GladRags Gab

My last few weeks have been full of getting together with powerful and successful women. 

Over a Mediterranean food lunch, I got to catch up with my friend Sharon MacFarland who is the President of Emerita a company that makes great products for women. Even though we both live here in Portland, we mostly seem to see each other in other cities while we're at the same tradeshows. She gave me samples of their new skin care line for women over 40 - I love them but I'm having trouble keeping my teenager's hands off them so I guess they are great for all ages! Sharon is a true entrepreneur in the sense that she runs a great business and just as effectively takes care of herself physically and spiritually because she believes in balance.

Tuesday I met Julia Stoops of BlueMouseMonkey for a quick dinner. Julia was one of my favorite instructors when I was in art school. She wanted to change career paths a while back from teaching to working fulltime as a web developer and was a bit nervous about making the leap. Well, she leapt and now she's busy all the time and she's making some amazingly creative sites. And writing a novel, and preparing for a new exhibit of her paintings… wow, she must have a clone!

Friday I had a lunch at a great little Mexican restaurant, ¿Por Qué No? in our neighborhood with my friend Rebecca Pearcy who owns Queen Bee Creations , makers of the hippest handbags around.  Over great big margaritas (hey it was Friday!) we discussed the challenges and rewards of being artists and business owners at the same time. Rebecca is a musician as well as the creative force at Queen Bee. She's inspiring and fun and generously open to sharing her business experience.

Tomorrow night my friend and artist extraordinaire, Marie Watt, has asked me to go a dinner/lecture to hear Wilma Mankiller , first woman chief of the Cherokee Nation.  I'll report more about that next week but I'm excited to hear her.

And this was back in March, but I'm still remembering the great experience of sharing time with Madeleine Shaw of LunaPads at our tradeshow in California. She is a quickthinking bundle of energy who is full of passion and good ideas. We got together with the DivaCup team and had some great fun - I'll bet you can guess the topic of conversation!

So it sounds like all I do is socialize, but I think all these experiences are valuable. I work here in the office everyday with inspiring women and I just think it's part of my job now to be with great women.

Brenda 

It has been a busy time here at GladRags. Besides our day-to-day efforts of sending out great products to smart women, we've recently moved from our too-big warehouse to a smaller just-right-sized commercially-zoned house. That means we have to be very neat and clean to keep things functional here. Too much mess or a few of days not picking up after ourselves and the place becomes disfunctional. But it feels good to be operating in a more efficient, compact space. We're in a thriving zone of North Portland and it's fun to watch all the activitiy out the window. There's a bus stop out front and we're right on a bikelane that is full of bikers come rain or sun so it always feels very alive here.  And the garden holds surprise after fragrant surprise.   

Spring has brought a lot of new things to GladRags besides the garden surprises. This blog has been on our "to do" list for months, we've introduced the new Moon Cup , and Sara is just working on in-store packaging for the new Pantyliner . It's already meeting with great success on the website and will be our May special on the site.

- Brenda