.” Successful advertising allowed Om & Ah to reach millions of millennial women around the globe, who immediately connected with the brand’s ethos and commitment to using ethically sourced clothing with as little environmental impact as possible. All of Om & Ah’s suppliers and manufacturers practice fair trade and fair wage only.

From its first to second year, sales increased tenfold. In 2019, they hit their goal of $1 million in monthly sales. The company is about to hit $10 million in revenue. “I often wondered how we managed to rise up and stand out among competitors,” admits Van Dyke. “Then one of our wholesale reps summed it up: It’s because the brand is meaningful and intelligent for our audience. A brand needs to make you stop and feel something.”

Om & Ah’s sales transformed when the co-founders hired a data analyst to tweak their advertising. Now they make data-driven decisions.

Image Credit: Alice Wint

Cooper and Van Dyke cater to wholesale clients, including department stores and major wellness studios, as well as collaborations with large online brands. They recently hired Jim Miller, former VP of sales for renowned life and business strategist Tony Robbins, to continue these efforts.

They also have big plans. Om & Ah just released a monthly subscription box in the U.S., which they’re rolling out worldwide in the coming months. They plan to expand into activewear, children’s apparel and custom-made skincare.

Going Wherever the Wind and Wi-Fi Take Them

Even as Om & Ah’s growth proliferates, the co-founders remain hands-on with a small team of highly qualified people, only hiring the best when the need to outsource arises. Cooper still handles the design and marketing agency identity, while Van Dyke acts as webmaster. They write all their email newsletters, which are filled with recipes and tips for adding zen to your life, without any hard sell.

“No matter our level of success, a homegrown feel must come through our brand. It can’t be stuffy corporate; we are a friendly, approachable company and want our customer to still hear and feel our personalities,” says Cooper.

They also make time to sit with cups of tea (with vegan cake!) and relish customer notes about how Om & Ah gear provided comfort and inspiration during hard times, or how people in their community have connected. “One of my fave messages was from a customer traveling along in the airport, who ran into someone wearing the same ‘Heart of a Hippie’ top. They hung out together and became friends!” says Van Dyke, beaming.

Despite their success, a homegrown, friendly, approachable feel must come through the Om & Ah brand, say the co-founders, wearing their best-selling slogans.

Image Credit: Alice Wint

“I’m often overwhelmed by the company’s impact and the connections the ‘Om family’ has forged,” says Cooper. “We’ve nurtured this baby from the embryo stage with all our heart, soul and knowledge … it’s been magical.”

Their success has also allowed Cooper and Van Dyke to travel widely, embrace their love of nature and share their adventures with customers. Van Dyke has gone full digital nomad, traveling with her husband, Jeremy, all over the world. They most recently toured Africa, where they did a four-day safari through the Serengeti on horseback (and were almost charged by a giant male rhinoceros!). They’re currently in Bali, and tend to go wherever else the wind — and Wi-Fi — take them.

Cooper also relishes traveling, most recently on a South African safari with her husband, Emmett. She dreams of visiting Uganda or Rwanda for a gorilla trek, but is also content to work from home in Northern England with her flat-faced cats by her side and vegan recipes simmering on the stove.

Above all, the Om & Ah founders remain committed to their mission of spreading joy, kindness and self-love. Their two bestselling messages are “In a world where you can be anything, be kind,” and “Perfectly Imperfect,” says Cooper. “That sums up our company.”

Follow Claire Cooper and Charlotte Van Dyke on Instagram, and visit Om & Ah.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/how-a-chance-conversation-in-a-coffee-shop-launched-the-multimillion-dollar-vegan-clothing-company-om-ah/ source https://scpie1.blogspot.com/2020/03/how-chance-conversation-in-coffee-shop.html

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riichardwilson · 4 years

Text

How a Chance Conversation in a Coffee Shop Launched the Multimillion-Dollar Vegan Clothing Company Om & Ah

Started in 2016 as a $500 side hustle by two English women, the ethically sourced company is expected to hit $10 million in sales by inspiring people with kindness.

March 25, 2020 10 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Claire Cooper and Charlotte Van Dyke weren’t exactly looking for side hustles when they met through mutual friends at a Los Angeles café one sunny afternoon in 2016.

Struck by divine inspiration, Claire Cooper ® blurted out three words after first meeting Charlotte Van Dyke (L) that became the company name: Om & Ah.

Image Credit: Alice Wint

A Steep Learning Curve

“It was tough,” admits Cooper. “I had to learn a tremendous amount and jump-start the left side of my brain, while the pressure of not making money was frustrating.”

Success Secrets: Love and Positivity

Om & Ah’s sales transformed when the co-founders hired a data analyst to tweak their advertising. Now they make data-driven decisions.

Image Credit: Alice Wint

Going Wherever the Wind and Wi-Fi Take Them

Despite their success, a homegrown, friendly, approachable feel must come through the Om & Ah brand, say the co-founders, wearing their best-selling slogans.

Image Credit: Alice Wint

Follow Claire Cooper and Charlotte Van Dyke on Instagram, and visit Om & Ah.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/how-a-chance-conversation-in-a-coffee-shop-launched-the-multimillion-dollar-vegan-clothing-company-om-ah/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/613585535022333952

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scpie · 4 years

Text

How a Chance Conversation in a Coffee Shop Launched the Multimillion-Dollar Vegan Clothing Company Om & Ah

Started in 2016 as a $500 side hustle by two English women, the ethically sourced company is expected to hit $10 million in sales by inspiring people with kindness.

March 25, 2020 10 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Claire Cooper and Charlotte Van Dyke weren’t exactly looking for side hustles when they met through mutual friends at a Los Angeles café one sunny afternoon in 2016.

Struck by divine inspiration, Claire Cooper (R) blurted out three words after first meeting Charlotte Van Dyke (L) that became the company name: Om & Ah.

Image Credit: Alice Wint

A Steep Learning Curve

“It was tough,” admits Cooper. “I had to learn a tremendous amount and jump-start the left side of my brain, while the pressure of not making money was frustrating.”

Success Secrets: Love and Positivity

Om & Ah’s sales transformed when the co-founders hired a data analyst to tweak their advertising. Now they make data-driven decisions.

Image Credit: Alice Wint

Going Wherever the Wind and Wi-Fi Take Them

Despite their success, a homegrown, friendly, approachable feel must come through the Om & Ah brand, say the co-founders, wearing their best-selling slogans.

Image Credit: Alice Wint

Above all, the Om & Ah founders remain committed to their mission of spreading joy, kindness and self-love. Their two bestselling messages are “In a world where you can be anything, be kind,�� and “Perfectly Imperfect,” says Cooper. “That sums up our company.”

Follow Claire Cooper and Charlotte Van Dyke on Instagram, and visit Om & Ah.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/how-a-chance-conversation-in-a-coffee-shop-launched-the-multimillion-dollar-vegan-clothing-company-om-ah/

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renegadepharmacist · 4 years

Text

How Chemists, Chinese Factories, and ‘Dark Web’ Dealers Spread Fentanyl Across the US

Ben Westhoff’s Fentanyl, Inc. is one of the first books to address what the Centers for Disease Control has called the “third wave” of the opioid crisis.

By Daniel Kolitz

TODAY 7:00 AM

Tablets suspected to be fentanyl are placed on a graph to measure their size at the Drug Enforcement Administration Northeast Regional Laboratory in New York, 2019. (AFP via Getty / Don Emmert)

The Wizard of OxyContin—where is he now? That nickname, revealed in leaked documents, belonged to an employee of Abbott Laboratories, which partnered with Purdue Pharmaceuticals to sell the drug. Starting in the late 1990s, he and his colleagues canvassed clinics around the country, hard-selling doctors on their flagship product. Purdue wooed doctors taught to distrust pain medications with steaks, vacations, and a stunning range of swag: Oxy-branded clocks, pens, beach hats, even swing music compilations. They were told that, unlike other opioids, OxyContin was addiction-proof; its time-release coating assured a steady, measured dose and would thwart attempts at abuse. Unmentioned by those reps—but known by their bosses from day one—was the ease with which this coating could be removed. As doctors began prescribing the drug in ever-larger numbers and Oxy’s sales soared into the billions, this glitch would devastate families, ravage towns, and before long spark the worst drug crisis in US history.

BOOKS IN REVIEW: FENTANYL INC: HOW ROGUE CHEMISTS ARE CREATING THE DEADLIEST WAVE OF THE OPIOID EPIDEMIC

By Ben Westhoff

Buy this book

Purdue eventually gestured toward fixing this problem, after 14 years of lucrative dithering. In 2010, a few years before its patent was set to expire, the company prolonged it with a new formula. This revamped Oxy was harder to abuse, and while its effectiveness has been debated, rates of prescription drug abuse have declined, aided by “pill mill” raids and stricter prescribing guidelines. But the wreckage that Oxy left behind is still being felt: In 2017, more than 47,000 Americans have died of opioid overdoses, the highest number on record. That same year, fentanyl became a household name, surfacing in local news segments, policy-website explainers, and thousands of toxicology reports. When the original Oxy vanished from the streets, many of the people addicted to it turned to heroin—and now it emerged that much of the heroin available in the United States (along with fast-rising quantities of cocaine) was laced with fentanyl. The advantage, for dealers, was price: Fentanyl costs less than heroin and is easier to acquire. It also happens to be 50 times more potent.

Often lost in the early news reports was the fact that fentanyl alone wasn’t killing people; many different kinds of fentanyl were. Since its invention in 1959 by the Belgian chemist and doctor Paul Janssen, fentanyl has seen more than 1,400 analogues: twists on the original formula whose origins and effects vary widely. Carfentanil, for instance—100 times stronger than fentanyl—was until 2018 FDA-approved for use as an elephant tranquilizer. It is here that the opioid crisis intersects with (and amplifies) a newer scourge: NPS, or new psychoactive substances, molecularly tweaked stand-ins for traditional street drugs. The best-known of these is probably K2, or Spice, the ostensible marijuana substitute whose high bears little resemblance to the real thing and whose side effects include blood-clotting, kidney failure, and instant death. But there are hundreds more, and likely thousands in development. Mini-pandemics have erupted across the country, as when, in the course of a single week last year, over 100 people in New Haven overdosed on what was later determined to be AB-FUBINACA, yet another synthetic cannabinoid.

Ben Westhoff, in Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic, charts this progression in harrowing detail. We are now dealing, he writes, with “the harshest drug challenge in our history.” His book is one of the first to address what the Centers for Disease Control has called the “third wave” of the opioid crisis: first OxyContin, then heroin, and now fentanyl and its analogues. Earlier accounts of this crisis—Sam Quinones’s Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic or Beth Macy’s Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America—had in Purdue Pharma the benefit, structural and dramatic, of a villain. More or less everyone can agree that pharmaceutical companies should refrain from wantonly pursuing profit at the expense of public health. Dopesick is rarely a pleasant read, but Macy’s account of Purdue’s first major court battle—which culminated in criminal convictions for three executives and $600 million in fines—provided at least some measure of catharsis.

Westhoff, reporting from the flayed, despairing center of this crisis, can’t offer any comparable relief. Purdue Pharma is now dead, and responsibility has devolved, in this third wave, to thousands of loosely affiliated actors: Dark Web distributors, small-time dealers, chemists whose skills and moral scruples vary widely. Like the cryptocurrencies that mask countless NPS transactions, these networks are decentralized: Members taken down are just as quickly replaced. But there is consolation in clarity, and the achievement of Westhoff’s book is to press this sprawling cast and the forces that gave rise to it into something like a coherent narrative, forming legible patterns out of widespread chaos.

As Westhoff points out, many of the most dangerous NPS were developed under completely legal circumstances, by tenured professors at prestigious universities. These experimental compounds—as well as the steps taken to produce them—were written up in small, peer-reviewed science journals and more or less forgotten, until the underworld began to repurpose these articles as recipes for recreational drugs. David Nichols, the utopian chemist who once dreamed of a drug that would end all war, now finds himself faced with the grief of parents like Eric Brown, whose son Montana overdosed on 251-NBOMe, which was brought into the mainstream through his research.

If Fentanyl, Inc. does have a primary antagonist, it’s the Chinese government. Virtually all of the fentanyls that have flooded the United States in recent years have been manufactured in China, where many NPS are legal, an arrangement that allows legitimate businesses to churn them out on a scale inconceivable to illicit drug makers in North America. This process has been heavily underwritten, as Westhoff demonstrates, by “lucrative tax incentives, subsidies, and direct financial support” from the Chinese government, as part of its breakneck bid to expand the country’s biotechnology sector.

The extent to which Chinese officials are aware of what they’re funding is unclear—some of these companies produce hundreds of products, churning out fentanyls alongside collagen, pesticides, and erectile-dysfunction meds—but the blind eye they’ve turned toward the export of these chemicals has yielded a number of complaints from the United States. The companies, meanwhile, know exactly what they’re doing: Fentanyls and NPS that are legal in China but banned in the US are often shipped in disguise, packaged as dog food or high-gluten wheat flour bread. In addition to an urgent public health crisis, this is an issue of international trade, which means that President Donald Trump seems authentically to care about it. In April, under pressure from his administration, China instituted a blanket ban on the production of all fentanyl variants. The majority of Westhoff’s reporting was conducted before this announcement was made, but, as he argues and as recent developments have borne out, it is “far from clear” if these new regulations have had any impact.

To illuminate this deadly, improbable cycle—in which drugs developed at American universities are mass-produced in Chinese factories and then sold to North American dealers, occasionally winding up, as party drugs, on the very same campuses whose endowments funded their creation—Westhoff ranges widely, logging time with each link in the chain of production. Eventually, in the book’s intrepid centerpiece, he manages to infiltrate two Chinese chemical manufacturers. At one of them, undercover as a cautious buyer, he encounters a roomful of cheerful twentysomethings blithely Skyping with potential customers to organize deals. It’s an uncanny moment: With fentanyl components swapped for cheap razors or custom-made mattresses, this could be any number of US start-ups, right down to the strained cheer and punishing work hours (though with the further difference that all of these people live together, in a motel adjacent to their office). But the book’s most revealing encounter takes place back home, when Westhoff, still posing as a buyer, is asked via Skype by one of these young sales reps why exactly people buy a chemical called NPP. Westhoff explains that it’s used to make fentanyl.

“I know Fentanyl,” she continued, “but why [do] people use it?”

“It’s highly addictive,” I said.

“Yes, I know it is a bad ,” the saleswoman admitted, “but I still sell it, so sometimes I feel guilt. NPP is not forbidden in China, so we can sell. I sell it, because I want to earn money, earn a living.”

Westhoff lets this exchange stand on its own, but a whole world throbs beneath it. Like many Chinese companies, the one this woman works for—called Yuancheng—began exporting its products to the United States only after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. That development cost millions of Americans their factory jobs and helped speed along the opioid crisis, as thousands of newly unemployed workers started selling their surplus Oxy to make the rent or maintain their own supply. Asked to justify themselves, they might have said something similar. Neither party—the laid-off factory worker selling Oxy out of his foreclosed home; the Yuancheng saleswoman working six-day weeks to keep the room she shares with six coworkers—can really be blamed. That the latter has progressed to killing the former suggests a failure, or an apotheosis, of two miserably enmeshed systems.

Stemming the flow of drugs from China is important, as is working, somehow, to curb the spread of NPS. But this problem isn’t disappearing soon, and there are people who urgently need our help. The relative whiteness of those affected by the opioid crisis has softened the old approach—jail the dealers, jail the addicts, remind young children that drugs are bad—but as Westhoff demonstrates, we have a long way to go. If we are to treat opioid-use disorder as a disease like any other, then here-and-now treatment must be our first priority, and Fentanyl, Inc. closes with a tour of some organizations taking that imperative seriously. Most of them are located outside the United States, a country whose fervent commitment to prolonged and needless suffering largely precludes the safe-injection sites and drug-testing operations that have saved countless lives in Europe. There have been some signs of progress—Westhoff highlights Grand Forks, North Dakota, a small conservative city that has liberalized access to Narcan, clean needles, and medication-assisted treatment—but harm reduction has yet to take hold as a national strategy. Which is unfortunate, because no other strategy works.

Daniel Kolitzis a writer living in Brooklyn.

#opioid epidemic

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leodottavioleandrodottavio-blog · 5 years

Text

Leandro Dottavio | Leo Dottavio | How To Be A Comic

Among the most frequently asked concerns I get while touring is "just how to I enter this company?" I have actually been a professional touring comic for 25 years, so I have actually heard this a great deal! In the bigger, feeling, becoming a comedian is truly a three-pronged venture.

Create your material

Hone and establish your funny material (practice your "established").

Get job.

Audio simple sufficient? Well currently comes the challenging component; in fact doing it. The hard facts are that also if I provided you all the responses only one to 2 percent of you would actually use it and go out as well as do it.

Funny is not just an art. It's a skill-based scientific research and a company. Nevertheless, most comics-- both professional and beginner-- equate comedy with frivolity and they treat their jobs frivolously. Like anything worth doing, funny takes work. It takes job to compose brand-new product as well as it takes even more work to go out and also get the gigs. Movie industry is 2 words; there's the "program" and also there's the "organisation" as well as it may stun you to understand that much of the time, you have to place even more effort right into business than the show. The good news is, when you do it right, you're having such a blast that you don't truly function a day in your life!

Leo Dottavio

Seem like enjoyable? Let's progress!

Let's start with writing and establishing product. There are a lot of people out there that think that you can't learn funny, that you're either birthed with it or you're not. That's a pure and also simple fallacy spoken by individuals that don't have a hint regarding the science behind giggling or the framework behind it. If you really think about it, have you ever seen a child bulge of his mom's womb:.

" So 2 individuals were making love ... then boom! Out pops me! Is this thing on?" You call that a birth canal? It's more like attempting to push an egg via a stir stick! Hey Mother? (spit, spit), you ought to shave that things! Have not you came across a 'Brazilian?'".

It just doesn't occur! Given, there are some people that seem to naturally have a funny bone built in. They appear to get it. My concept is that they grew up around funny, either listening to the greats at a young age, or they were elevated in a household that was full of wit. All the comics I understand that make me laugh had exposure to amusing individuals at a young age and also started adapting comical actions. Those habits obtained them attention. They began to recognize the patterns of behavior and also language that resulted in giggling as well as used them to various other circumstances with good results.

The keyword from the above paragraph is "patterns." There are certain patterns that specialists make use of over and over again, to get laughs as well as it's generally a pattern that creates surprise. According to psychologists who examine humor, in this context, shock is the leading element that activates human laughter, If you can stun someone with what you are mosting likely to say, they will usually laugh. Among the most convenient methods to do this is to apply one of the 12 significant comedy solutions that I uncovered over the years of studying the best comedians. Hell, you don't even require to study the greats to recognize this formula. If you have a pal (I assume most of us do), that transforms whatever you say right into a sexual undertone, than he/she is most likely applying this formula. It is known as the "Double Entendre." This essentially suggests "two definitions." You primarily take an usual phrase and rotate the intended significance to indicate something absolutely various, yet it could actually fit in the declaration, but its overstated ...

Leandro Dottavio

Recently I went to the grocery store. The clerk stated, "Did you find everything you were searching for?" I said, "Well, I discovered the wine and the candle lights, but I could not find a true love ... You had Mahi-Mahi, yet I'm not right into doubles.".

In the above joke, when the staff utilized the word "every little thing," she indicated everything in the store. As a comic the word whatever could be a great deal of points. In this case I chose a 'true love.' What makes the joke work is not just the misdirection on the desired significance of words, but the truth that funny analysis of the word still fits within the context of the question. If it didn't make sense, then there would certainly be seriously.

Let's consider an additional Double-Entendre play on words: Previous head trainer of the Tampa florida Bay Buccaneers was having a terrible season. At journalism meeting a reporter said to the coach, "Coach, how to you really feel about the implementation of the infraction?" McKay replied, "I recommend it.".

You can see there that the word perform was used in two various methods. This structure must be a routine tool for anyone who is finding out just how to create comedy. Among the ways I fine-tune this capacity and make it more offered to my day-to-day life is through technique. When a month I do a word exercise that reminds me that our language has a lots of words that have multiple definitions. Maintaining this fine-tuned in my brain, provides me a device that is constantly sharp and also available. This allows me to re-interpret something someone states and also use a funny spin on words. The workout is easy, yet very powerful. For the exercise, I take fifteen arbitrary, but rather usual words and create them down. After that I locate at least 5 different significances for each word. Working this workout regularly will give you a fantastic leg up on your speed and finesse as a comic. It's straightforward, yet extremely effective. Especially due to the fact that couple of comics actually do it. This is just one of twelve major funny structures used by all the most effective comedians as well as funny writers. If I was to include them done in this article, it would take you a week to end up reading. It is a simple, yet powerful example of exactly how you can manipulate the English language and develop surprise as well as trigger giggling from a target market.

TRUTH: Every comic who makes you laugh utilizes at least one funny framework. It is the structure of words or the act-out that activates the giggling. Without the structure, there is no giggling.

Also when you have all twelve comedy structures down, (most comics collaborate with 3-4), and you establish an act of at the very least five minutes, to begin, half an hour to start getting paid, you need to begin to function and also hone it in front of an audience. I 'd start with close friends. Run the product by them, see what they believe, see if you can make it far better by tweaking the surprise. As soon as you feel comfy that you can do the five minutes without thinking about it, do it before a target market. Just how do you do this? Well, if you're in a larger city, there are probably lots of open mics. These are locations where you can do 5-10 mins of material to 'test it' before a target market. This is the means I started. If you do not have the advantage of being in a huge city, then you may have a comedy show that plays once a week or once a month in your town at a regional bar or restaurant. If that's the case, travel down there and also ask if you can M.C. the program. Most bars that have 'one-niter' comedy shows, do not have an M.C. So if you show up and also ask, they will probably be more than delighted to have you do it. When you do your 5 or 10 minutes in advance, then you can video tape it. As soon as you have a video clip tape that's of good quality, you have a calling card to get various other job. So now you still need to function the 'service' side of the exactly how to be a comic equation. When you have an act that is producing a laugh every 18-20 seconds, and also has a strong start, center and end, it is time to get out there. What most beginning comedians do not understand is that when you hit this degree, (can take 6 months, or 2 years), it's time to buckle down regarding treating your stand funny like a business. You are now an item (or service), and you need to sell. At this moment in your occupation, you will certainly not have a supervisor or an agent. If you are privileged adequate to have the money, you can work with a Public Relations supervisor (around $3500 each month). They can assist you venture out news release, areas on the radio or tv. However you need to have a gig to advertise first. But most of us do not have that option when we're starting out so allow's leave that alone. So you have a thirty minutes act that you have actually been establishing at open mics as well as various other occasions like meetings, parties, etc. How do you obtain it on the road? At this moment you can be considering a number of possibilities in your journey to becoming a comedian:.

Targeting the funny club and also one-niter market.

Breaking into business comedy or speaking engagements.

I do both clubs as well as corporates in my career, and now I mainly target business merely since there's even more money in it for me. There is also the college comedy market, cruise liner market, resort as well as gambling enterprise market, warm up comic market (for online sit-com, game and talk show audiences), and army shows. Armed forces programs can be big. I was collaborating with an intermediary for the armed force who claimed he could have me benefiting the rest of my life doing armed forces shows. We could spend a lot of time experiencing all the opportunities, yet that can take days. The important point to bear in mind is that if you can write and also create a funny regimen that is clean as well as good, you can work forever. As soon as you have this info, it's time to target your market, do your study and start marketing. That's right. Begin selling. You are your very own organisation now and you provide a service. If you learn to treat yourself like a company by drawing up a company strategy, setting goals as well as following through, you will certainly begin to function. When you begin in funny there are 3 positions readily available. They are each expected to carry out for different amounts of time:.

Opener/M. C. (15 minutes).

Attribute or Middle (in some cases called "best") (30 minutes).

Headliner or Closing act (45 mins. -1 hour).

KEEP IN MIND: This is organisation is affordable, but right here's something most comedians do not know: If you strive and you develop your act and you develop your online reputation for being a great comic, you WILL CERTAINLY FUNCTION! This service and also the bookers that supply comedians around the country are constantly trying to find good talent.

If you wish to target the club market, you ought to likewise target the one-nighter market.This way you have extra scheduling options readily available to you when organizing days. Exactly how do you target? Start little; start regional. If you have funny in your location, speak to the clubs, most likely to the clubs, ask the supervisors, door people, M.C.'s what the method is for entering the door and also auditioning or doing a visitor set. Be respectful as well as be consistent. Jay Leno drove from Boston to the New York City Improv numerous days a week for numerous months before Bud Friedman (the owner of the Improv) let him do a set. He was prepared. He did an excellent job. The rest is background. When you obtain your opportunity, be prepared and do a well-crafted 5-10 minute set. After that, talk to individuals, see what it takes to get back to do another set. When you join people and also establish relationships and also a track record for being a strong act, currently you have all you require to get work. A lot of comedy skill bookers when traveling require to see video clip. Some will certainly take a chance on you if you have recommendations from some headliners. It's a good concept to develop relationships with as many comics as feasible. Behave to everyone, always act expertly. It's these connections that can make or break your opportunities for getting work. Make at the very least 10 call a day for your profession.

Call comedy clubs and bookers. If you do not obtain them on the phone, constantly, I imply always leave a message. Keep accurate documents on who you talked to, who the decision maker is, the names of aides and the best time to call.

If this seems like you are a sales person ... after that well, you are. This is the business side of the formula of exactly how to be a comic as well as it's where most comedians fall short.

When you do lastly get a booker on the phone. Be respectful and also ask if you can send them a video clip as well as if they prefer to see the video online or on DVD or E.P.K. (Electronic Press Package). Believe it or otherwise, there are still some bookers out there who would certainly favor to hold a DVD in their hand.

Several of these bookers are tough nuts to fracture. When I run into that predicament, it's time to make an individual sales phone call. I just email or call and ask them,.

" I actually want to satisfy you and also play your space. If I can fly around in 2 weeks approximately, do you believe you could discover area in the line up for a visitor set?".

For the hardest bookers in the country, this has actually constantly worked. However exactly how do you afford that? Why your structure your calls and also one-niter jobs, you ensure you book something in or around the location of the club you so covet. When you have that day in position and scheduled, call the club as well as see if you can decrease in as well as do an audition set. Place in this additional step as well as you'll probably get a visitor set.

Once you do the guest collection, send them a thank you card (and or something with your image on it), to thank them for the possibility and keep adhering to up till you get an area. Never ever follow up more than when a week, unless you still have not talked with the target person, then comply with up every 3 days.

Calvin Coolidge stated, "persistence as well as uniformity trump ability any day." So be persistent and consistent. Be courteous and maintain adhering to up. As well as if calling doesn't work. Pay them a check out. Let them know you're relentless.

When you begin putting dates together. Use every opportunity to video clip tape. Try to get wonderful sound high quality, preferably. A terrific tape results in more function.

If you follow these steps:.

Compose your funny product.

Sharpen as well as create your product (your "established").

Get work.

#Leo Dottavio #Leandro Dottavio

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topicprinter · 5 years

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Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview.Today's interview is with Doug Geiger of CanYouHandlebar, a brand that sells men's grooming products.Some stats:Product: Men's Grooming ProductsRevenue/mo: $100,000Started: November 2012Location: Mount ClemensFounders: 1Employees: 10Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?I’m Doug Geiger, founder of Can You Handlebar, a men’s grooming product company. We’re one of those low-key-high-quality brands.We are best known for beard oils and balms, moustache wax and inventing the first application brush for beard products, the Can You Handlebar Beard Oil Brush®. We are carefully and consistently extending our product line and distribution.In our first three years our production grew from a kitchen countertop with a crockpot I stole from my wife to “making a million bucks” and a 10,000 square foot building with a whole fleet of crockpots. Meanwhile, our retail presence -- which began on the counter of a gracious proprietor of the corner gas station -- has grown to our own network of barbers and salons across the US, international distribution and most visibly, the shelves of every Art of Shaving.What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?Back in the halcyon days of 2010, on a whim, I decided to grow a handlebar moustache. It is hard to imagine now, but there once was a time where there were not too many people selling moustache wax or beard products.There were no products available locally and most of those available online weren’t transparent about ingredients and felt kind of “homemade” (and not in the good way). My hunch was that well made and well-packaged beard products could do really well as a business. I sat on the idea for at least a year because I was tied up with my day job and a newborn in the home.In 2011, I turned in my fancy plastic lanyard and left the high rise for the last time. I joined Saddleback Leather and this proved to be the perfect incubator for a fledgling moustache wax startup. First, it provided a consistent paycheck while I ironed out my recipes and business plan. Second, my time at Saddleback provided me with good reflexes when it comes to quality and customer service. Most importantly though, I had the encouragement and mentorship of the owner, Dave Munson and the help of my Saddleback coworkers.Even though my time had freed up a little working from home, I was still quite broke. My wife and I were married (and each managed to stay sorta employed) during the Great Recession. But even as of 2012, when we launched the website we were still paying off our wedding debt from years prior. Nevertheless, I had a hunch and at this point in my life, frankly I was tired of ignoring all of my hunches.So, I loaded up a credit card with $400 in supplies and stole my wife’s crockpot. The day before launch, we took our toddler trick or treating, then made our way to the kitchen. I followed the handwritten recipe from my fourteenth experiment and the yield was a couple dozen cans of wax and half that again in spillage. The next morning I logged in and set the site to “public.”Here’s a shot of our first large order going out in our first “commercial” space.And here’s a shot of me at The Art of Shaving. The first time I was able to walk into a mall and see my products on the shelf in a retail capacity. It felt really good.Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.Our first product was a moustache wax. My research amounted to buying just about every competitor product I could get my hands on to get an idea of what was possible, doing lots of research and tinkering with all manner of ingredients.The research process involves a lot of research online on the properties of each ingredient and to determine if there are known allergies we can avoid. We also have discussions with our chemist if we are having a hard time achieving some property we want as well as to look over the final formula.After we believe we have a winner, we have a lot of people try it and give their feedback. Meanwhile, we are working on labels and UPC barcodes and product photography. It gets easier over time to lainch a product but it never gets easy.After several versions, we landed on a really simple recipe that, with just a couple tweaks, is now sold all over the world.The first batch was made in a crock pot and was ladled by hand into metal tins with a one ounce scoop I purchased for the occasion. It was a real mess. Learning how to make a can of really good moustache wax takes one sort of research and development. Learning how to make ten thousand of these at a time, takes another sort. One thing we got right was putting as much R&D into our processes as we put into developing new products.I don’t have any photos of the crockpots in action, but here are our first two beard oil prototypes. We ended up going with the name “Initiative” since the word “Industry” isn’t used to mean “hard work” much these days.Our first two beard oil prototypesDescribe the process of launching the business.We’d had some success in smaller circles with direct sales and were building a reputation based on the quality of our moustache wax among the beard and moustache community. Setting up a webstore seemed like the next logical step, along with getting our product on Amazon.Credit cards were our friends at first and this was definitely more of a “side gig” for the first year or so. Then we found that our Amazon sales picked up, often on the strength of our reviews and finding an aficionado niche with our moustache wax formula. We brought on our Director of Sales Brian Furby and he developed a plan that allowed us to reach out to barbershops and salons to offer wholesale pricing, creating a global network of retail partners. These things became the underpinnings of our success.Brian’s strategy was two-fold. He started with cold-calling and emailing owners of salons and barbershops, introducing them to our products and offering to send them a package that included full-size products for free, just so they could see the quality of the goods in person. This led to a postcard mailer program to expand our reach.Finally, we expanded to include visits to industry trade shows, where we were able to meet and interact with retailers face-to-face. They could see the products first-hand and by simply signing up for a Retailer Sample Kit they could get started making money with Can You Handlebar right away, at no cost to them.These programs were a success in building out our retail program of independent shops and salons. As our product line grew, we altered our offering to include more goods and special incentives (like a branded barber cape), available at a significantly reduced cost. This gives potential retailers a taste of our wholesale pricing and gives them enough product to stock their shelves with our Retailer Starter Kit, all with a very small investment on their end.We kept an eye toward thoughtful design in our packaging and on continuing to deliver quality goods. That eventually led to our being noticed by The Art of Shaving, who have become our most significant retailer, a relationship that has brought our products into hundreds of retail locations where we continue to be a best-seller.In terms of lessons learned, one of the things that we might have done differently and something we still struggle with is overthinking things. Aspects of that can be beneficial, and it’s certainly helped us to be careful and a bit cautious. But we have a tendency to get obsessive about the details. Sometimes we’ll talk ourselves into a corner until finally one of us will say “What the hell are we waiting for?” and we’ll get the idea moving again.Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?Our efforts have always been rooted in quality products and customer service, building relationships with our customers based on delivering exactly what they are looking for. It’s how we got started, and it’s where we distinguish ourselves. That can feel a bit old school, and sure, we’d love to have some viral success that explodes business exponentially, but we have been very happy with a steady and consistent build over time.We’re just not a flashy brand. We don’t consider beards to be a trend, and we don’t approach our business as though it were. It’s resulted in a lean and focused product line and innovation driven by our core values and extensive R&D. We’re not rushing products to market for a quick buck.This also means that when a customer has a question or a concern, they’re getting a response from an actual human being. It means a satisfaction guarantee that accounts for the customer’s actual experience with the ultimate goal of finding them a product that works for them. Our social media is organic and conversational. We share what we care about, whether fishing or baking bread, high-end knives or low-end junk food--It’s all just an extension of who we are. No cheap memes or alpha attitudes, no trash-talking competitors.Social mediaOur strategy for social media has always been rooted in genuine interaction. We feature our own content in terms of photos and writing as well as sharing photos from customers and retailers. We decided early on to avoid cheap memes and viral posts. We’d seen other brands do it, and it always felt like it played to the negative, reinforcing stereotypes about bearded guys or beard culture. It’s always been important to us that our customers choose our products because they are right for them, not because some alpha dog told them to, or because it’s the hipster thing to do.Our earliest notable success on social media was with a program we dubbed The Big Thank You, which we ran for two consecutive years. It was a giveaway contest designed to thank our customers and followers for their interest in our product, and also a way to introduce them to several other small businesses whose work we appreciate. In turn, these small businesses helped us promote on their end, creating a nice ring of cross-promotion across social media. We accepted donations or bought outright products from our partners as part of the giveaway, and it was important to us to choose makers who we knew shared our belief in quality, and who it just made sense to brand with.Entrants into the contest were asked to upload a picture of themselves showing off their facial hair and all of our followers were asked to vote for their favorite. Engagement was through the roof, as were click-throughs and newsletter sign-ups.Here’s some stats on the second year:The contest ran for a week, from November 19th-27thWe had 25 sponsors$8000 worth of prizes13,525 visitors to site during contestSocial Growth/Engagement (CanYouHandlebar only; doesn’t include any data from sponsors)Gained 220 followers on InstagramGained 62 followers/likes on FacebookFB reach was ~39K from contest postsInstagram reach: 10,776; impressions: 35KTwitter: ~45K impressionsAnecdotally, it was a success for our sponsor partners as well, as all reported positive growth. In most cases, all it cost them was their cost of goods and a small amount of time spent promoting on social media.AdsWe’ve utilized Facebook, Instagram, and Google ads and experimented with other forms of online advertising and we’ve found that overextending ourselves and our budget doesn’t necessarily result in higher sales.Online advertising is a nut we still haven’t completely cracked. A lot of that feels like it’s connected to what a niche market we are, and within that niche we’ve found our greatest sales success in simply delivering the best products and packaging we can, and letting word of mouth spread.AmazonTo that end, Amazon is an important part of our success, with customer experience driving strong reviews. There is a true aficionado’s appreciation for what we do. We thrive on returning business.Though there are a multitude of other options for our customers to consider when purchasing a beard product, we feel that the quality of our goods shines through.How are you doing today and what does the future look like?We are steady and growing moderately on all fronts. We are looking to expand into other retail locations and further international distribution. We are expanding our product line as well. A recent example is the Tattoo Balm we just released. It’s our first unisex grooming product and also one of the first that isn’t directly beard or moustache-related. It’s a whole new market for us and we’re looking forward to finding some inroads there.Our day-to-day operations have expanded dramatically from where we started. We now operate out of a 10,000 square foot warehouse in the greater Detroit area, we employ anywhere from 10-15 full and part-time positions and have scaled our production abilities up to be able to fill thousands of units a week as needed.Our sales are currently tiered with retail partners in the lead, Amazon second and website sales third. A massive goal for us over the past few months has been to increase traffic and sales on the website. We’ve undergone a complete design facelift and have focused on targeted social media ads. It took a ton of time, money and effort whipping our site into shape. Thankfully, we are now converting well once people get to the site. We’re now working on strategies to get these initial site views and increasing conversions.Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?Right after I started to see some success, I hired “experts” who weren’t as serious about our success as we needed them to be. I paid one guy over $40,000 over the course of six months because he was “really connected” and could help my business take off. The only thing that really took off was him--with my money. This taught me a little thing about business and a big thing about me as a person. On the business side, I am now a lot better at defining expectations in contracts. On the personal side, I realized that I was starving to hear that I was “on the right track” and was consequently way more vulnerable to flattery than I thought.When you’ve toiled for years on a business as random as beard oil without a ton to show for it, it feels really good to finally hear some “real business person” compliment you and tell you that you are about to hit it big, if only you had someone like them who sees the potential and can make a couple calls…I needed validation so much as any brand new entrepreneur, and I spent the cost of a brand new fully loaded family sedan to hear it. Fortunately, I was able to extricate myself having only lost money and pride. It could have been much worse.You can’t avoid all mistakes. But you can inoculate yourself against a bunch of strains of entrepreneurship diseases by reading content like these on Starter Story and by keeping an eye out for business owners you can chat with every so often to give you this validation. You should not rely exclusively on your SO, personal friends or employees. It isn’t fair for them to be your sole support. Once you are committed to your own business, you immediately need a new category of friend: business owner peers with whom you can freely discuss financials, fears and hopes. If you provide for this support network early on, you will have picked up through conversations a resistance to some of the nonsense that’s out there without having to go through it firsthand.I can’t go on too much longer without screaming that luck is such a huge part of our success. I was fortunate to be in the vanguard of the “beard trend” by accident and I am certain that getting into the market so early helped. Back then, we were one of only a dozen or so brands doing beard oil, beard balm and moustache wax. Now there are thousands. Had things not gone exactly right, I could very easily be one of the thousands of guys out there now whose company didn’t pan out and who only have a couple dozen bottles of beard oil and a $40 piece of bearded clipart they never got around to using to show for it.That said, luck is never enough, not long term. You have to work really hard on a lot of chores that the customer will never see or know about. Had we not made the most of our position as one of the early leading brands, we would not be here. I think some of our best decisions over the years include focusing on a quality product in a clean professional manufacturing facility. Our manufacturing crew is presently led by my first employee Andy Pokorski, who has been with me from the crockpot to the factory. He has had a hand (and beard) in nearly everything at Can You Handlebar. Accordingly, he gets unlimited days off for fishing. Each day Andy, Annette, Dylan, Mike and a handful of regular part-time employees operate a production facility they helped build, that makes and distributes some of the best men’s care products in the world.We also prioritize packaging. This is critical for personal care products. They are applied after the shower or may be carried around in a pocket. A well packaged beard oil for instance, ought to have a water-proof label, ought not shatter when dropped on a tile floor and should never get your clothing oily in a suitcase. We think this way and customers seem to appreciate that. We design for actual everyday and our customers can tell.As soon as I could afford it, I brought on Brian Griffith as a full-time graphic designer, and Adam Barraclough as our copywriter and the results are staggering. For the first time we could start with a marketing idea and have all of the talent we needed in-house to make our idea a reality. Tim Kramer, a colleague from my Saddleback days, joined us as our social media manager but his role, like everyone else’s, has expanded to include whatever needs to be done. We do most of our photography and videography in-house now. The skills needed to run a modern online business are numerous and are not easy to learn, but having control over our creative has allowed us to get the look and feel we want.I believe it is the combination of luck, hard work and our lack of pretense that helps us stand out in a crowded field. It’s easy to play up any number of “hipster” or “alpha male” tropes, and those things are rampant in beard culture, but that just isn’t us.What platform/tools do you use for your business?Our online store is powered by Shopify, and we’ve had excellent support and consulting from Kurt Elster over at Ethercycle. We’re not web devs by nature so having a team we can reach out to for assistance with specific requests has been invaluable to us.Shipping is through ShipStation, YotPo for reviews and WholesaleHero to integrate our retailer pricing directly into the webstore. We keep things fairly simple on this end and these apps meet our needs without overcomplicating things. We really like Klaviyo for email and use a customized template to plug in fresh copy and creative assets, which makes sending out a newsletter a snap.We use Buffer for social scheduling and rely on Google Analytics and Shopify reporting for stats. As a team, we work remotely and utilize Google Drive and Skype daily in order to keep in touch and share information.I wish I had a true “killer app” recommendation here, but a lot of what we do comes down to being able to rely on a few basics that can be easily trained, shared and utilized amongst our whole team.What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?I’m a huge fan of Kurt Elster’s The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, he often focuses on people in unique industries who are finding success and sharing some of the strategies that led them there. It’s inspiring but also unpretentious and ground-level enough to be relatable.I loved reading Jim Koch’s Quench Your Own Thirst: Business Lessons Learned Over a Beer or Two about the rise of Boston Brewing and the Sam Adams brand. It was amazing to me how he embraced his failures as readily as his successes and was unafraid to discuss them plainly. This is one of dozens of audiobooks I have listened to on my phone with Audible. I love that site.I try to run everything by my wife. She’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and if she doesn’t “get” something it’s usually a sure sign that I’ve missed the mark. She’s a great supporter, and that means the world to me, but she’s also not afraid to call bullshit. Having someone like that in your professional life, who’s not afraid to tell you “this sucks” or “I’m not sure this works” is invaluable.Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?Use your pride against your fear to get out of first gear.If I have done one brilliant thing in the past six years it was to recognize that I was afraid and needed to kick my own ass. So, I bought a bag of lanolin I could not return with money I did not have knowing I would be mortified to have to explain to my wife why I decided to quit just after investing in a big bag of sheep’s wax.As I mentioned earlier, I’d had ideas for businesses for a very long time and had never followed through. I was afraid I would fail. Somewhere in there, I was probably afraid I might succeed. Either way I had by this point established a habit of daydreams without action that I needed to break. I had an intuition that I needed to drop myself into a mess and fight my way out. That’s when the idea to buy obscure ingredients hit me. I placed the order and kept plugging away. When it arrived, I placed it prominently next to my computer monitor. I knew that the only way to turn that lanolin back into the money I desperately needed was to make a bunch of moustache wax and sell it. Which I did. If you use this idea, just be careful and don’t overdo it!Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?We’re not actively hiring for any specific positions, but we love to hear from contributors and collaborators who may be interested in sharing creative content. Whether that’s photos or videos, artwork, reviews of our products or other insights, we welcome anyone who is willing to help us spread the word.We have built a great community of contributors over the years who help us do everything from test drive new products to give us feedback on concepts for campaigns.Where can we go to learn more?Find us Online:Website: https://www.canyouhandlebar.com/Talk to us directly :[email protected] you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data.Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM

#/r/entrepreneur #reddit

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vigrxwarning · 4 years

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samuelmmarcus · 5 years

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Dark Exterior Farmhouse

It’s always wonderful to have Pike Properties LLC (previously featured here) on Home Bunch. They are one of my favorite builders in Charlotte, NC and it’s easy to see why… just take a look at this newly-built modern farmhouse with dark exterior. Here, the builder share more details with us:

“Pike Properties was presented with a relatively flat lot with large dimensions, and therefore it was time to go about building something truly special. It isn’t uncommon for Pike to build a special home, but this home took everything to new heights and was full of new design ideas and concepts never before seen in Pike builds.

One important thing to note is that Pike Properties isn’t a custom builder. We are purely building homes on a speculative basis. We buy the dirt, design the home, bring it to life, and sell it to its new owners. That said, many features you find inside this home and others we have built are at our additional cost. Did we need copper gutters? No. Did we need a stacked stone wing wall? No. These are the extra sizzle features we add to our homes to make them stand out and live up to our high standards.

Welcome to the tour of this striking Modern Farmhouse build in Charlotte, North Carolina!”

Interior Design Ideas: Dark Exterior Farmhouse

This home is so very eye-catching. The contrasting colors and boldness of the overall design ensures that brake lights come on as cars drive by and that people stop and let their dog sniff just a bit longer. The overall design is actually just a slight tweak on this home: “Farmhouse-Style Home Inspired by Chip & Joanna Gaines“.

Tired of white, white, and more white, Pike Properties decided to take a slight risk and go dark with the main body paint color (Benjamin Moore Raccoon Fur). This color is very unique and actually can look more dark gray in some lights and more dark navy at other times. If you are looking to paint your home this color, definitely throw up some samples at different locations (shade and sun) to ensure you like the looks.

As briefly mentioned before, the gutters are genuine copper. It is an upgrade of around $2,500 over aluminum gutters, but WOW. They make such a statement against the dark facade that we knew we just had to splurge on them. Looking now, we don’t think the home would have felt “complete” without the copper.

CertainTeed Weathered Wood architectural shingles cover the roof, while a metal accent tops the window awning, a classic farmhouse feature.

Beautiful Porch Furniture Sets: here, here, here, here & here.

Shingles

To lighten the facade up a bit and to ensure a focal point of the design, we used cedar shake and a stacked stone wing wall to coat the gabled bump out. A window box adds a feeling of quaintness and homeliness. The shake, as well as cedar columns, a front door are all stained in Benjamin Moore Hidden Valley 50% formula (semi-transparent). The front decking/skirting is Hidden Valley full formula (solid).

Front Door

The front door is very inviting and is made from genuine Fir. We used a Schlage electronic keypad door lock with matching handle, found here. The ease of use and ability to not have to carry around a key is a great added benefit.

Rain Chains

Rain Chains are from Houzz.

Garage

From this angle you can see the detached carriage house as well as side entrance overhang with custom crafted bracket supports.

Living Room

As you walk into the home, you are greeted by this living space. Located at the front left corner of the home with plentiful windows facing east and south, the natural light is incredible. Access to the rear wrap around porch is granted via the glass door, adding to the farmhouse vibes. Your focal point in a living room tends to be the fireplace, and that is no different here. For the surround we went with a curved trim detail that supports the cedar mantle. The hearth is black granite. We always paint the inside of the firebox in a heat resistant black paint, as it is much more pleasing to the eye than leaving it tan. This fireplace wouldn’t be complete without the designer tile.

Tile: Soho Studio MJ Sabino Asian Statuary Polished & Honed – Others: here, here, here, here, here & here.

Paint Color in all the main living areas of this home is Benjamin Moore Dove Wing with trim being Benjamin Moore White Dove.

Couches- Discontinued – Others: here, here, here, here, here, here & here.

Beautiful Brass Table Lamps: here, here, here & here.

Coffee Table- Arteriors Home.

Rug: Jaipur Living – Others: here, here, here & here.

Kitchen

Taking some of our favorite elements from previous kitchen designs and blending them created the masterpiece that you see here. A Modern Farmhouse kitchen that possesses both Modern and Farmhouse ingredients and feels warm and welcoming, while sustaining that ever so slight feeling of exquisite luxury.

Navy cabinetry is trending big right now, and for good reason. We went with that trend and painted these custom cabinets in Benjamin Moore Lead Gray. Although the color refers to Gray, they are truly a gray/navy. This tone is perfect because it isn’t too deep or bright of a navy that would lend itself to be too casual or unsophisticated. These cabinets were custom made by a local Charlotte shop.

The 10′ center island anchors the kitchen and creates a natural gathering spot. It is topped off in a white Quartz that contrasts beautifully against the cabinetry. Speaking of contrasting, we feel that the brass accents in this space pull everything together so wonderfully.

The custom range hood really exemplifies both Modern and Farmhouse elements. Making it squared off with hard edges and no flare and or trimmed edges, it is a very modern statement piece. Add in the shiplap look and you have the epitome of a Modern Farmhouse range hood.

Counterstools- RH – Others: here, here, here, here & here.

Refrigerator

From this angle you can more thoroughly appreciate the great expanse of the island. In addition, to keep scale with the rest of the kitchen, we choose a jaw dropping 60″ French door refrigerator! It comes in two separate pieces, the fridge and freezer columns.

Appliances: Freezer, Refrigerator, Trim.

Sconces Flanking Hood: Savoy House.

Range Wall

This may just be one of the most beautiful tiles we have ever seen before! The striking intricacies and brass branding is truly special. We went with a simple marble tile for the main backsplash that is full height up the wall, and then for the picture frame accent we splurged big time for this amazing tile. It was quite worth the extra money!

Accent Tile- Soho Studio Empress Helena – Others: here, here, here & here.

Main Backsplash Tile- Jeffrey Court Wall Street White 3×9 – similar here.

Pot Filler- Delta Contemporary in Matte Black.

Range- Jenn-Air 48″ Pro-Style.

Faucet

Faucet is Brizo Litze in Matte Black with Brilliance Luxe Gold.

Lighting

Pendants are Hudson Valley Blake in Aged Brass. Other Beautiful Lighting: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here & here.

Kitchen Island

This angle of the kitchen is truly stunning. It shows off the open floorpan between kitchen, keeping room, and dining area. Windows galore offer loads of natural light. The space elicits warm and cozy feels, as a Modern Farmhouse should. This home is certainly perfect for those who love to entertain.

To the left of the apron front farm sink is a trash drawer with two built-in bins, a functional upgrade. With the press of a button, the Jenn-Air microwave drawer opens up and allows you to easily drop in whatever it is that needs heating up.

Hardware: Cabinet Hardware is all from the Emtek Alexander Collection in various sizes.

Kitchen Sink: Blanco Profina.

Dishwasher: Jenn-Air.

Dining Room

This dining space serves as the sole dining area in the home. It is the formal dining room, the breakfast room, and everything in between. Is the formal dining room going out of style? In many cases we tend to say yes. With that said, it was important to ensure that this room maintained elements of formal and informal design. The open concept ensures some informality, while a striking chandelier and stained ceiling trim detail keeps the formality in check. From a standpoint of being in this room in person, we would say the stained wood ceiling accent trim is what really sets this room apart and causes visitors jaws to drop. Take that away and it is a typical dining room. This is a prime example of our belief in going a little above and beyond the ordinary to create spaces that are truly extraordinary. This dining space is perfectly situated overlooking the backyard as well. Wow!

Chandelier

Chandelier- Visual Comfort EF Chapman Oslo – Others: here, here, here, here & here.

Dining Table- Jeffan – Others: here, here, here, here & here.

Dining Chairs- Joss & Main.

Rug: Jaipur Living.

Flooring

We will dive into the Keeping Room next, but first we’d like to take a moment to talk about the wood flooring that spans throughout this home. The floors are 3.25″ White Oak site finished with an eco-friendly durable finish called Rubio Monocoat. The name of the finish is Havana.

Chandelier: Visual Comfort.

Keeping Room

A brief history. “Keeping rooms can be traced to 18th-century Colonial America, when most cooking was done around a home’s only fireplace. Since this was the warmest part of the house, family members were drawn to the kitchen; but to avoid being underfoot and annoying the chef, they gathered in the next closest area: the keeping room. It was typically furnished with a comfortable couch, where they could lounge and accomplish small tasks such as sewing or writing letters.” (Via Realtor.com)

With that history lesson under our belts, we feel like having a keeping room in this home further extends the coziness and livability of this home. While things aren’t like they used to be in many regards, people still have a tendency to gather in and around kitchens, so why not have a cozy spot for them to sit?

This ceiling is vaulted 20′ high and boasts exposed cedar beams, keeping things just a tad rustic. When faced with a tall, focal point wall there is almost no better choice than to cover it with shiplap, so we did just that! Something about having that trim and not just drywall enhances the coziness of the space. The second fireplace of the home is more informal with simpler trim and a black granite surround, versus tile. Keeping with the hint of modern found throughout this home is the Visual Comfort Ian Fowler Bistro Chandelier.

Coffee Table: Discontinued – Other Beautiful Coffee Tables: here, here, here, here, here, here, here & here.

Couch- Discontinued – similar here.

Chairs- Orient Express.

Rug: Jaipur Living – similar here, here, here & here .

Beautiful Rugs & Pillows:

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Powder Room

This picture really and truly speaks for itself. This is the sole bathroom on the main floor and functions as the go to bath for visitors. Imagine your guests reaction when they walk into this? Many synonyms for “jaw-dropped” come to mind, no doubt.

What we have here is a floating cast concrete vanity that is mounted to the wall. It is a custom made piece but shockingly costs no more than an average Restoration Hardware vanity. With no base, your piping is exposed. Luckily they make champagne bronze pipes! The brass look against the black wall tile is simply unbeatable.

Paint- Benjamin Moore Moonshine.

Mirror- West Elm Antique Tiled Wall Mirror.

Faucet- Delta Dryden Widespread in Brillance Champagne Bronze.

Lights- Elk Bremington in Oil Rubbed Bronze/Aged Gold.

Tile- Soho Studio Hexagono Cuna Grafito Matte – similar here.

Stairway

When walking into this home, the stairway is one of the first things you see. That said, we wanted to ensure it made a great impression. This was our first time doing tile risers as well as our first time using metal railings. Well, it certainly won’t be our last. We love the look and think you will too!

Tile- Jeffrey Court Acquerello Palermo Field Tile – Others: here, here, here & here.

3rd Floor Bonus Room

It is a great added benefit to have this finished space on the 3rd level that would have otherwise been unfinished attic space collecting dust. It could be used for a variety of uses like a media room, billiard space, exercise room, etc. We even incorporated a built-in desk perfect for kids homework or a crafting table.

Paint- Benjamin Moore Dove Wing.

Stair Fixture- Kichler Rocklyn

Pike Properties Built-in Bunks

Are the kids having a sleepover? Well, we’ve got you covered. These built-in bunks are not only functional but also stylish. Carrying in a nautical theme makes them feel like ship bunks.

Fun fact: Inside that small door to the right is a kids play nook with lowered ceilings!

Lights- Hinkley Mercer in Heritage Brass.

Guest Bathroom

This bathroom is great for kids. It is connected to a secondary bedroom as well as the hallway to service a bedroom across the hall. Plenty of countertop space and drawer storage abounds. Carrying the hardwoods into the bathroom is a great look, especially given the white furniture vanity.

Paint- Benjamin Moore Moonshine.

Vanity- London 72″ Vanity from Houzz – also here.

Faucets- Delta Ashlyn 8″ Widespread in Chrome.

Lights- Kichler Braelyn in Chrome.

Neutral Bathroom

An en-suite bath, this is the private bathroom to one of the secondary bedrooms. One of our favorite elements is the basket weave tile in black and white. It has a 3D look to it in person, and takes you back to earlier, simpler times.

Paint- Benjamin Moore Moonshine.

Floor tile- MosaicArt Epic Basketweave Matte from Florida Tile – similar here.

Shower wall tile- Dorian Streamline 3×6 Arctic White from Florida Tile – here.

Vanity- Scott Living Canterbury 36″ from Lowes – Others: here, here, here, here, here & here.

Mirrors: 45.5-in L x 33.5-in W White Beveled Wall Mirror.

Lighting- Kichler Braelyn in Chrome.

Master Bedroom

A relaxing oasis was created with the use of neutrals and earth tones. This room features abundant sunlight throughout most of the day, and is just the perfect spot for an afternoon recharge. The diagonal shiplap accentuates the recessed bed wall. If the shiplap isn’t enough, we also put V-groove on the tray ceiling inset!

Paint- Benjamin Moore Halo.

Wicker Pendants- Mistana Durrant 1-Light Wicker Outdoor Pendant – Also available here.

Ceiling Chandelier- Crate and Barrel Finley.

Bedside Tables- Joss & Main – Others: here, here, here, here, here & here.

Recommended Bedding: here & here.

Headboard: here.

Chair- Uttermost – similar here – Others: here, here, here & here.

Rug: Jaipur Living.

Master Bathroom

This is the home of absolutely gorgeous bathroom vanities it so seems! What a great way to start your day each morning. Get out of bed and splash some water in your face in front of this beautiful accent wall.

With this bathroom overall, we went with a more so coastal theme. The blues and whites abound. It is truly causal elegance at its finest.

With such pretty tile, we wanted to hide the least of it possible with mirrors. That led us to these beautiful and unique round mirror that hang with leather straps. It’s also a bit nautical which was fitting.

Vanity- London 72″ in Grey from Houzz – Others: here, here, here, here, here, here, here & here.

Faucets- Delta Trinsic 8″ Widespread in Matte Black.

Mirrors- West Elm Modern Hanging Mirror.

Tile- MSI Surfaces Tamensa Porcelain.

Sconces- Hinkley Morgan.

Tub Nook

Feel like a king or queen in this rectangular freestanding tub raised on an elevated platform. Doing a small raised platform where the tub sits helps to define the space. The tub goes from feeling inside the bathroom, to having its own defined space that feels separated. Stylish cedar floating shelves are perfect for candles and towels. Romantic evening, anyone?

Paint- Benjamin Moore Halo.

Tub- Mirabelle Hibiscus 66″.

Faucet- Delta Trinsic in Brillance Champagne Bronze.

Chandelier- Hinkley Astrid in Metallic Matte Bronze.

Shower

Carrying the coastal theme onward, we went with this bold and beautiful baby blue tile for the master shower. Adding the brass banding and brass hardware really compliments the look. To not overwhelm the eyes, we went with white/grey tile on the floor. This shower has the rain head as well as a wall mounted head that is not seen in this photo.

Don’t miss the peek of the owner’s bedroom.

Tile- Soho Studio Rumba Ash Blue – Also here – Other Tiles: here, here, here, here, here & here.

Shower Floor Tile: here – similar.

Mudroom

Heading inside from the detached carriage house via the side porch entrance you are welcomed by this space. Have muddy shoes? Is it pouring rain? Whatever the case, these floors are meant for handling anything. Durable brick tile from Jeffrey Court ensures that you don’t ruin your floors and allows for easy cleanup of messes. On top of that, it is simply stylish, especially when laid in this herringbone pattern. In all honesty, having a brick floor in a mudroom just feels right!

Hooks and cubbies and a built-in bench add all the functionality you expect from a drop zone. We didn’t have to add the shiplap backing but we figured, why not!?

Brick Flooring: Jeffrey Court – similar here & here.

Computer Cove

Everyone needs a spot where the junk and extra stuff can be hidden away. Everyone needs a room where they can retreat to in order to get things done. This computer cove, or small home office space is just what the doctor ordered. Located off the back hallway through a pocket door, is this handy room. Plenty of built-in cabinet space for extra storage and granite countertop space for accomplishing work.

Cabinet Color- Benjamin Moore Gray Owl.

Light- Feiss Waveform Mini Pendant x3 with ceiling mount.

Built-In Dog Station

One of our favorite sizzle features to add into our homes is what you see here! It is relatively cheap ($500-$750) and is such a cool WOW factor and talking point. It is a ledge that is framed and trimmed out and topped in granite with stainless steel bowls set in. Tile lines the walls to prevent water as your dog splashes with their tongue from messing up your wall. A pot filler makes it super simple to refill. How cool is that!?

Pot Filler- Danze Opulence.

Rear Porch

A Modern Farmhouse wouldn’t be complete without an expansive covered rear porch. With access from the keeping room and dining/living space it is easy to take a step out and enjoy the amazing North Carolina weather. With room enough for dining and sitting, there is no limits with what you can do with this space. It overlooks the flat rear yard which is very large for an in-town location!

Ceiling Stain- Benjamin Moore Hidden Valley Semi-Transparent.

Decking Stain- Benjamin Moore Hidden Valley Solid.

Fan- Kichler Hatteras Bay Oversized in Distressed Black.

Outdoor Dining Furniture: here & here.

Outdoor Lighting

Front Door Light- Kichler Mount Vernon Hanging Lantern.

Dream Home

“When the sun sets over this Modern Farmhouse, a genuine feeling of calmness and tranquility sets in. The lights inside come on, dinner is prepared, and living begins.”

That is a direct quote from our Instagram post of this photo, and we feel it really evokes the emotion this homes brings into peoples lives, both those inside and those passing by.

Many thanks to the builder for sharing the details above!

Builder: Pike Properties (Instagram)

Architecture: Frusterio Design, Inc.

Home Staging: Jenna Jackovich, Style Fix Staging.

Photography: Joe Purvis Photography.

Best Sales of the Month:

Thank you for shopping through Home Bunch. I would be happy to assist you if you have any questions or are looking for something in particular. Feel free to contact me and always make sure to check dimensions before ordering. Happy shopping!

Serena & Lily: 25% Off Outdoor Furniture!

Wayfair: Up to 70% OFF – Home Remodel Sale!!!

Joss & Main: Warehouse Clearout – Up to 70% off!

Pottery Barn: Free Shipping – Use code: FREESHIP

One Kings Lane: High Quality Design Decor for Less.

West Elm: Best time to shop. Up to 40% off Everything!!!

Anthropologie: See the super-popular Joanna Gaines Exclusive line!

Urban Outfitters: Hip & Affordable Home Decor.

Horchow: High Quality Furniture and Decor. Up to 30% off the entire site!

Nordstrom: Up to 40% OFF. New Easter Decor!

Arhaus: Dining Sale. Up to f0% OFF!

Posts of the Week:

Small Lot Modern Farmhouse.

Coastal Farmhouse Home Decor.

Painted Brick Cottage.

2019 New Year Home Tour.

2019 Home Renovation Ideas.

Modern Farmhouse with Front Porch.

Modern Coastal Shingle Home.

Beautiful Homes of Instagram: Fixer Upper.

Classic Colonial Home Design.

New England Home.

Kitchen Renovation with Before & After Pictures.

Full-scale Home Remodel Inspiration.

Beautiful Homes of Instagram: How to Build your own Home.

Connecticut Beach House.Grey Kitchen Paint Colors.

Follow me on Instagram: @HomeBunch

You can follow my pins here: Pinterest/HomeBunch

See more Inspiring Interior Design Ideas in my Archives.

“Dear God,

If I am wrong, right me. If I am lost, guide me. If I start to give-up, keep me going.

Lead me in Light and Love”.

Have a wonderful day, my friends and we’ll talk again tomorrow.”

with Love,

Luciane from HomeBunch.com

Come Follow me on

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Contact Luciane

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dawnjeman · 5 years

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Dark Exterior Farmhouse

Welcome to the tour of this striking Modern Farmhouse build in Charlotte, North Carolina!”

Interior Design Ideas: Dark Exterior Farmhouse

CertainTeed Weathered Wood architectural shingles cover the roof, while a metal accent tops the window awning, a classic farmhouse feature.

Beautiful Porch Furniture Sets: here, here, here, here & here.

Shingles

Front Door

Rain Chains

Rain Chains are from Houzz.

Garage

From this angle you can see the detached carriage house as well as side entrance overhang with custom crafted bracket supports.

Living Room

Tile: Soho Studio MJ Sabino Asian Statuary Polished & Honed – Others: here, here, here, here, here & here.

Paint Color in all the main living areas of this home is Benjamin Moore Dove Wing with trim being Benjamin Moore White Dove.

Couches- Discontinued – Others: here, here, here, here, here, here & here.

Beautiful Brass Table Lamps: here, here, here & here.

Coffee Table- Arteriors Home.

Rug: Jaipur Living – Others: here, here, here & here.

Kitchen

Counterstools- RH – Others: here, here, here, here & here.

Refrigerator

Appliances: Freezer, Refrigerator, Trim.

Sconces Flanking Hood: Savoy House.

Range Wall

Accent Tile- Soho Studio Empress Helena – Others: here, here, here & here.

Main Backsplash Tile- Jeffrey Court Wall Street White 3×9 – similar here.

Pot Filler- Delta Contemporary in Matte Black.

Range- Jenn-Air 48″ Pro-Style.

Faucet

Faucet is Brizo Litze in Matte Black with Brilliance Luxe Gold.

Lighting

Pendants are Hudson Valley Blake in Aged Brass. Other Beautiful Lighting: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here & here.

Kitchen Island

Hardware: Cabinet Hardware is all from the Emtek Alexander Collection in various sizes.

Kitchen Sink: Blanco Profina.

Dishwasher: Jenn-Air.

Dining Room

Chandelier

Chandelier- Visual Comfort EF Chapman Oslo – Others: here, here, here, here & here.

Dining Table- Jeffan – Others: here, here, here, here & here.

Dining Chairs- Joss & Main.

Rug: Jaipur Living.

Flooring

Chandelier: Visual Comfort.

Keeping Room

Coffee Table: Discontinued – Other Beautiful Coffee Tables: here, here, here, here, here, here, here & here.

Couch- Discontinued – similar here.

Chairs- Orient Express.

Rug: Jaipur Living – similar here, here, here & here .

Beautiful Rugs & Pillows:

(Scroll to see more)

JavaScript is currently disabled in this browser. Reactivate it to view this content.

Powder Room

Paint- Benjamin Moore Moonshine.

Mirror- West Elm Antique Tiled Wall Mirror.

Faucet- Delta Dryden Widespread in Brillance Champagne Bronze.

Lights- Elk Bremington in Oil Rubbed Bronze/Aged Gold.

Tile- Soho Studio Hexagono Cuna Grafito Matte – similar here.

Stairway

Tile- Jeffrey Court Acquerello Palermo Field Tile – Others: here, here, here & here.

3rd Floor Bonus Room

Paint- Benjamin Moore Dove Wing.

Stair Fixture- Kichler Rocklyn

Pike Properties Built-in Bunks

Are the kids having a sleepover? Well, we’ve got you covered. These built-in bunks are not only functional but also stylish. Carrying in a nautical theme makes them feel like ship bunks.

Fun fact: Inside that small door to the right is a kids play nook with lowered ceilings!

Lights- Hinkley Mercer in Heritage Brass.

Guest Bathroom

Paint- Benjamin Moore Moonshine.

Vanity- London 72″ Vanity from Houzz – also here.

Faucets- Delta Ashlyn 8″ Widespread in Chrome.

Lights- Kichler Braelyn in Chrome.

Neutral Bathroom

Paint- Benjamin Moore Moonshine.

Floor tile- MosaicArt Epic Basketweave Matte from Florida Tile – similar here.

Shower wall tile- Dorian Streamline 3×6 Arctic White from Florida Tile – here.

Vanity- Scott Living Canterbury 36″ from Lowes – Others: here, here, here, here, here & here.

Mirrors: 45.5-in L x 33.5-in W White Beveled Wall Mirror.

Lighting- Kichler Braelyn in Chrome.

Master Bedroom

Paint- Benjamin Moore Halo.

Wicker Pendants- Mistana Durrant 1-Light Wicker Outdoor Pendant – Also available here.

Ceiling Chandelier- Crate and Barrel Finley.

Bedside Tables- Joss & Main – Others: here, here, here, here, here & here.

Recommended Bedding: here & here.

Headboard: here.

Chair- Uttermost – similar here – Others: here, here, here & here.

Rug: Jaipur Living.

Master Bathroom

With this bathroom overall, we went with a more so coastal theme. The blues and whites abound. It is truly causal elegance at its finest.

Vanity- London 72″ in Grey from Houzz – Others: here, here, here, here, here, here, here & here.

Faucets- Delta Trinsic 8″ Widespread in Matte Black.

Mirrors- West Elm Modern Hanging Mirror.

Tile- MSI Surfaces Tamensa Porcelain.

Sconces- Hinkley Morgan.

Tub Nook

Paint- Benjamin Moore Halo.

Tub- Mirabelle Hibiscus 66″.

Faucet- Delta Trinsic in Brillance Champagne Bronze.

Chandelier- Hinkley Astrid in Metallic Matte Bronze.

Shower

Don’t miss the peek of the owner’s bedroom.

Tile- Soho Studio Rumba Ash Blue – Also here – Other Tiles: here, here, here, here, here & here.

Shower Floor Tile: here – similar.

Mudroom

Hooks and cubbies and a built-in bench add all the functionality you expect from a drop zone. We didn’t have to add the shiplap backing but we figured, why not!?

Brick Flooring: Jeffrey Court – similar here & here.

Computer Cove

Cabinet Color- Benjamin Moore Gray Owl.

Light- Feiss Waveform Mini Pendant x3 with ceiling mount.

Built-In Dog Station

Pot Filler- Danze Opulence.

Rear Porch

Ceiling Stain- Benjamin Moore Hidden Valley Semi-Transparent.

Decking Stain- Benjamin Moore Hidden Valley Solid.

Fan- Kichler Hatteras Bay Oversized in Distressed Black.

Outdoor Dining Furniture: here & here.

Outdoor Lighting

Front Door Light- Kichler Mount Vernon Hanging Lantern.

Dream Home

“When the sun sets over this Modern Farmhouse, a genuine feeling of calmness and tranquility sets in. The lights inside come on, dinner is prepared, and living begins.”

That is a direct quote from our Instagram post of this photo, and we feel it really evokes the emotion this homes brings into peoples lives, both those inside and those passing by.

Many thanks to the builder for sharing the details above!

Builder: Pike Properties (Instagram)

Architecture: Frusterio Design, Inc.

Home Staging: Jenna Jackovich, Style Fix Staging.

Photography: Joe Purvis Photography.

Best Sales of the Month:

Serena & Lily: 25% Off Outdoor Furniture!

Wayfair: Up to 70% OFF – Home Remodel Sale!!!

Joss & Main: Warehouse Clearout – Up to 70% off!

Pottery Barn: Free Shipping – Use code: FREESHIP

One Kings Lane: High Quality Design Decor for Less.

West Elm: Best time to shop. Up to 40% off Everything!!!

Anthropologie: See the super-popular Joanna Gaines Exclusive line!

Urban Outfitters: Hip & Affordable Home Decor.

Horchow: High Quality Furniture and Decor. Up to 30% off the entire site!

Nordstrom: Up to 40% OFF. New Easter Decor!

Arhaus: Dining Sale. Up to f0% OFF!

Posts of the Week:

Small Lot Modern Farmhouse.

Coastal Farmhouse Home Decor.

Painted Brick Cottage.

2019 New Year Home Tour.

2019 Home Renovation Ideas.

Modern Farmhouse with Front Porch.

Modern Coastal Shingle Home.

Beautiful Homes of Instagram: Fixer Upper.

Classic Colonial Home Design.

New England Home.

Kitchen Renovation with Before & After Pictures.

Full-scale Home Remodel Inspiration.

Beautiful Homes of Instagram: How to Build your own Home.

Connecticut Beach House.Grey Kitchen Paint Colors.

Follow me on Instagram: @HomeBunch

You can follow my pins here: Pinterest/HomeBunch

See more Inspiring Interior Design Ideas in my Archives.

“Dear God,

If I am wrong, right me. If I am lost, guide me. If I start to give-up, keep me going.

Lead me in Light and Love”.

Have a wonderful day, my friends and we’ll talk again tomorrow.”

with Love,

Luciane from HomeBunch.com

Come Follow me on

Get Home Bunch Posts Via Email

Contact Luciane

from Home http://www.homebunch.com/dark-exterior-farmhouse/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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