The Betty Blog » small business

My Story and How Betty Belts Happened in Skirt Magazine

donna — Fri, 13 May 2011 16:41:01 +0000

Here’s my story and how Betty Belts came about. It’s a fascinating read, I have to admit, a little strange for me, seeing it here in print. The Skirt reporter, Charlene Ross, did a great job of piecing it all together from a two hour long recording of my ramblings, jumping from one subject to another, going off on interesting tangents. Not an easy task!

Enjoy! – Donna

Donna von Hoesslin: Surfer – Designer – Activist

Author- Charlene Ross for Skirt Magazine

Donna Surfing at Queens, Waikiki. Pure bliss. Photo copyright David Pu'u.

Donna von Hoesslin is a California girl who followed a drummer to Europe at the age of 17 and ended up living in Berlin for 17 years. She married into German nobility and was living the fabulous life of the social elite. During her time abroad she held various jobs as a fashion designer, translator and back-up singer for a European two-hit wonder band.

But the very first time Donna stepped on a surfboard at the age of 31 her life changed forever. She was hooked instantly and became passionate about surfing and would travel often to faraway places so she could ride the waves. Unfortunately it was a passion her husband did not share. One day after returning home from a surf trip Donna and her husband Elmar realized that their marriage had turned into a convenient friendship and the word divorce hung in the air between them. They both cried. Today they are separated by 5,000 miles, but truly remain the closest of friends.

Betty Belts

Donna came back the states and moved into a shared beach house in her hometown of Santa Cruz so she could make surfing a part of everyday life. To make a living she became a…

(Click here to read rest of story. Or on the link below.)

http://ventura.skirt.com/shes_so_skirt/donna-von-hoesslin-surfer-designer-activist

I Need GSP to Stay in Business

donna — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 17:42:03 +0000

I just wrote to Senator Feinstein and Congressman Gallegly to implore them to help revive the GSP program, the removal of it is causing me to have to raise my prices once again to stay in business. This, after a tremendous hike in the price of silver and a weaker dollar forced me to do that already once this year.

I can see this being the final nail in the coffin of many small businesses like my own. The artisans around the world who depend on us for work will be facing less contracts and lost income. I am going to do my very best to keep my own busy, because that has always been my promise to them, but this is going to be a very big challenge for my business.

Meanwhile we have added local USA production (very expensive already) of some designs in the collection, but I still pledge to support the Balinese people I have been working with for all these years.

Grrrr… The good news is, GSP has expired before and been revived. It can happen again. Fingers crossed.

This is what it’s about:

On December 31, 2010, the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program expired. GSP extends duty-free treatment to several thousand products imported into the United States from more than two-thirds of the world’s countries. GSP is an important way American companies keep costs down. Large and small businesses import products duty-free under GSP.

Seth on Scale

donna — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 17:53:20 +0000

“It’s good because rightsizing allows you to be profitable and live as a human.”

Today’s Daily Dose of Seth once again just nails it. This is one of many reasons I don’t send my designs free to celebrities and don’t want to sell my brand to Macy’s or Urban Outfitters. I keep BB small and manageable so I don’t lose control and can keep surfing, but most of all, so it can remain win-win for my artisans, my staff, my self and my customers. In manageable scale.

Once, in 2007, my brand was on display at the National Retail Federation’s annual “Big Show” at Javitz Center in NYC, in the “Store of the Future” installation of a Pop-up Store.

I felt like such a prostitute when I saw who was coming. The C-Class of all the big box retailers marched through and I had to stand there and explain to them why they needed to make environmental and social responsibility a priority. A major shoes and accessories chain asked me to create a cheap line of jewelry for them which I felt would have necessitated exploitation of the people making them to get the price as low as they needed it so I simply said NO.

Thank you, Seth, once again, for confirming what I already knew in my heart.

Ready for the doors to open.

Bikinis & Bangles – The Making of the Hobie Bohemian Bangle

donna — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 01:04:55 +0000

Some of the 17 hand-painted styles we created for Hobie Girl. You cant even buy this collectors item! The only way to get one is to buy a Hobie Bikini at a partipating Dillards or other Hobie retailer.

I’ve spent the past two months working on a really cool project with Hobie, one of the oldest iconic surf brands, today a multifaceted conglomerate of fun things us ocean lovers do in the water, sailing, kayaking, surfing and much more. Together we created a Betty Belts private label product, a hand painted bangle to be used as a gift-with-purchase promotion for retailers who sell Hobie Girl Bikinis. Buy a bikini, get a free bangle.

On various levels I’ve worked with Hobie for years. We share two brand ambassadors, a.k.a. “team riders”, the lovely surfing twins Sierra and Hailey Partridge. Sierra and Hailey have been with Team Betty since 2005, when Betty Belts became their first surfing sponsor. Photographer David Pu’u, who around then became my own partner in life, started shooting them surfing and modeling BB and soon got them cast as models for a Hobie photo shoot in Hawai’i. One thing led to another, with the girls proving their water skills to be numerous, and they became the first female athletes since Joyce Hoffman (1962) to get signed on by the brand.

Hailey and Sierra Partridge modeling one of the 2011 Hobie Bikinis. Hailey is also wearing my new "surfboard resin" earrings, made from excess surfboard resin collected by local shapers. Upcycle with style!

Every year since, Hobie has hired David to shoot most of their product lines, including the bikini line for their ad and retailer display campaigns. And Betty B. accessories make a frequent appearance on Hailey and Sierra. I myself am the one who styles and accessorizes the bikini shoots every year. We all work really well together and the results are always gorgeous.

When they started thinking about their annual gift-with-purchase for 2011, Carrie Seifert, PR Director for the brand, contacted me about Betty Belts possibly creating the giveaway for them for 2011. Together we came up with the hand-painted bangle idea, using the patterns from the 2011 Hobie bikini collection to make them extra special and collectible.

Nyoman's beautiful hands add a layer of design to one of the Hobie Bohemian Bangles. Each one is painted by hand by the Balinese Artisans of Betty B. for the Hobie Project.

My artisans in Bali have been very excited about the project and diligently hand painted 9000 bangles in 17 different patterns to become a gift with a Hobie Bikini purchase at Dillard’s Stores and other select Hobie retailers this Spring. For a retailer near you, check with Hobie Girl.

Please see the photos below and their captions to get to know the people behind this project and enjoy the interesting back stories. I am very proud of my artisans for pulling his off in a relatively short amount of time and especially to my Bali production manager Ketut, for coordinating everything over there so seamlessly and capturing the process in these photos.

My staff in Bali and I are looking forward to doing more private label jobs like this for other companies who want to have something more authentic and unique to represent their brand.

For more info please visit www.BettyBelts.com

Betty Belts artisan Komang Oka, age 25, carefully paints the Hobie floral pattern onto one of the Hobie Bohemian Bangles.

Here you can easily see the first two steps painting this Hobie Design on the bangles. They need to dry between each coat. They can have as many as 12 layers of colors in the patterns we made.

Wayan Karmini, age 22, is meticulously painting pink dots on the bangles. She is wearing her old stained clothes for painting, but still matched it up. Notice the way she holds her pinky finger, which is an aspect of traditional Balinese dance.

A close up view of Wayan's talented hands at work.

These Hobie Bohemian Bangles have a few more layers to go before they are finished, but they already look really cool!

Betty Belts Artisan Made Nguwer, age 17, paints pink dots on one of the flower Bohemian Bangles. She practices Traditional Balinese Dance, as you can see by the way she holds her fingers here.

Kadek Kenti, age 21, takes a break from painting to spend a moment with her daughter. Children are cherished in Bali. Interesting Fact: Balinese Babies feet are not allowed to touch the ground for the first six months of their lives to protect them from evil spirits.

Ketut and Ayu who work at Betty Belts HQ in Bali carefully pack the bangles for shipping to California. Interesting fact: Everything we make and process in Bali gets blessed every day in their Hindu rituals. It is an important part of the culture that is an important part of the making of BB products. You can always feel the love when you own a piece made by Betty Belts.

Ketut Lestari, age 23, sits behind a wall of bangles in the Betty Belts HQ in Bali, doing quality control of each and every one before they get stacked and packed for shipping. We had the same situation here in California when they arrived.

The Hobie logo is painted onto the inside of every bangle.

That's me, Donna, surrounded by boxes of Hobie bangles at our house. The shipment was too large to process at the tiny Betty B. shop in Ventura, so we did it over several days in the living room of our home. Our cats enjoyed their temporary perches on makeshift box towers in their terrain.

Sierra Partridge of Team Betty and Team Hobie was over at the house to shoot some surfing with David and helped quality control the shipment from Bali one evening. Thank you, Sierra!

Our cats Ninja and Samurai enjoyed having a house full of boxes while we processed the huge shipment of Hobie Bohemian Bangles in our living room.

Betty Belts in the Media: Donna’s a Cover Girl!

donna — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:06:55 +0000

Wow, I’m blown away!

I’m a “Cover Girl” today!

Check out this inspiring article below from this week’s VC Reporter…

Betty Belts Owner/Designer Donna von Hoesslin graces the cover of the VC Reporter with one of her all time favorite quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Commerce, Compassion and Community

by Claudia Pardo McFayden

The sweet scent of African freesia wafting through the store and onto the street entices visitors into the carefully decorated eclectic space that is Betty Belts. Cradled in a corner just off the beaten path in Downtown Ventura, the cozy yet vibrant ocean-inspired accessories shop, owned and run by Donna Von Hoesslin, is replete with beautiful and unique jewelry and accessories — ceramic necklaces, metal pendants, leather cuffs, colorful scarves, elaborate belts, cute beanies, intricate hairpins and more. It’s a delightful bazaar of one-of-a-kind, handmade treasures.

Established as an online store back in 2003, Betty Belts, also known as Betty B., is older than its current brick and mortar location. It began as a wholesale and online brand of belts in Santa Cruz, with a later addition of jewelry. “The brand existed before I opened the store,” says Von Hoesslin. Operating out of a warehouse on the basis of win-win — people, environment efficiency and women’s surfing, Betty B.’s promise has been to show up in the community while offering a unique and accessible product.

A surfer herself for more than 10 years, Von Hoesslin finds her inspiration in the beach and in her time spent out in the ocean. It was her passion for surfing that caused her trepidation about opening a retail store. “I didn’t originally want a physical location,” she admits. “I was afraid I would not have time to surf, have a life.” Her boyfriend and biggest supporter, David Pu’u, Santa Barbara native and celebrated photographer and filmmaker, encouraged her to get the space. Von Hoesslin took her board out to sea and found her answer in the place that inspired it all to begin with. She opened Betty Belts in 2007. “It was the best decision I ever made.”

Since then, Betty B. has become a hub of connectedness in the community. Offering an array of uniquely designed jewelry by local artists and artisans from Bali, it remains true to its original promise: to contribute to the community and build relationship through a unique product. Work by local artists including that of the skillful Hands of Stone, a group of women who make eco-friendly ceramic necklaces with ocean-influenced elements, Kathleen Fitzgerald’s one-of-a-kind, exquisitely crafted, hand-made earrings; Guy Q. Goods’ metal jewelry for men and women; Lise Solvang’s cozy alpaca and bamboo knits; Tiki Tony ceramic tiki necklaces; and David Pu’u’s attention-demanding prints that serve as the main wall décor in the shop.

Women are especially responsive to Von Hoesslin’s enriching collaboration with the artists, not only the female patrons but all the women who become interconnected through Betty Belts. There is a tangible female bond that begins with Von Hoesslin as the connector and is often sparked by chance meetings at Betty Belts. “I introduce women who come to the shop to each other, and cool things happen,” she says. One particular connection is mothers and daughters.

“They wear the same jewelry. I dig it,” she says. Often she will find the mothers coming back to the store to purchase a new piece because their daughters are wearing theirs. The common faux-pas of being caught wearing the same accessory is instead a thrilling commonality among her female customers.

A recent collaboration between Von Hoesslin and what is affectionately knows as Team Betty, a group of female surfers who have become essential in the promotion and marketing of Betty Belts, resulted in the personal design of a piece of jewelry by each of four local sufers: Mary Osborne, Jeannette Ortiz, Hailey Partridge and Sierra Partridge.

Together with Von Hoesslin and Pu’u, they traveled to Bali, where they worked and executed this creative project.

In addition to working with local artists, Von Hoesslin employs several artisans from Bali, where most of the pieces are made. Having worked for close to seven years with the same artisans, Donna has established a work ethic based on fairness, skill, good quality and, most important for her, community…

Continue reading here:

http://www.vcreporter.com/cms/story/detail/commerce_compassion_and_community/7661/

P.S.

Check out our Facebook Page and become a fan!

Modern Procrastination (Seth’s Blog)

donna — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:53:19 +0000

Don’t miss Seth Godin’s Blog today Modern Procrastination.

I’ve fallen victim to this… But usually I challenge the Status Quo. In fact I now no longer acknowledge the existence of it… Food for thought. Short read. Seth is always brilliant. Read his new book “Linchpin” if you want to really make a difference or of you just want the ultimate early adopter status symbol on your desk…

Seth's new must-read book Linchpin

The Struggle These Days…

donna — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 23:05:04 +0000

… Perfectly explained by Seth Godin in his Blog today.

I’m a big fan of Seth’s Blog and always recommend it and his books to people I mentor.

If you can only subscribe to ONE blog, make it Seth’s.

No Bigger Grant, But A LOT of Love

donna — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:24:51 +0000

Relieved that the Intuit contest is over. I didn’t win the finals, but I DID win in many ways: stoke, inspiration, love, generosity & GRACE.

No bad at all!

Smiles,
Donna

PS Read a great article about it all here in the Ventura County Star

Anxiously Awaiting Finalist Results in Intuit’s Small Business United Contest

donna — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:52:38 +0000

The judges are judging, the votes are being tallied. Tomorrow I will find out if my video submission won my company a small business grant from Intuit.

You can’t vote on it any more, but please come watch my video and be inspired!
Fingers crossed, my friends!

SMiles and Aloha,
Donna

Inspiring Video from Betty Belts Can win 25K with your votes. A must-see and enjoy!

donna — Tue, 19 May 2009 00:58:17 +0000

Read Readers of The Betty Blog,

As you may know, I’m a finalist in the Intuit Small Business United Contest.
I submitted my story, it won among over 1900 entries as one of 50 finalists with the help of many of you who read my story and rated it as Inspiring Funny and Useful.
So for the next round, I had to create a video, which is now live.

http://community.intuit.com/contests/aP3kaUx0aqllvkab8P4pmk

This video expresses how one can turn a passion into a viable business.
I think this video really hits a nerve because the free-fall that I experienced when I left Berlin and struck out on my own once again is not unlike what many are experiencing today in our economic disaster era with the loss of stability connected to the loss of the status quo on so many levels.

This shift is a time of true opportunity.
One CAN create a business based on passion.
There’s nothing to lose, really, if you think about it…

http://community.intuit.com/contests/aP3kaUx0aqllvkab8P4pmk

Bonus: you will finally get to hear me sing. ; )

How to “vote”:
-click on link above and watch the video
-rate it as INSPIRING USEFUL and/or FUNNY (you get THREE votes, one each category)
-Create an Intuit Community ID and password (sorry! But it’s very brief)
-Leave a comment if compelled, but not necessary
-Spread it far and wide via your blogs, social networks and more

Thank you!

With love and gratitude,
Donna