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4 Benefits of Online Stores

Borders Books at 1807 Fordham Boulevard in Cha...

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Shopping online has become a norm for most Americans. Because of the “on the go” mentality, there is less and less time to go shopping at stores. Also, with the rising cost of tolls and gas, it’s more cost effective to buy things on the web. Whether you’re shopping for back-to-school clothes, a winter coat for your spouse, or a sweater for your mom on her birthday, websites such as http://www.offers.com provide access to a boatload of items that will make lovely gifts.

Variety

Online shopping gives consumers the opportunity to find nearly anything–not only items that may be out of stock in their local store, but also items that have since been discontinued. Access to more variety makes shopping easier, more fun, and will result in better gifts for your loved ones. Clothes shopping is easier because you’ll have access to a wider range of sizes

Coupon Codes

When shopping online, consumers can find coupon codes to save themselves extra money. These codes may include a percentage off an order, free shipping or free gifts. There are a variety of websites that provide these codes to consumers looking to save some money. If you love fashion, there are plenty of discount codes available for clothes from your favorite designer.

Save Time

By shopping online, you avoid traffic, long lines and crowded stores. This gives you quick access to a store’s inventory. No searching the store for certain items, no rain checks, and no wait as the clerk checks for your size shoe in the back.

Free Shipping

Many stores such as Borders, Wal-Mart and other department stores offer free shipping to those who shop online. Why wait? Search online for items you need. Save some time, money and find better deals.

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American Made by Robots

People are looking more and more at buying clothing that is “Made in the USA”. For years there was a drain out of the United States of manufacturers who could not compete with foreign pricing. Many companies pay their employees less outside of the country than they do within the United States. Significantly less.

These wages could be much better than what the employees could make outside of the factory so they are really helping these people. Nonetheless, this does not help the American who has lost his or her job to a worker in another country. Now these jobs are beginning to come back. Recognize that they are different kinds of jobs than what left.

The US cannot compete with the low wages of foreign countries, but we can compete technologically. More US textile manufacturers are putting in more computer controlled systems with robotics doing some of the work.

Cutting out fabric can be controlled to a level that humans cannot manage. With a robotic system cutting the fabric from a bolt there is less waste and greater precision. A size six is always a six and will wear exactly the same from garment to garment. Much of the sewing can now be done robotically and with speed and precision.

As these systems are implemented there is need for trained technicians to watch and quality check the robotic systems. They need to know how to tweak the system to keep them running optimally. They need to understand the robotic and computer systems to keep them working and to fix them when they do break down.

Yes there are fewer humans per bale of clothing leaving the factory, but there are now more Americans employed in the clothing industry than there were just a few years ago. Thank you robotics!

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Installing the Right Survey

Building a brand of any kind online takes a long time. It’s not an overnight process, but building a clothing brand online can feel like an eternity. The brand you set out for the world will always take time to catch on. Fashion is a tricky thing. What is hot today will be out of fashion tomorrow, but then come back en vogue in a few years. However, this uncertainty shouldn’t discourage you from finding how your brand is doing and how it could be improving.

Since you can’t meet face to face with these customers it’s important to install a customer satisfaction survey to your website so that users can rate their experience doing business with you. The people you are ultimately trying to please are the ones that have shown a willingness to buy product from you before. These people need to be happy and getting their thoughts in a survey might be the very best way to do it.

Many people look at surveys as a hindrance and something meant to set you back but the survey, when filled out appropriately can provide meaningful insight into how your clients see your business. It’s important to know not just what they think but why they think it. Just knowing they aren’t interested in shopping at your site again would not be helpful. Finding out they are in disagreement with the prices will tell you a lot about your business, whether you can fix it or not.

The surveys themselves can be fully customizable. You can choose to ask whatever questions you would like. It’s only fair that you ask what you think matters to help your business in to the future. Getting feedback from the kind of people that pay the bills are definitely important to the overall health and success of your business. Not just for now, but for the future.

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Sewing Patents

Sewing by hand has been around for over 20,000 years. Starting with needles made of bones or animal horns these sewers used animal sinew for thread. The 14th century brought iron needles and the 15th century added the eye to the needle.

Patents for sewing machines that did not work were issued from 1755 to 1818 with seven different men trying to mechanize the process of sewing. Finally in 1830 the French tailor, Barthelemy Thimonnier invented the first functional sewing machine and was almost killed in the riot from French tailors who torched his garment factory, burning it to the ground. They were afraid that his invention would put them out of work.

Walter Hunt created America’s first working machine in 1834. He did not patent the machine because he was afraid of causing unemployment with the machine. In 1846 Elias Howe became the first American to receive a patent. He later fought against Isaac Singer, and won, a patent war based on the lockstitch that he invented. Singer paid the patent royalties. For Howe it was a boon economically as the next 13 years saw him earn close to two million dollars from the lockstitch he patented, up from annual earnings of $300.

The first chain-stitch sewing machine using a single thread as invented by James Gibbs and patented in 1857. The first woman to patent a sewing machine was Helen Augusta Blanchard who patented a zig-zag stitch machine in 1873. She would eventually have a total of 29 patents for improvements including surgical needles and a hat sewing machine.

It is because of these sewing machine pioneers that we enjoy inexpensive, durable and well made clothing today. Without them we would still probably have just one or two drab outfits to wear.

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Cotton: Durable and Beautiful

Cotton has been used to make clothing for thousands of years. Cotton is a wonderful source for clothing as it is soft to the skin, durable against the stresses placed against it and can be dyed and woven into many colorful and attractive patterns.

Cotton is grown in the southern United States and in many other countries with like climates around the world. As the plant matures it has a fluffy boll that surrounds the seed of the cotton plant. The cotton gin, invented by American Eli Whitney in 1793 and patented in 1794, was a major boon to the cotton industry.

This invention allowed more cotton to be grown and harvested without having to use as much slave labor to produce clothing. Separating the fluffy boll from the seed was time consuming and painful. The seed is sharp like a needle and will prick the workers. There is a reason that much cotton clothing was colored reddish brown throughout history.

After the gin has removed the fluffy boll from the seed it intertwines the fibers into cotton threads. Now the cotton can be used for many different uses including yarns, laces and threads. Each of these creates different textures of clothing and allows the clothing manufacturer to create many visual variations, all using cotton.

These variations are created on looms which are large mechanisms where the cotton is woven into row upon row of interweaved patterns and become cloth. This woven cloth can either be made directly into the end product or it can be cut and sewn into a new garment. The versatility of cotton cloth is one of its major strengths.

Add in the fact that cotton effectively retains colored dyes and the clothing manufacturer can add even more variety to the clothing they are producing. Today it is not unusual to see clothing racks at a store and each garment is virtually identical to the next with color and size variations being the difference between the clothes. Intricate weavings of the yarn, lace and tread can create stunning garments that are beautiful and durable.

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The Evolution of Clothing

Bianca Rinaldi

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In today’s world everyone wears clothing. Anthropologists estimate humans started wearing some form of clothing between 100,000 and 500,000 years ago. This is a long history of placing something over our bodies to hide our nakedness.

The first clothing was made from animal skins, animal furs, grasses, leaves, bones or shells. Different people throughout the world created different coverings depending on their surroundings. They would look around and use what they found to create some form of clothing. The bible teaches that Adam and Eve made “coats of skins” after leaving the Garden of Eden. As ancient man used animals for food they also used their skins to provide warmth and comfort.

Anciently clothing was often draped or tied. People learned how to make wonderful draping garments. It was woven as a circle from the beginning and you draped it over you to stay clothed and warm or cool. Many people around the equator wore clothing to protect their bodies from the head of the sun. It was not just people in cold climates that used clothing.

After needles were discovered people could sew arm portions to the body of the garment and have more form fitting and much more functional clothing. Weaving itself was a major change and then humankind discovered the sewing machine.

We still wear clothing that is made from animal skins, animal furs, grasses, leaves, bones or shells, but natural and synthetic threaded garments are by far the norm and often these ancient materials are used as creative add-ons to the garment. They are now the baubles added to make it look beautiful or different.

Today, each of us no longer has only one or two sets of clothing, painstakingly put together by our own family. We now purchase clothing that is inexpensive and durable. Each of us often has hundreds of different garments we wear. The evolution of clothing from “you kill it, you wear it”, to today’s inexpensively mass produced clothing industry is impressive and we as a world have embraced this change with open, welcoming arms.

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From Textiles to Insurance

Berkshire Hathaway was a textile company that was started in 1888 by Horatio Hathaway. By 1962 Warren Buffett started to buy shares in the company because he believed that it was heavily undervalued and the price of the stock would come up. Buffett gradually increased his share of the company until he owned 49% of the company and used his votes to change the management of the company.

He put Ken Chase in as President to run the company and Buffett, himself, looked after the financial infrastructure of the company. Shares for Berkshire Hathaway were bought by Buffett for $15 a share and were selling at $18.

During this time Buffett began to use Berkshire Hathaway in two roles. Berkshire Hathaway continued to produce textiles as the core business and Buffett used them as an investment vehicle. As time moved on Buffett knew that the industry was struggling against the cheaper foreign production of clothing. Buffett realized that the mills were struggling and kept them open for years past what they probably would have without him. By 1985 the mills of Berkshire Hathaway were not even tentatively profitable and he closed the doors to the textile portion of the business.

At this time Buffett moved from one commodity business to another, insurance. Through Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett eventually acquired GEICO General Insurance Company in 1994, having owned stock in the company since 1943. At the time Buffett acquired GEICO their situation was similar to when he bought Berkshire Hathaway. They were both fundamentally sound companies which were heavily undervalued and Buffett felt that both would do better with him running the financial side of the company.

With Berkshire Hathaway even Buffett could not keep the textile company alive against the flow of textile jobs out of the United States. However, with GEICO his genius was able to shine through. He has helped make GEICO into the third largest insurance company in the country. We all know the green lizard that is their spokesman. GEICO insurance is what it is today because of a failed business investment in the textile industry…Berkshire Hathaway.

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Ordinary People Inventing Scissors

Your three year old child picks up her cute little scissors and cuts through the paper. As she does so you almost totally ignore her. Her scissors are sharp enough to cut the paper but have blunt ends, plastic parts and they are difficult to actually hurt her. This was not always so.

Scissors have been around for over 3,500 years. They apparently were first invented in Egypt around 1500 B.C. and were made of bronze. Each piece of metal was sharpened on one edge and then each scissor rubbed against the other scissor using a fulcrum to provide the pivot. They then cut the paper or cloth or whatever needed cutting. Slowly the scissors spread throughout the world.

The Romans, in about 100 A.D., improved the design by creating cross-blade scissors. Most of the improvements to scissors are lost in time and we cannot trace their origin. Somewhere in time someone found that greater control could be found by adding a screw or rivet in the middle of the two scissors and adding loops for fingers.

Londoner Robert Hinchcliffe, in 1761, invented steel cast scissors. Today almost all scissors are steel cast for the cutting edge. Children’s scissors will have the steel cast blades with plastic handles and coverings to protect the children from cutting themselves.

Scissors needed to be sharpened to be effective. To protect the edges artisans would often place them into a cover, usually made of leather. As they were often handmade they did not just throw them away when they were no longer sharp. Scissors in a family could last for generations.

There is not much known about the history of scissors. What we see above is all there is known about it. As people made improvements they just made them and continued working. To most of them it was just another tool and not all the extraordinary. Most of the improvements were made by ordinary people making ordinary changes to an ordinary piece of equipment. No big deal.

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A Craftsmen Renaissance; Selling Handcrafted Items Online

If you have a hobby such as sewing, painting, candle making or anything else that results in a handcrafted item, you have a potential online business on your hands. Etsy.com is a site that caters to people who want to buy and sell unique, hand-made items. It is a wildly popular site and has led to a renaissance of craftsmen who take pride in what they make. With Etsy and sites like it, the technology of third-party sales sites has made it easier and cheaper than ever for anyone to market their wares to the masses.

If you want to get in on this trend and create your own home business using your skills and talents, there are many things that need to be done before you begin. To start, you need capital for materials. Some people use

credit cards, others use sites like Payday One to borrow the money to get their business started. Once you have the start-up capital, you can begin creating your inventory.

With just one or two finished products, you can begin to list your items on Etsy and market your business. First, decide on your business name. It should in some way describe what you sell, or it can be simply a memorable name that people will come to associate with your hand-made items. Each listing that you create on Etsy will have your business name, so each listing should have a clear photograph and should be well written. This will give your business a good reputation among the many buyers who search the site for interesting, unique items.

Creating a Twitter account that sends messages each time you add a new product to your Etsy store will help you market your wares, and it costs nothing to do. Also create a Facebook page for your store and you’ll soon have a growing pool of customers.

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Where Did Those Jeans Really Come From?

Denim, the jeans fabric
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Buying jeans doesn’t seem like a big deal. You go to the store, you pick out what you like and what fits you, and you go on with your life. If you stop and think, though, your jeans really didn’t come from the store. They came from somewhere else as a raw material and were transformed into jeans through a process that’s probably longer and more complex than you would expect it to be. With that in mind, take the time to consider where things are coming from. It’s fascinating to learn about your world and all of the products that are created in it, from their beginnings as raw materials to their endings in your shopping cart.

The Apple Bottoms that you have on didn’t start out as jeans. They didn’t even start out as fabric. They came from plants that were woven into material, and from synthetics that were created. Like most products, they got their start somewhere far away. They were grown and harvested by people who live far different kinds of lives than the one you’re living. Then they moved down a supply chain where what they collected was shipped somewhere else to be processed, turned into another material, and shipped out again. Eventually, they reached their final destination, and that allowed you to buy them and wear them. Supply chains are surprising things, and most people don’t realize how they work and how much effort goes into them.

If the supply chain has problems somewhere on it, it affects everything past that point. If you can’t get your favorite jeans, it could be because the people who make them can’t get the materials that they need in order to get them created and shipped to the store. What happens in one part of the world can have a big impact on the rest of it, since we’re really all in this together.

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