Backroads Boss Lady by Jessi Roberts

Author:Jessi Roberts [Jessi Roberts]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2019-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

ORIGINAL GANGSTERS

Finally! With Rietdyk’s and half a dozen other wholesalers soon onboard, I was finally ready to take the big step all the little girls dream about, or at the least the little girls allowed to dream: design. We don’t dream of selling dresses, right? We dream of creating them. It’s the number one thing boutique owners ask me about and talk about among themselves: “How do I design my own stuff?”

It’s the dream given to us right there in Genesis, when it says we were made in the image of the Creator. Well, if God is part of us, and He’s the creator of the world, then being a creator is part of us, too.

It’s also a nightmare.

Design is hard! Ideas are easy in your head, but to translate them to a shirt or a piece of jewelry? That small step feels like a mile. I went through a dozen freelancers trying to find people who could produce what I wanted. The reality with any business partner, whether designers, wholesalers, or shipping companies, is that most aren’t right for you. They’re either not good enough or your interests and talents don’t align. To succeed, you have to find the best fit for you. That goes for husbands, too, which is why I’ll take mine every day of the week, because Justin’s semi-squishy dad bod fits perfectly with my no-nonsense mom-itude.

That’s not the worst problem, though. The worst problem with design is right there in Genesis, too, when it says we are copies of our Creator. Lesser copies, but still made in His image. The fact is, to one degree or another, everything in this world is a copy. It’s impossible to be 100 percent original. There is simply too much culture, coming at us too fast, for it not to affect every decision we make and everything we produce, even if only accidentally and subconsciously.

This leads to everyone’s first complaint. Within a week of designing their first shirt, women are in the boutique chat groups: “So-and-so copied me!” This isn’t a minor issue. These women are devastated. They feel their lives are ruined.

Most of the time, I look at the disputed shirt, and it’s not a copy. Usually it’s just a similar phrase, design, or color scheme. That’s not only okay, it’s inevitable. Just because you use red, white, and blue on a shirt doesn’t mean no one else can. You weren’t the first to put those colors together. Target did it twenty-five years ago. And Betsy Ross two hundred fifty.

Let it go. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I disagree. I say it’s the sincerest form of asshattery. (Yes, that’s a word.) I hate it. But if you start to feel like anything similar to your design (or recipe, or lifestyle choice) is infringing on your world, you’ll drive yourself crazy.

This is not to say there aren’t legitimate copying issues. There are. People will straight rip off your work, and it wasn’t something I always handled well.

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