Happy Birthday Anomie!
anomie turns 1 today!
use code: HAPPYBIRTHDAY for 20% off today and tomorrow at anomie!
A draft I wrote 1/7/13 in regards to anomie and my goals for the shop, fun for me to read 2 years later:
January 7, 2013
The Five Year Plan
Someday, hopefully, I will open a boutique (though I hate that term -- how about just "shop"?) in San Francisco. It's been a secret dream of mine and life is too short not to follow your dreams. Do what you love, not what you think you love or what you think you should do or what your family wants you to do (though I never did listen to the latter). If nothing else has come out of my 8 months of free time post-grad, that is it. Oh, just listen to this. I have one minor brush with cancer and I'm sitting here waxing poetic about what I truly want out of life -- what a cliché!
Re: shop name. God, endless brainstorming. Do you know how hard it is to find a simple, one word shop name that sounds chic, yet unpretentious at the same time?! For a while I was thinking "hanger" with the shopfront logo being a giant iron hanger, but in this day and age you want something that's yours. Something you can actually get a web address for! After stupidly saying stuff like, "I just want a word that means more than just a word, like a phrase or something," one hundred times over, Ryan inspired me to look at the name of different theories (he's really big on getting credit for that). I immediately thought back to my classes at SFSU, Villanova, and Penn and decided to call it anomie (pronounced: anno-me), lest all those years of studying criminology and tuition checks go to waste. It's a sociological term developed by Durkheim, meaning a state or normlessness or chaos.
I have somewhat of a vibe in mind. In my head it's sort of helmut lang minimalism meets industrial edge meets hip, LA independent jewelry designer. In all, I plan to sell clothes, jewelry, bags, beauty products, stationary, papergoods, and homewares... and anything else I'd like. I've got a growing list of amazing independent jewelry designers to start with and I'm really excited about the whole process.
Online first. Until that brick and mortar dream comes true, I'm planning to start with an online shop (shopanomie.com
-- coming soon) to see if this path is a viable option for me. As I
said, I've got a long list of jewelry pieces I want to sell, many
of the pieces I own and love already. For the first while, I will stick
to jewelry, accessories, and other smaller items. Clothes will come in
time. I'd been waiting until the new calendar year started to file with
the state to
establish my LLC, get a tax ID, resellers license, open a company bank
account, and the rest of the necessary legal and logistical start
your own business type stuff. My dad started his own businesses and has
been
self-employed since before I was born, so naturally I'm picking his
brain during this process to ensure I don't "fuck up," to put it gently.
I want to be as eco-friendly as possible in the process, so I've already
found all the bulk mailing, packaging, and gift wrap supplies I'll need
made exclusively out of recycled paper. In my head, I envision every
jewelry item mailed in a brown box with a stamp of the store's logo and
some thin brown string wrapped around it and everything else wrapped in a
tissue paper with string and a tied on card with the logo stamped on. I
always love when I order things from online retailers and they come
thoughtfully wrapped and I definitely want people to feel that when they
order from anomie. Handwritten thanks yous with every order. An obvious care taken with each package. That whole deal.
I'm moving back to California in March and will be going full force with
it then (and possibly get work in boutiques for experience). Until that
time, I will be consumed by meticulous planning and painful biting of
my tongue. The online shop is pretty much finished and I just
desperately want to have some inventory to post and to set it live. For
an incredibly impatient person, this aspect has been the most
challenging. Impulse control is not my forte.
I'm excited for further researching designers, visiting trade shows, and
finding amazing pieces to offer. Though I don't have professional
experience in buying or merchandising, I know I can be successful at
this. This is what I love. And it's perfect for me. I wanted a mix of
creative and more business-like work. I am a creative person (though,
I'm starting to question that given the best adjective I came up with in
the last sentence was "business-like" to describe more logistical
work), but I don't want to solely be focused on creative things. I'm a
business minded and right-brained person, but I don't want that to be
the only thing I do. I really love paperwork (inventory, reports,
etc...), marketing, and other aspects unrelated to the actual fashion,
so I know I can handle the behind the scenes of running a shop. I can do
taxes and pick out interesting necklaces. 21st century HBIC. I think I
will find being a shop owner/girl to be a very personally fulfilling
career (can I please put HBIC as my title on my business cards?!); and
naturally, I'd love to have a place to get dressed up to go to everyday
(with no dress code!). Dexter would also love to be shop dog. We've just
got to work on that whole barking at strangers thing first though.
Big ideas. Some day, down the road, I'd even love to have my own
clothing and jewelry line of the same name as the shop and work on
collaborations with various artists to fill the store. You know what I'd
some day die over: Clare Vivier x
anomie. Just die. Collabs would be amazing to explore; I have a lot of
design ideas, but sadly lack the skills and knowledge to execute. Very
frustrating. Regardless, I plan on taking classes and doing a lot of
self-teaching to get to that point with metalwork, paper/letterpress,
Photoshop/Illustrator, jewelry making, sewing, and other creative
ventures.
Stranger things have happened.
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