A little more info about the show. Hope to see you there!

Hey people!
It's really important that we help Aggies for Africa get as many shoes donated as possible! They have a goal to reach 3000 pairs this year! We need a lot of help talking it up and getting as many people involved as we can so please tell your friends and donate your shoes!
And why not have a good time while you help out. Come to the benefit concert on THURSDAY!! It's the first Aggies for Africa fundraiser this year for Mali Rising. Proceeds from the show will go to help AfA raise $50,000 for a school in Mali.
Just a reminder about it, it's at the Lundstrom Center about (1250 East 1000 North by Snow Hall) music starts at 7pm, $5 or $4 with a pair of shoes to donate. Bring ALL YOUR FRIENDS the music will be great and it'll be a good time.

Rocking for a cause this thursday!

Sentimental and Aggies for Africa have teamed up to put on a benefit concert. This Thursday night at 6:30 p.m. at the Lundstrom Student Center. This is going to be a great concert, and for a good cause. All the money will go to Aggies for Africa to help support them in their cause of bringing a better awareness to what has and is going on in Africa. We will also be doing a shoe drive to help out as well. The cost at the door is $5, or $4 if you bring a pair of shoes to donate. The bands playing consist of two locals; The Shuttles, and the Love Puppets as well as two touring artist; The Boy and His Machine from New York, and Same as Sunday, from Ohio. All four groups put on a great show. Please come and show your support and learn more about how you can help. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and music starts at 7 p.m.
Thanks.

How can Sentimental become a career and not just a hobby.

For me to make this business that I started a few years back into an actual career I have a to set and accomplish a some goals. So today I'm going to cover a few goals I have set, and how I will accomplish them. I will cover some of these goals in a series of post over the next couple of weeks.

First Goal - Graduate College.
I've been in school for entirely too long. I started late and have gone through it at a snails pace. Sometimes I even ask myself, "Why am I there? Especially when I plan on running my own business. Isn't school for people who want to work for someone else?" The answer to these questions is simple, and the same everytime I ask it. School is beneficial for a number of reasons.
The first that I like to bring up is that it is there as a backup plan. If my business were to fail and I needed a job, I would have a degree to fall back on. I actually know people who have tried starting up businesses and later needed to get a job bacause the business failed. Hopefully that is not the case with Sentimental.
Secondly, I am confident that the knowledge I gain from going to school will increase my ability to run a succesful business. No matter how much I would like to say that I could do it without school - and who knows, maybe I could, I would rather take my chances with a college degree to back me up. Many succesful business owners never graduated, but could they have done it better if they had.
So as I mentioned before, I have been in school for a long time. My goal is to get out of school - and not as a drop out. So to accomplish this goal, I plan on taking classes full time. If I do this I should hopefully graduate within two years.

Progress on the exposure unit.

After a little more time working on the exposure unit, we have accomplished a somewhat usable device. Well, the lights turn on now anyway. After getting the frame together with a base, making an actual box. We painted the inside silver to help reflect some light. Next was drilling holes and fitting in a base structure for the actual light fittings. Then we got the toggle switches in and wired to the lights, it was time for testing. The first test was a success. All the lights worked great. So now all that needs to be done is to have some glass cut out and placed on the top, and a lid.

Peach Days Report

Well, we just finished up Peach Days last night and boy am I glad to have it over with. Even though we were able to sell a decent amount of merchandise the weekend had its fair share of problems. Friday started off slow and hot. The festival starts at ten in the morning and last until ten at night. So the twelve hour day was mostly sitting around until six. I actually stood most of the time because I forgot to bring my chair (second mistake). So what was the first you say - I forgot to bring money for change. Wow! Anyway, six o'clock comes around and so do the people. And not too far behind come the sales. End day one with packing up the tent and making sure that the tie downs are secure to the bricks that are weighing it down. Because the tent was on concrete and not grass I was not able to use spikes.
Day two started off with a bang. I show up to my tent and see that the walls are all down. Not being sure as to what is actually going on, I walk up to my tent and all these vendors from other booths start walking up to me saying, "Your booth blew over!" I wasn't too worried about this because it has happend before. Well this time it didn't turn out well at all. The frame had bent, and I was not happy.



Hopefully the damages will be covered under warranty. Back to the better parts of the weekend. I had the opportunity to meet some really cool people from out of the valley. Had a great response from customers and I'm looking forward to our next opportunity to get our and meet people and sell more clothes; Fall Fashion Stroll here we come.

Getting things moving again!

Hey everybody, it's been a long time since Sentimental has done anything new online. After almost a year in idleness we are finally moving things again. So we figured what better way to get back into things than with a new shirt and a killer sale!
We're doing a presale for one of our newest shirts - "The Cheesiest."



And to add to the excitment we are having a 09/09/09 Sale as well.Select Tees are on sale for $9.99 One day only. Starts at midnight.

Kicking things up a notch.

So I don't know how many of you know that we do custom screen printing as well as selling our own line of shirts. Well if you didn't, you do now. Over the past few years we have been building our own little print shop in our office. We have been printing shirts for our line and we manage to do a few custom orders from time to time. Well our setup has been somewhat lacking in some areas; especially when it comes to exposing screens. For some time I have been wanting to update our exposure unit, but it is a pretty expensive thing to do. I found this unit online and would love to have it. The only problem is the price tag of $1500.

So I've decided to make my own exposure unit for a fraction of the price. I was able to get started over the weekend. I will be posting pictures as progress is made. I'm pretty excited to get this done and working.

Also, just a quick note. We'll be having a sale on Wednesday; select shirts for only $9.99, as well as a new shirt available for pre-sale!

What do professional Blogs do for business?

As I have previously mentioned I am going to try and write on the blog more regularly. Coincidentally I'm currently taking a business writing class in school and one of our assignments is to keep a professional blog. To get an A on the assignment I must post at least two times a week. My first assignment is to write about what a professional blog can do for businesses.

If a blog is written well it can be a great way for a business to keep their readers up to date with what is happening with the business, if written on consistently with interesting articles, a blog gives readers a reason to return. Blogs also give a more direct connection between a business and its clients. Clients are able to connect with the business and vice verse. This can be a benefit to both the business and the client. For a business to be successful they must provide a product or service that their target market is interested in. The interaction that can be provided by a decent blog can allow customers to give feedback on products, as well as ideas for new products. This has been, and will be one of the main focuses of Sentimental. We hope to build a genuine relationship with our customers and welcome criticism. Hopefully over the course of the next few months we'll be able to build a blog filled with interesting content that will give our customers a reason to comeback and see what else is going on.