News - Happy Birthday to Us!

A year ago we finally got all our baby Starlettos delivered from the factory in Brisbane.  All those little pouches and boxes arrived too, courtesy of Emily (our one-in-a-million graphic designer).  With joy in our hearts we sat down to start packing them.  Mmm...joy is probably too strong a word to describe packing...but you get the picture. 

Lazily we gave the ok to our web developer to switch on (technical term) the website and thought little more about it.  This was the culmination of about 18 months designing, discussing, prototyping, failing repeatedly, demonstrating, coming up with a name, then coming up with a good name, spending money, spending more money and spending...a lot of time on the phone. 

Like any birth, even after all the waiting and impatience, the initial experience was basically one of shock.  "So is this real now?"  Two hours later there was even more shock when some intrepid internet explorer (let's call her Katey) found our site and bought the first pair of Starlettos!  From there, shock took a step back and panic glided smoothly in to take its place. 

As with any small business, panic is still a regular visitor.  We also get to see plenty of excitement, enthusiasm, fun and sometimes even intrigue!  We have loads of people to thank for getting us through the first year...Emily, of course; Sophie - our PR Chick; Scot - our visionary designer; Laura and Natalee on sales and marketing; Andre for the super-deluxe website and loads of others who do all the stuff behind the scenes.  Thanks to all our stockists for having faith in us and thanks to all our many customers for supporting us. 

Reflecting back on this year, it's really not every day that you take a crazy idea from a chat with your cousin (Lisa) about wedding shoes through to something you can buy in a shop  - and it's not for everyone!  It's not like I decided to do it straight-away, it just sort of...kept coming back into my head until I ran out of people to talk about it.  Not satisfied, I started paying people to listen and they became my advisors.  

The highlight?  Sunrise was pretty good - although it may have been all a bit early - before we were in any shops!  Our biggest day on the website (still) was the day Jackie O talked to Melissa Hoyer about them.  Go Jackie!  I think the help and support we got from so many established businesses was the best (special mention to Lara Solomon at Mocks and to Ere Perez and Bridget Tomkins).  I also got a lovely handwritten note from Emma Freedman thanking me for her pair (she's all class!).

For those of you, reading this who have great ideas, a bit of spare time and plenty of determination, I would really recommend it.  If you can get a bit obsessive, it won't do any harm of course!  Just identify what needs to be done, and what you can't do yourself, then find people who are good at those things and surround yourself with them. That leaves you free to muddle along with everything else!  After about a year - or maybe less - you will most likely have a business!

Next year we are hoping for great things from Starlettos - well, it's natural for any parent to have ambitions for your baby.  We have a few irons in the fire and we've met some more good people to do a few more things we can't do ourselves.   

Keep an eye out for us, keep telling your friends (especially if you're friends with Kylie and Sarah-Jessica Parker) and keep telling us what you think.

Thanks again and Happy Birthday to us!

Ilde and the Starlettos team