Speech Given to the Graduating Class of
Women's Economic Venture Group
By Susanne Chess, Proprieter, Fine Fabrics
September 17, 2005

To answer to your first question, yes, I made my outfit. It’s a Karl Langerfeld design made from fabric I purchased in Paris. Karl Langerfeld himself directed me to the place from which I purchased the fabric, so I celebrated the memory by making a suit from one of his patterns. The fabric is what is called a super 100. It’s a tropical weight wool typically used for suit making. We have over 100 colors and patterns of similar wools available through Fine Fabrics and on our website finefabrics.com. If you are not ready to challenge yourself by making a suit, we can refer you to many dressmakers and tailors who can do the job for you, or if you want to learn, we'll give you a hand making it yourself.

And that is Business Rule Number 1: You’re always marketing, which means you are always on.

Marketing can be done in obtrusive ways, like what I just did or in the most obvious way, which is, of course, advertising. Consistent advertising can be very effective, but it is also very expensive to do right, and like all small businesses our cash management plan does not always allow for thousands of dollars going out for advertising.

With Force Fin, do all of you know Force Fin? For those of you who don't, we make the finest fins in the world. They're designed by my creative husband, are patented, in fact, we hold over 35 patents, distributed in maybe 17 countries now, are part of the permanent collections of the New York Museum of Modern Art for changing the way in which we perceive moving through water, and Force Fin was my first business. We founded it when I was 26 years old. I had no prior business management experience. Force Fin still is my primary business.

Fine Fabrics is new. I opened it last year because I saw a need and opportunity in the community. So how do I go from a fin company to a fabric store? The businesses are really not that much different. Force Fin came into being because my husband, Bob Evans is first and foremost a diver. He was and is an underwater photographer who wanted a better fin with which to do his work. I made my first dress when I was 5 years old and have made just about everything special I have worn since. I was one of those who were most drastically impacted when Betty's shut her doors. I figured I was not the only one in town who was frustrated with having to drive to Los Angeles for quality buttons, so on one of my forays South for sewing supplies I decided to open shop. Both businesses are based upon our lifelong passions, but more importantly, both businesses are based upon our love of business. Both my husband and I are entrepreneurs by nature.

I do not spend my time in the shop sewing and we do not spend our days diving. Instead, I spend my days with a review of inventory and purchasing, chasing after orders, assisting customers, trouble shooting computer glitches, chasing after customer needs, chasing after sales, chasing after my husband, chasing after what my husband wants to me chase after, chasing after employees, chasing after attorneys, chasing after media deadlines, and chasing after finances. The business is our life, not our avocations that inspired the business. Loving the business process makes it worthwhile. Being associated with our passions just allows for a few fringe benefits like the diving trip to the waters near Cuba my husband is on testing new products this week.

Back to spending lots of money on traditional marketing... Trade shows are another popular, but expensive method of marketing. At Force Fin we do everything in house, that is all design and development of trade show booths and activities. That helps with the budget, but international trade shows, which are the only ones we find worthy of attendance can still cost upwards of $30,000 for a few days of display, and that's a steal for trade show display and attendance. Larger companies in our industry spend upwards of a quarter of a million dollar per show. These shows may have been effective for us when we were getting our name out there and building credibility among potent ional business associates in foreign countries, but there came a point of diminishing returns. That's when we decided to take a risk and not buy a booth at the main show. That was in 2000 and we have not displayed at a show since. To this day, when I speak to customers they still think we attend.

You will notice that I did not say that we would not attend, just that we would not buy a booth. Instead, we found creative ways to  "attend" without the expense of staffing a booth. A few examples of our  "attendance" that we are using this year is logo placement on key give away items at the show, bags and boxes given to attendees to collect and carry printed matter collected at the various booths. We're dropping our own brochures in each of these bags. That will cost us about $1,000.00 for 2 shows. We'll also make sure our listing is prominent in the trade directories. That will cost another $1,200. We’ll also do 2-postcard mailings to all members of our mail list somehow related to the show, but that we do regularly in any regard. Do all of you keep an active mail list? I can’t underestimate the importance of keeping in touch with your customers through mailings. We usually use postcards because the message is seen even as they are thrown away.

This year we got lucky and my husband Bob was honored with receipt of the most coveted industry award, so his and our company name will be plastered throughout the media at and after the trade show. We're press hounds and usually find ways each year to capture the interest of the media. The result is that we are not attending the show, but our guerilla marketing techniques give the impression of attendance without paying the price of a ticket -- and that is guerilla marketing by definition.

Another example of guerilla marketing is my wearing this ridiculous hat. You will remember me because I had the confidence to wear a hat, probably more than my words. No one wears hats like this in a business setting. By remembering me you will also think of Fine Fabrics and those of you who swim or dive will also remember Force Fin.

I started wearing hats at one of those international trade shows. In the sensory overload that overtakes every trade show attendee, my hats offer a point of orientation. You could find Force Fin by looking for  "the chick with the hat." We also had reserved the same booth across from the pool year-after-year, but that's a different story.... After a few years customers and would-be customers would stop me in the hotel lobby or come up to me at restaurants to talk about fins. They were told that Ms. Force Fin was the one who wore a hat. And when we walk the show as industry award winners this year, I will be wearing a hat.... Its a method of differentiating myself and by differentiating myself, I differentiate my businesses.

Differentiation is the key to marketing. You and your business must stand out and distinguish yourself from the rest of the crowd. You must be willing to be out-there. Otherwise, how will anyone know where to find you and even if they do, why would they think about you or your business over anyone else doing what you do or your business over any other place they might go or activity in which they might participate.

Being the only fashion fabric store in town gives Fine Fabrics an edge, but it does not guarantee success. We still must overcome the fact that it is much easier and maybe less expensive to buy a dress ready made, or that it might be more trendy today to knit or ride a bike. Every fashion outlet in town is my competition; every activity in which you might participate is competing for my clients' time. My goal in marketing Fine Fabrics is to offer an outlet for community creativity and fun. Its a place where everyone can become a fashion designer, and every woman and many men do at some time in their lives desire to be a fashion designer. It is my goal at Fine Fabrics to inspire the fulfillment of that desire in every customer that walks through our door. With Fine Fabrics, I am a retailer selling a product, but I am also offering a service that transcends simple customer service. Now I won't belittle simple customer service. It is of paramount importance, but at Fine Fabrics we are doing something more. We are also offering an inspiration for every one of our customers to fulfill their dreams. In that way we can build the business and succeed.

The same is true with Force Fin. Our mission statement is to fulfill  "a vision to help people move through the water, free as the inhabitants of the Oceans that inspire our fin designs." Once again our goal is to fulfill a need for our customers. Yes, we are selling a product, but we are also selling a way of life, and a way of understanding and connecting with nature and the activity for which our customers use their fins, whether it be diving, swimming, fishing, rehabilitation, or any other in water activity.

I'm sure that in your business plan preparation courses you went over the importance of your mission statement. Your mission statement is your identity. It is what you want people to understand you by. It’s your business mantra. We had forgotten ours for a while and one day I received a call from a Harvard Business Graduate Student who was doing a paper on paradigm busting businesses. He had chosen Force Fin as his paradigm for paradigm busting. The first question he asked was our mission statement and I had to pause because I had forgotten it. Then I remembered,  "Bob Evans has a vision to help people move through the water, free as the inhabitants of the Oceans that inspire his fin designs."

The next year we incorporated our mission statement into our marketing, used it on our website, repeated it in press releases distributed by our company and before I knew it people were identifying us with this vision.  It’s our inspiration; its what made us take the risks associated with starting and running the business. To lose sight of your inspiration is to flounder. What inspires you inspires others, and when you inspire others, you will succeed.

Now I don't know exactly how you were taught to prepare your Business Plan in your course study. I learned by reading and re-writing to fit our ideas private placement memorandums that were given to me by a helpful stockbroker. We needed a few hundred thousand dollars for start up capital. We ended up capitalizing the company with $750,000. There wasn't an organization like WEV around when we started up or if there was, I did not know about it. So I had to figure things out for myself.

The original plan was grandiose. We projected a value of $20,000,000 in 6-years time. We believed the numbers published by industry organizations, something we've since learned to drop by about 75%. We also believed that we could capture major market shares in multiple markets because we were offering something revolutionary, something better than anyone else. We were not cognoscente of the competitive barriers put up by main line company booking programs or the effect of 70%+ margins available to retailers purchasing deeply discounted goods manufactured in China or Estonia. It’s not the fact that these goods are so much less expensive to the consumer that drives sales of low cost goods; it’s the fact that their distribution margins are astronomical. That drives profitability and popularity on the shelf. We make our Force Fins in the USA. Our quality is superior and price is higher than fins made overseas, but so is our cost of goods. That kept us out of the mainstream sporting goods market and drove us to sell through specialty stores and direct to the consumer. The Internet proved to be a boom for us.

Our current business plan has been streamlined to a spreadsheet that gives a snapshot of past, current and projected income and expenses, and balance sheet, which I update regularly to reflect changes in day-to-day, month-to-month and year-to-year actuals and to reflect new goals set by our Board. I try to update the business plan at least quarterly. Anytime I've let myself get lazy and not look at this detail for a while, then we flounder, and usually in the worst way that is financially. I also do the monthly closing statements. That keeps me in touch with the day-to-day operations and helps with cash flow management. Operational cash flow haunts every business, large and small, at various times. A working business plan will reveal these cash fluctuations while there is still time to do something about it, before it affects your credit or sends you running to the bank at the worst time. And, you never want to go to the bank when you need the money!

You always want to have the means of accessing capital in place before it is needed. Keeping your working business plan up to date makes it possible for you to predict when you can spend more or take a little money from the company for yourself. It will also tell you when you need to tighten up the belt by cutting expenses and sometimes cutting your own pay. Every business owner cannot pay himself or herself at some time. A working business plan being kept up-to-date will alert you as to when you need to put additional capital into place to limit those lean times.

A working business plan also lets you know how and when to expand. My husband is wonderfully creative and energetic. He is a fountainhead of new ideas and inventions. It’s great for the Company image and helps to keep us in the media limelight, but it also wrecks havoc with business management. To bring new products to market is the same as starting a new business. Yes, we have the operations in place, so its not quite as demanding, but it does demand a new set of purchasing parameters, new packaging and merchandising materials need to be developed and modification, additions to or even a brand new marketing plan needs to be put into place, and all of this has to be followed through upon.

A well-launched new product will generally increase the sales of existing product lines, but putting the new product into place also drains human and financial resources. Our company suffers from its constant invention and re-invention annually. It is our working business plan that allows us to manage through.

But new products diversify our offerings. Just as diversification is necessary to hedge your risk with business investments, how you generate your revenues within your business must be diversified as well. At Force Fin we started with 1-fin, our Original Force Fin, that we sold to different markets, to swimmers, snorkelers, recreational scuba divers, commercial and military divers, bodysurfers and fly fishermen. By selling to different market segments we captured a larger portion of the available fin market, but we also limited the risk of our company. Diving peaks in early summer and mid-winter, fishing peaks in the spring and Swimming peaks in the fall. Diversifying the market segments to which we sold balanced out our year round sales.

The economic downturn that hit after the tech industry bust and 911 showed us how vulnerable we all can be. Our main income generation at that time was from recreational scuba divers. The demographics for use were high-end leisure travel. We were the first impacted and hardest hit by the economic aftermath of 911, right up there with the airline industry. Fortunately, we were also one of the most requested fins for use by the military. The resultant decline of the dollar made us a steal overseas. Military and foreign sales carried us through. Once everyone relaxed and started to travel again, they were looking for peaceful, domestic destinations. Our sales to fly fishermen grew and carried us through with a stable base to now once again grow with the launch of new product lines for divers. This gives us an edge because the other diving companies could not afford to invest in new product development during these past few years. New product development is where we put all our money, thanks to the never-ending creativity of my husband, and now we're ready to start nipping at more of the big boy's market shares once again.

Likewise Fine Fabrics is not just a place where you buy fabric. We also have our on-line sales at www.finefabrics.com. To diversify income generation and with the assistance of Grant House Sewing Machines, we are now offering sewing classes. Class schedules can be seen on our website finefabrics.com. The sewing machines also made it possible for us to set up a kind of Internet cafe, but for sewing. Anyone who wishes to learn to sew, or needs help with a project, can come in and receive consultation and use the machines. There are three more stages of diversification that Fine Fabrics is slated to go through, with each being implemented when our business plan tells us the time is right.

Your next question is how do I do all this, run two demanding businesses? Do I have time for family life? I took a cue from some of the more successful men I know. When we first met our shareholder in Force Fin, he was on the Board of 46 corporations. I can't even count the number of businesses our other shareholder owns. I figured if they can have or be a part of the management of multiple businesses I can too.

It starts with being very disciplined with my time. I do not waste a moment. Having great employees helps also. At Force Fin my key employees have been with us more than 10 years. I know I can depend upon them when I am gone, and they know they can call upon me when necessary. At Fine Fabrics the right people are falling into place. Finding the right employees is a trying process. It requires that they get as much from the business as you envision the business giving you. If the position fulfills them, then you can count on them.

Since I opened Fine Fabrics last August, I have taken only 3-days off. My schedule goes something like this: Up at 4:45 am. In the pool swimming at Los Banos in their Masters program by 6:00 am. If I don't take the time to get exercise first thing in the morning, it’s not going to happen. That's my quiet time. Immersed in the water I am to myself. I count my strokes. Its meditation. I have a goal to swim at least 1600 meters, that's a mile everyday, but I try to make the time to continue on with the workout until I reach 2000 meters. While in the water, in addition to achieving my daily exercise goals, I set my daily expectations for Force Fin and Fine Fabrics. My husband swims also.

There was a time when we weren't getting any exercise, when we became so immersed in the business, we were not taking care of ourselves. We both got very out of shape. We both put on weight. Swimming has put us back in touch with our personal needs. It has also helped with the Force Fin business. Being immersed in what your customers do gives you an association with them. We wear our fins swimming, so when our swimming customers have questions we can confidently answer them. It also put us into good enough shape to dive again. In fact it was a promotional dive trip, along with a radio station out of Florida that got us swimming. I knew it was going to be an advanced dive trip. Our second dive was one where you drop off the boat to 90 feet, come around the reef to be swept away by a screaming current and picked up by the boat when the current spits you aside at the end of the reef. I do not believe that people should dive unless they are in good cardiovascular condition. So I had to get back in shape to join my husband on the dive trips... and we've gone to some great places since I started swimming so I could dive again. Cay Sal Bank which is just north of Cuba, Cayman Islands and we joined Jean Michel Cousteau and other friends at his resort in Fiji a couple of times. In November, we're off to the Andros Islands in the Bahamas, so I am going to do some well deserved recreating soon.

By 7:30 am we're at Force Fin. We have only one car so mid-Day Bob shuttles me over to Fine Fabrics, where I stay until 6:00 pm. I work at the store on Saturday and Sunday too. Its important to my husband that we sit down and eat 3 good meals a day and that I make them for him. Cooking winds me down. It’s relaxing for me, so I cook when we get home. Bob does the dishes. I generally make enough to have for lunch the next day, and I make up a quick breakfast, usually caprese (tomatoes, mozzarella cheese and basil) to have after our swim. I rarely do work at the home in the evening anymore and if I have a glass of wine I most certainly don't. We go to bed pretty early.

My husband is getting frustrated with the mess in the house. Anyone into Fen Shui would pass out if they passed through our doors. But then, I don't think we, the chaotic project people that we are would be comfortable in a meditative environment. We would fill it up as quickly as possible.

I have a 26-year old son. He's a graduate student in Chemistry at Cal Tech. He just returned from a 1-month cruise as lead scientist for Cal Tech's project on the NOAA Flag Ship Ronald H. Brown. He's on the Sierra Madre Fire & Rescue Team and is off to Hawaii next month to race in the Duathlon World Championships. He is surfing with friends this weekend. He doesn't have time for a girlfriend right now. All and all he has done all right growing up in a family where as he would say,  "all conversations lead to Force Fin." I am Ms. Force Fin. I am Ms. Fabrics. This permeates everything that we do.

For our finale, let's get back to marketing. Elite marketing works and there are ways to do it without paying the exorbitant endorsement fees that only the major corporations can afford. Just remember, without permission you cannot imply endorsement by the elite party, or otherwise put words in their mouths. And you can only use a name in a statement that is true and correct. I used elite marketing techniques in my talk with you today a number of times. In my opening, I associated Fine Fabrics with one of the top designers in the world, Karl Langerfeld. He has nothing to do with our business, but the association was implicit in my words and in your minds. We have permission from the Museum of Modern Art to make the true statement that the  "Tan Delta Force Fin is part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art." I associated Force Fin with the most elite divers in the world by mentioning that we sell to the Military, primarily Special Operations Forces, and that we dive with Jean Michel Cousteau. But most importantly, I have taken a position of authority by being here speaking with you. By taking the risk of opening a business, you become an expert in your field of choice. You are the elite in your business enterprise. Seize the opportunity and repeat it loud and clear every opportunity with every means and every chance you have. 

Buy Your Fabrics HERE

Buy Your Trims HERE

Ms. Fine Fabrics Blog

Fine Fabrics CLASSES

Fine Fabrics Events
Solstiss Lace Aug 2008
Mokuba Ribbon Dec 2007
Sri Lanka Batik Oct 2007

Fine Fabrics MODELS

Fine Fabrics in the NEWS

Fine Fabrics on-line fabric and trim catalog is updated everyday!