We’re having a huge sale in the WilloToons shop! Not just any sale, but a huge, bring the house down, clear out the closets, make room for new inventory, SALE.

We can’t wait to bring you more organic items and some new designs (yes, really!) but we need room for them. To make that happen, we’re giving you the best pricing we’ve ever offered on many of our baby onesies and selected adult tees. We’re talking onesies as low as $10 and adult tees as low as $12! Head on over to the store to pick up some goodies now. Hurry because the sale is for a limited time and quantities are limited!

While you’re there, don’t forget that Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. We’ve got a ton of new jewelry in the store as well as our delightful, perfect for Valentine’s Day, Bacon Lover greeting cards. What says love more than bacon??

All single item jewelry orders are only $2 shipping and
FREE Shipping for all orders over $50!
(these are domestic rates only, but we ship internationally, too!)

Sometimes it’s hard to decide just what to buy that special someone… so let them pick out their favorites!

A WilloToons Gift Certificate is a great idea for when you just can’t decide what to get. Let the recipient decide if they want a sassy t-shirt or a pretty new pair of earrings.

Our gift certificates are available in email format – perfect for last minute shopping! Send us the recipient’s name and we’ll email you an attachment to forward on to the recipient or print out and give to them.

We’re looking forward to an awesome 2010 with all of you, with new and exciting happenings at WilloToons. Stay tooned!

I’m leading a workshop here in San Francisco, called “Using Social Media to Grow Your Fashion Business.” I did this workshop once last year, and it was a lot of fun, so I’m looking forward to presenting it again in a few weeks! Keep in mind you don’t have to have a fashion business per say for this information to be relevant.

Details:

There is a lot of talk about the importance of integrating a social media campaign into your marketing and sales strategy! Come learn how to navigate and sort through all of the social media sites and figure out which ones you should invest your valuable time and efforts on.   In this workshop will learn how to build and engage your community and create increased product awareness.

Topics will include:

• Creative, low cost marketing strategies
• Maximizing your network to test or launch a new product
• Increasing online sales
• The importance and value of maintaining authentic communication with your community

Presenter: Willo O’Brien moved to San Francisco at the dawn of the first Internet bubble and has spent the last decade building long-lasting friendships with the entrepreneurs and trendsetters of the Internet 2.0 phenomenon. Her experience in social networking has fueled the success of her business as a designer, illustrator and music lover who turned her lifelong passion into a fun, eco-conscious gift line: WilloToons.com – where geek meets rock ‘n roll.

Using Social Media to Grow Your Fashion Business
Tuesday, March 2nd
6pm – 8:30pm

The Art Institute of California
1130 Market Street
10 UN Building
4th Floor
San Francisco

Cost: $35/$20 for FBI members
Register: Click Here!

View Event Information on the Fashion Business, Inc website

RSVP on Facebook!

Hey pals! I’m so excited for Austin this year… and it’s coming up fast!

If you’re attending SXSWi this March, you can click the links below and add our core-convo’s to your schedule:

• SXSW SARS

  Friday, March 12 @ 2pm
  Core-conversation led by Jay Goldman & myself (Willo O’Brien)

  Add to my.sxsw
  Add to Sched

  Each year at SXSW, you hear about “SXSW SARS” or “SXSW Scurvy.” Days packed with panels, movies, and concerts are exhausting and wear down your immune system. Learn some ways in which you can prepare for, and stay clear of getting sick at SXSW.

  UPDATE: Take our survey about staying healthy at SXSW!
  (or whilst traveling to any conference)
  Here’s a link to a tweet to RT, too, if you please.

• Snappy Strategies for Selling Art & Craft Online: Part Deux

  Tuesday, March 16 @ 11am
  Core-conversation led by Rebecca Marshall & myself (Willo O’Brien)

  Add to my.sxsw
  Add to Sched

  More people than ever are starting their own art/craft businesses or supplementing their income with passion projects and, as always, technology rises to meet the challenge. Even as the economy worsens, our passions strengthen! Come discuss all the online tools and creative strategies that can help you sell your work online.

  Listen to our audio clip about this convo on the GetCrafty site!

As per usual, I’ll be there for both Interactive & Music. Looking forward to reuniting all my kick ass friends from around the globe, and meeting new fabulous faces, too!

Here’s a few things that are making my life awesome recently:

• Groupon – $25 for $50 worth of food (and similar awesome deals)? Um, yes please! Subscribe to this, it’s in a ton of cities and has GREAT deals.
• TCB Courier – For all of you who remember Kozmo.com or know Pink Dot in LA, you’ll be delighted to know we have something similar in SF again! Imagine you’re hosting a party, and you’re running out of wine, or you spaced buying dessert. For $6, TCB Courier will deliver whatever you want! Keep in mind it’s mostly just to the Mission/SOMA areas – see their map & funny video.
• The new Chase no-envelope ATMs are incredible (more commentary/info here, here & here). They make depositing checks so much easier, faster & less paper waste! Now if only their online banking site would catch up & be as sexy.
• Californication – I’m so into this show right now. Scored Season 3 and I’m just loving it.

And a few geeky computer things that are making my life awesome recently:

• Airfoil – After finally getting my Airport Express working again on my home stereo, I quickly realized I didn’t like being limited to only playing music out of iTunes. I wanted to stream music from Firefox – like playlists on Blip.fm or Last.fm – to my stereo. And that’s precisely what this does. So rad!
• Organized – From the makers of iStatPro, an app that they call a “Swiss Army knife for your Dashboard, including a calendar, world clocks, notes, iCal events and to do’s”  Which may beg the question, who uses the dashboard anymore? Well, I hadn’t for a long time… at least not regularly, besides occasionally checking the weather or time in another zone/country*. But recently I saw Buzz tweet about the Today app, and it made me think, “I like that, but surely someone’s made something similar for the Dashboard.” So after finding Organized, I got back into it (even setting Exposé to display it when I roll off top-right). *It also took care of me needing to use the world clocks I had set up before, because it’s a tab on Organized. Love it! This company also makes some awesome iPhone apps, under the name Bjango.
• Minutes – I often need a quick timer, whether it’s to remind myself to go re-park my car, or that I have 5 minutes till I need to call someone for a phone meeting… Minutes is so well done. I haven’t even used some of the other cool things it has, like opening a file or starting/stoping iTunes… but I love that it does those.
• Spirited Away – My friend, Gabe, reminded me of this gem. My computer can get pretty crazy, multi-tasking with windows everywhere, and that’s where Spirited Away comes in. It helps whisk away windows you’re not looking at to keep the view clean. I just don’t like how it hijacks the command+H shortcut to manually hide, which I use all the time… probably out of habit because everything was always needing to be hidden manually! Just got to get used to Spirited Away taking care of it for me.
• Aviary Firefox Add-On – I am an avid fan of Skitch, but am thrilled to have the Aviary plugin for when I need to take a screenshot of a full page, and then copy it to the clipboard – which I then usually paste into Skitch to post it there or Flickr [example]. I find this works better, and is faster than ScreenGrab!, which is what I used before for full or partial page screenshots.

Stay tooned for Part 2… which is my list of ‘things that are making my life awesome’ in a more personal realm.

If you liked this post, you might like to read my post about My Favorite Firefox Add-Ons.

Have anything you’re super geeked about lately? Let me hear it in the comments!

Sorry for the build-up on this news. I didn’t mean to make it such a big deal, but it IS an exciting move in my world, I just had to notify a few specific people before telling the internets. You all are so incredibly darling for being interested and so supportive. I truly, truly <3 my internet friends!

So, the “big move” is exactly that… WilloToons HQ has moved offices. The short story is that I was in the Renaissance Center last year, and now I’m working out of the Irata Labs office (which I expound upon more in the last 1/2 of this post). Now, this might not mean a thing to the rest of you, but in my life, it’s kind of a big deal… and, for those of you interested, I’ll happily detail why. :)

But first, a little background for those who don’t know me, or my story, that well:

I spent six years, working from home, doing freelance custom illustration and web/graphic design*, and while I loved working out of my house, my office was in my bedroom. Which, probably goes without saying, made it that much harder to create any kind of work/life balance. I launched WilloToons, my product line, in 2007, which meant I went from juggling one business, to two. Including storing inventory and shipping orders out of my garage**.

* I’ve pretty much let go of my freelance design business, but still take on small web/graphic design jobs + custom illustration work for cash flow.

** I now have a rockstar Merchandibeense Manager, Jen, who stores & ships all my inventory (among many other helpful tasks)

My First Office
In the fall of 2008, I was approached by the Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center and awarded one of the few grants they had available, from the Mayor’s Office of Community Development Women’s Grant Program. This enabled me to enroll myself, and WilloToons, into RenCenter’s year-long Incubator Program. This program included office space in their SOMA location, as well as one-on-one consultation with business, marketing and finance professionals. As you can imagine, I was beyond thrilled! I’m very business-minded, and an entrepreneur no doubt, but the truth of the matter is I’m an artist. Meaning, I can use all the business guidance I can get! :)

Also, starting a company can feel really isolating and overwhelming. I am fortunate that I had (and have) a lot of really amazing, supportive friends… but at the end of the day, it’s me bootstrapping it all and having to figure out what move to make next. Granted, that is the task I’ve taken on by owning my own company(s), but doesn’t lessen the immeasurable benefit of having solid advisement from friends and business professionals.

For the first year (2007-2008) I worked my butt off promoting WilloToons – learning from every transaction and experience, collecting data, brainstorming new ideas, defining and re-defining my vision – all the while still taking on clients for my design business, but found it harder & harder to juggle both. Becoming involved with the RenCenter at the end of 2008, and starting the year with my offices there in January 2009, I decided to let go of my design business even more and “get serious” about WilloToons. This involved taking their Business Planning course and – finally, 2 years in to my business – writing a business, marketing and expansion plan, drafting up financial projections, and putting a framework around how I wanted to see my business grow and what it was going to take to get there. I have mixed feelings on if doing a plan is absolutely essential for every business (as many have done just fine without), but it’s an excellent exercise and taught me a LOT nonetheless. Plus, at minimum I need the financial projections for any fund-raising or small business loans.

I’d have to say one of the best, best, BEST parts of it all was having an office outside of my house! My bedroom is now just my bedroom (I have space on both sides of the bed… huzzah!), and the fact that I’m able to occasionally leave my laptop, and therefore work, at the office, and just enjoy my space/time at home is nothing short of dreamy. :) This transition alone has created so much more peace of mind this past year. And, as a small business owner, peace of mind is gold.

2009 started off with a bang! And while it was a difficult year overall, I have a lot to be grateful for. The support and consultation of the professionals I met through the classes, workshops and individual sessions at the Renaissance Center were life changing, and I am so grateful to know these resources are available moving forward. I sincerely think one of the biggest challenges we face in business – or even life in general – is learning how to ask for help. We have all these amazing minds around us all the time, and so much of it is just knowing what questions to ask, and being willing to receive support.

Making the Move
I actually didn’t think I was going to move offices, but as the year was ending, so was the end of my year-long grant. Which meant, in order for me to stay, I was going to need to re-up my enrollment into the incubator, which meant providing them with my financials, P&Ls, and paying rent. I had a choice. I mean, if I was going to be actually paying rent, I had the option of where that office would be. I certainly didn’t want to move my office back into my house, but as a business owner, I had to consider the additional monthly overhead rent was going to add to my already tight (bootstrapped) cash flow situation, and had to make a decision.

Thankfully, as I was trying to figure out what to do, I was chatting about it with my friend Chris, and he mentioned how much space there is in his office at Irata Labs, and that while he couldn’t promise it would be long term, we could arrange for me to have my office here for awhile. YAY! (Actually, Chris will tell you it wasn’t quite that easy. We seem to have a pattern where he offers up his help, and me and my independent (stubborn?) self doesn’t allow myself to receive, and next thing you know it’s in the 9th hour & I realize I *do* need his help, and he’s magically there for me. Heh. *sigh* I love my friends. And yes, I’m trying to work on that whole asking for help/receiving thing a bit more. :)

Moving into the RenCenter was a big move, so my moving on from there, in to another office space, is just as great in my book. I think this one feels especially big, too, because it actually marks me having my *2nd* office ever. One where *I* made the choice. And, BEST OF ALL, I’m with my awesome friends! I am so stoked.

I now work in an office with my super good friends, Chris & Keith (and Ben, who I’m just getting to know). Keith (@dkr), in particular, has been a friend for years, AND he’s a badass, creative designer (not to mention great taste in music), so I’m thrilled to be working near him. I was telling them both yesterday, “I am with my people!” :p Plus, I’m all excited about this new location (2nd & Harrison), because I’m near South Park and have a TON of great friends who work around here:

• My awesome TicketFly peeps: Ali, Amy, Marianne, and founders Dan & Fraser (who were my clients at TicketWeb!)
• Susan Wu, who is a rockstar CEO I met initially through CFC in ‘08, but recently reconnected with (thanks to Randy), and we had an awesome business meeting. I’m THRILLED on her business guidance… and it’s been such an incredible reminder for me to tap into the amazing brains I’m surrounded by (and not just dine & have drinks with them, but actually seriously sit down & talk business :)
• Citizen Space is right downstairs, where my good friends work: Hillary, Seth and occasionally Thomas, just to name a few. AND this is conveniently where I host my Church of Craft monthly meetings (this month is most likely going to be there January 24th… get on the list if you want to join)! Oh, and coincidentally, Irata Labs is actually in the space where Citizen Space used to be! So I’d been here many times already.
• South Park awesomeness, including being able to eat lunch in the park, meet friends for lunch, and take part in all of the awesome SF street food carts that frequent this area! Most notably @banhmai, my friend Mai’s Vietnamese sandwiches that I’ve yet to try. Update: Oh yes, AND The American Grilled Cheese Kitchen, who is Heidi from my business planning class… they’re opening up soon just a few blocks away. Yum!

The move happened pretty fast, and yet totally felt right. I love it when that happens. After meeting with Susan on Friday, I stopped by to say hi to Chris & Keith, and saw once again how cavernous this office is, and realized how completely easy and great it would be to work out of here. I made a call to my friend Brian, who recently offered me to share some of his storage space, and asked him if I could store my desk & a few other things I wouldn’t need to bring with me, and he said he could help Saturday… so literally less than 24 hours later, I was moved!

Alright, I could go on & on, as I have a few points I want to expand on, wrapping up some of the other amazing things that happened in 2009, as well as discussing my plans for the new year, but let’s publish this bad boy once & for all.

Thank you all again SO much for your interest, support and friendship. Some days I feel like the luckiest girl in the world, and having you all in my life – as a part of my amazing community, both online, and locally – is truly what keeps me going. Group hug! And for you locals, let’s do lunch in South Park soon. :)

I’m long overdue writing out all my thoughts on the last few weeks, so I promise I’ll post more soon, but for now here’s all the photos (& a few videos) from New Years Eve. Hope yours was as fun as ours… Happy New Year, everyone!

A few weeks back I was interviewed by a reporter from the Associated Press, and subsequently photographed utilizing the device. The fun thing about an AP article is that it gets published everywhere. That said, the article unfortunately doesn’t mention “WilloToons” or my website URL, so it hasn’t turned into sales, but it’s definitely had a lot of friends mentioning they saw it on the wire! :)

Here’s two of them:

• Mercury News: Twitter co-founder’s new startup: Accept credit cards with your iPhone
• Boston Globe: Twitter co-founder tackles credit card payments

Read all my posts about Square…

My friend Gene shot another video of me using Square last night at the Noise Pop Holiday Shop!


YouTube – Willo uses Square at the Noise Pop Holiday Shop.

That was my last event of the year (phew!), so thank you all for coming out!

See previous posts about my using Square:

• Using the Square iPhone app (first video)
• Using Square to take credit cards on my iPhone

As per usual, using Square at last weekend’s event was a huge hit, if not even more so now that it’s out of private beta & everyone’s all abuzz about it. Here’s a video Gene (aka my Deputy of Media :p) took while he was buying a few tees. The screen is blown out most of the time, so you can’t quite see the process, but hey, we tried. The funny thing was there were a few other people taking photos at the same time, too. Like I said in my original post about Square… gotta love something that makes it FUN for people to pay you with credit card! :p

Using the Square iPhone app to make my holiday purchases at Bazaar Bizarre by GeneX

I’ll see if I can shoot another video with better screenshots at this Thursday night’s Noise Pop Holiday Shop… just depends on how crazy busy it is.

I’m delighted (read: SUPER FRICKIN’ STOKED!!) to announce that I will be co-leading two awesome core-convos at SXSW ‘10!

• Snappy Strategies for Selling Art & Craft Online: Part Deux
  A continuation of the fantastic convo that Becca & I had last year, that was jam packed, with a line out the door – YES!
• SXSW SARS
  Fortuitously taking over for preggie Tara, and I get to speak with my NBFF Jay Goldman! This convo is perfect for me because, as many of you know, I can somehow party my arse off in Austin for 10 days straight & still be standing. I’ll see if I can’t package some of that magic for this talk. ;)

So excited to see you all there!

UPDATE 1/14/09: Add our convos to your my.sxsw schedule!