3:45 AM: And here we are again, another all-nighter at the Lima airport. Exhausted and smelly after three flights and the predictably long wait at customs (not to mention some exciting early morning post-caucus traffic at the DMI airport), I am back in Peru, the land of the Ñañas. The six months home in Iowa flew by, and now all that stands between me and my dear Ñañas is the 6:45 AM flight from Lima to Arequipa. Almost there...
A very broad summary of the months lapsed since the last post: After departing Peru in mid-July, I spent almost six months home with friends and family and the beautiful concept of regular business hours. Chiri-wise, the months were eventful and generally quite positive ones, if sometimes a bit overwhelming.
A few highlights: The sweaters and accessories we thought would never leave the workshop made their way box by box from Arequipa to our doorsteps in Des Moines -- occasionally detouring through customs in Miami --where tags were lovingly and laboriously attached by my dear mother (need a blanket stitch? She's your gal.). Lexi and I made seemingly unending pilgrimages to Joann's and Hancock franchises throughout the Midwest, armed with notions coupons to buy the precious buttons and snaps that we kept buying out in Des Moines.
Meanwhile, somewhere in Portland a magic elf designer named Jamie Letourneau was hard at work creating the Chiri logo, selecting a font and then making rubber stamps of our logo and hand-dying and stamping each hang tag that accompanied all 300+ garments. (Yes, we are forever indebted to her.) The ladies kept up their work in Peru with almost, almost, no glitches; our website went up; I took three two-hour classes on small business accounting followed by a crash course in Quickbooks with Lexi's Aunt Kitty and somehow seemed to make it through our meeting with our accountant; Lexi meticulously packed up and shipped out multiple orders to ten stores around the Midwest, including the Des Moines Art Center Gift Shop and Back Country Outfitters in Des Moines; we paid visits to three of the Twin Cities stores selling the Chiri line and found our clients to be generally thrilled with the product; and somewhere in the midst of all this, plans got under way for round two.
So here we are. It's now 2012, and a new season has begun. It was an incredible first year with the Chiri project, and we're ready for more. But before we throw ourselves into the next round, I want to thank everyone for all of your support. Whether it was sending positive thoughts our way, giving us tips on potential stores where we could sell the line, sewing on labels or watching for the UPS van and calling to let us know a travel-worn box had arrived, your contributions have made this possible. Gracias y feliz año nuevo!
[As it turned out, I made it through another night at the airport, but the plane to Arequipa that took off Thursday morning was forced to return to Lima after Arequipa's haze didn't let up for us to land, so we were switched to another plane in Lima and lucky enough to make it through on the second try, arriving around 1:30. A long 30 hours.]
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