We're Back! And Our First Interview with Liberty Jane Clothing's Cinnamon Miles

We're back from our vacation! And we brought a cold with us! Le sigh. We are a bit worn out and tired because of our cold, but we will try and press on and do as much as we can this week.

First off, we have a lot in the works -- giveaways, trip reports, cute posts, new things we've ordered, and more -- so keep your eyes peeled!

Second, we got the idea to do interviews from Karen's Mom of Three Blog (giving credit where credit is due, heehee) -- and we asked Cinnamon Miles of Liberty Jane Clothing if she wanted to participate. We've come up with a plan to do a series of interviews with her so you guys can learn more about her company, her products, and the various projects she is involved with. Hope you are all excited!

If you have a question for Cinnamon, please feel free to comment on this post and I might just ask her your question!

Here we go everybody!

1) When you started Liberty Jane Clothing, did you ever think it would be where it is today?

I'd have to say, probably not. I didn’t even realize there was such a big market for custom doll clothes until we started to get into it. But my husband Jason would definitely say "Yes!", or that we’re not as far along as he thinks we could be. I love to design and create, but I'm not the visionary, he is. For that reason we make a great team. The design and presentation is an integral part of LJC, but there are so many other things that need to be woven into it to make something like this successful.

2) Where do you see LJC heading in the future?

We’re incredibly excited about our short-term opportunities. We’re growing so quickly, it’s getting harder and harder to keep up with everything related to the business. We know that we need to hire employees to grow, So over the last month or so we’ve been on a mission to seek advice from fashion industry insiders on how best to grow.

We’ve had the good fortune of meeting with Jaeil Lee the Professor of Fashion Industry at Seattle Pacific University and a former Abercrombie & Fitch Designer. We’ve also met with veteran people from Levi Strauss, Eddie Bauer, and Nordstrom’s. This has been an incredibly humbling experience where we get to brainstorm with these truly remarkable experts on how to grow a clothing brand. We’ve asked them for their advice and listened to their perspective. They’ve been incredibly gracious to us, and helped us clarify our opportunities. We’ve come up with a simple plan that we are super excited about.

(See the LJC blog post about the newest LJC employee!)

3) What did the Fashion Industry Insiders Tell You that you didn’t expect?

We were surprised at how well they resonated with what we were doing. Maybe we have an inferiority complex or something, but when you think of meeting with a senior designer from Eddie Bauer, or the founder of a mega brand, you sort of expect them to not appreciate the 18-inch doll design work, but we didn’t get any of that – they were incredibly ‘into it’. That surprised us. It was really fun. They immediately saw the power of our brand, even if it is tiny compared to the scope and scale that they are accustomed to. Beyond that, they mainly re-assured us that we were on the right track in many ways. Their advice, besides from specific next steps, was that we just needed to keep taking one step at a time.

4) What are the next steps you’re planning?

We see a huge opportunity to continue to grow the pattern business, and we’re going to take several specific actions to help boost that part of our work. You might notice we don’t publish too many of our own designs these days, because we’re just too busy, but we’re going to work hard to ramp up that part of our work. Designing & publishing our own work more. That’s a clear short-term goal. That will also mean that we will likely move to a system where we have new Limited Edition designs for sale via EBay throughout the year, rather than just during a Spring & Fall launch. The Spring/Fall Launch model generates a lot of stress & pressure, which we want to move away from a bit.

5) What stage are you at for the Fall Line? How many different outfits will you offer on Ebay?

With the 2011 Fall line, we are continuing with The International Collection. There are four outfits one for each location - Tokyo, Euro, Malibu, and Outback. This set of outfits has been challenging and fun at the same time. As our company has grown and we provide the LJ patterns to our partners, it is becoming more and more of a challenge for me to think up new ideas! But it is great to have that push to do something new and different. I'm really proud of this new collection of outfits.

6) You started offering BIN Fall outfits on your website. There are two currently available. Will you offer more BINs this year? Or just these two?

We plan to offer more of these types of “not-limited edition” outfits. We’re calling them "unlimited" outfits. They will be available on our website and through our EBay store. These outfits will be a bit simpler in design than my LE outfits, but be the high quality and construction that LJ is known for.

7) What inspires your recent clothing designs? Specific outfits from clothing companies? Specific trends? Specific celebrities?

I find inspiration everywhere! I'm snapping pictures on my phone everywhere I go, from the high-end shops to places like Target. My girls laugh when I see something and say "Oh! I have to make something just like that for the AG Dolls" then I take a quick pic, and look at the inside of the garment to see how it's put together. One of my favorite magazines is Vogue Bambini, it's the Italian Vogue for kids. It's pretty hard to find, but it's filled with amazing print ads and so much inspiration!

--- Thanks for reading our first interview peoples! Stay tuned for more interviews with Cinnamon -- and again if you have a question to ask her, feel free to comment with it on this post! ---