Seriously??

An online review floating out there on the internet has come to my attention.  This review was written by a former customer who apparently got the TOTAL WRONG IDEA from something I said to her in the shop.  So, without further ado, I am going to address a few things just to keep the record straight.  I'm writing it here because a) the review space doesn't have a place to enter comments about the reviews and b) my husband is afraid I'll sound crazy.  lol.

1.  Sunshine's Hip Baby has NEVER bought any merchandise at wholesale from a previous season.  Truth is, I don't know where to find stuff like that, or maybe I'd be more profitable.  We have made a few (like 2 or 3, really a few) reorders of things we really like at a discount toward the end of the season.  For example, reorder some short sleeve shirts in May or June because the manufacturer has extra and offers a discount.  Since these items come in late in the season, we usually (though not always) put them directly out on sale, as they would have been on sale if we got them on time and we got them at a discount.  We can have a great price for our customers and still make our regular markup.

2.  The Children's design market is often just behind the adult market.  For example, designs that are fresh & new in adults fashion often make their way into children's designs, scaled down for kids.  This is not a slam against kids designers, nor is in any way meant to say the kids' fashion is out of touch.  What it means is that children's designers borrow from adult fashions.  Isn't that cute??

3.  I talk too much.  Deal with it.  I'm trying.  And I do think I'm smarter than some people.  Haha.  Everyone is smarter than someone.  Everybody should be constantly trying to get better and smarter and learn more.  I didn't think I was smarter than her-necessarily.

4.  A strategy I have often recommended for parents (or anyone else) who wants designer clothes but cannot or will not pay what they really cost is:  Buy clearance at the end of the season and put it away for next year.  If you can accurately guess your kid's size, this is a perfectly sensible thing to do and a strategy I employed when I wanted nice things for my kids and couldn't afford them.

5. Lots of people ask us where we get our beautiful, unique things from.  My standard answer is:  Some come from designer's corporate reps who bring us the line to show it to us and we choose (like in the case of Paul Frank); Some come from independent sales reps who have showrooms in the markets (we buy most things here); some brands we stumbled into on the internet (many great organic brands have been found this way); and occasionally I see a child who really looks great, stop the parents and ask them what they're wearing so I can go hunt them down (the designers, not the kid! also usually on the inernet) and get that stuff for us/you!

It is my belief that my statements 4 and 5 were confused in meaning with issue 1.  So now this customer thinks I am ripping people off by buying previous seasons' merchandise on the internet and reselling it at full price.  WTF?

Supposedly I think Sacramentans won't notice because we're a year behind fashionwise.  Okay:  news flash, Sacramento is not New York.  Okay?  People here get comfortable wearing what they've got and don't want to take crazy fashion risks like people in Tokyo and San Francisco.  It's true.  Deal.  There are fashionable people here, and there are people who want to look unique (and want that for their kids too), thank goodness, because how boring it would be if everyone wanted to look the same.  (And we wouldn't be in business.)  BUT, anyone who shops boutiques and/or higher-end department stores (and no, I don't mean Macy's) will know what's out there.  You can use your glorious internet to price check.

Sunshine's Hip Baby always has current season's designs at current season's prices.  The end.  And we have sales and clearance so you can get a deal and that one last dress in size 4T can get sold.  Designers at the middle and higher end of the scale have pricing recommendations that are not negotiable.  In any case, you couldn't make any $ selling at any higher or lower price, because if too high no one will pay it and too low you won't have any profit.

Small shops are a dying breed.  We don't have the huge markup that large stores and big boxes do.  Macy's or Children's Place can sell something for 70% off and still make a profit.  Thanks to sweatshops, middlemen make money even if the designer and the retailer both go out of business.  Small shops are already losing money at 40 or 50% off--that means that we are paying you to take these items away.  We do it for the love of uniqueness.  We do it because we want people to have an alternative.  A place that's different and hopefully more friendly.  And a place where you can find things that are truly better and made in a truly better way.  But that costs money, so you'll find that things with a lot of detail work and higher-quality fabrics, and workers that are paid a minimum wage aren't going to be cheap.  That's okay.

More isn't better.  Better is better.