oliver green d ring belt...

At last, as always, forever, and primarily I am an entrepreneur interested in building business and being intellectually stimulated.  On top of that I am a crafter, more of a hipster crafter, not that average crafty people aren’t impressive, they are… it takes imagination to create anything.. and a tremendous amount of  courage to put it out there and sell it! I have had quite a few little start ups including my very first venture at 10 years old, a store in my basement called The Disco Spot where I sold my clothing, but created a ”total look” makeover for many of the neighborhood kids for about 5 bucks a pop! My mom would ask where my “green pants” were and I would answer, I don’t know, meanwhile they were on Melinda Godfrey, my neighbor down the street!  I also sold candy for a profit, as the village store was such a far walk from our enclave.  In addition to my store rife with Spencer Gift strobe lights, various colorful spinning lights, and a record player with the Eagles on singing Life in the fast lane, I would have regular lawn sales.  Of course these would happen  in between my air guitar playing to the Kiss Alive album blaring on big black speakers strategically placed in my screened windows and pointed outside for me to perform on my front lawn.  I used a rake for the guitar.  This show was free, but I did create other shows where my cousins and I would re-enact Sonny and Cher singing, and since I concieved of the idea, I was Cher, and my cousin Mary Beth was forced to be Sonny.  She would always complain about having to be the man.  We would set up a stage in her backyard on their red porch, play the music and lip sync.  We tried to charge a fee, but I am remiss to remember if we made any cash.  I also lip synched and acted with my friend Muriel for my mother, I Shot the Sherriff, whereby I would do the shooting and Muriel would have to die, because I thought of the idea, so I naturally got the lead and the good part.  Come to think of it, I must have been really fun to be friends with because I was forever scheming to make cash and to come up with creative ways to earn it.  I am still exactly the same! I had a friend say to me that I haven’t changed since Kindergarten! Is that necessarily a good thing?

I then graduated to various crafty projects which included crocheting, coloring, knitting, painting, dancing, etc.  In my yound adult hood began another creative foray into little cool companies like: kitsch klutch, where I took interestingly shaped vintage handbags and decorated them with funny things I found at garage sales like rubber aliens, glitter, etc and coined clever names for each one.  A tshirt company, well 2, one where my friend Damon and I recreated some old school band logos like Beastie Boys, cool movie slogans, etc, but our sales location wassituated in a bad location where ”coolness” wasn’t embraced. A yoga inspired tshirt company called Sole Patch, which almost got picked by by my friend Bob’s job at a franchise, however, I was unable to produce them at a low enough price point (no china).  I also had an airbrush tanning salon in Greenwich CT, called Smart Sun, where I would paint the nearly nude bodies of the uppercrust in the basement of a retail store on Putnam Avenue!  I was very good at airbrush and trust me, I had to be great with people as well because they were self conscious standing there nearly nude, and sometimes nude.  I also had to get acccustomed to what I was actually doing and not over think it.  It was funny most of the time… the client and I would laugh a lot and have interesting talks due to the compromising positions they were in.  I never felt that I couldn’t go for something, and never thought about the barriers.

I am now in the throws of my longest term business which has me creating great  belts inspired by whimsical fabrics!  I don’t know about anyone else, but I can easily spend 3 hours searching through fabric on the internet. I am absolutely mesmerized by the patterns and colors.  I pride myself on my ability to choose great fabric and I have made it into a viable business.  oliver green belts is my innagural effort to bring to the masses interesting belts which are great quality and reasonably priced.  In today’s economy it makes much more sense to buy a belt to update your look, rather than blowing money on a whole new outfit!  I love making the belts as I clip through my dvr’d shows like Chelsea Lately, Gray’s Anatomy, Ugly Betty, Oprah, Samantha Who, Charlie Rose (occasionally) and various network programming when it is on.  It is definitely a zen experience and I can knock out about 20 without even blinking an eye.  I am currently learning more about web site optimization and am undergoing a redesign with my friend Rich Testani.  Since my belts are better quality and much cooler than anything out there, I need to have that reflected in my site design.  Balancing my inventory while doing shows this summer will be difficult, but I have to master it, as I have only a fraction of my inventory online.  my web site is www.olivergreenonline.com . You should bookmark it and keep checking to see how it is being continually improved and updated and not to mention to get yourself some great belts to kick around in.  There is always free shipping!

This entry was posted on Monday, April 20th, 2009 at 3:11 pm and is filed under Entrepreneurial Commentary, Posts by Sandra Oles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.