Thursday, November 06, 2008

doodle is a funny word and doodling just sounds like it should be dirty

As far as business ventures go, I wish the blood of Charou ran thicker in my veins.

My first chug of entrepreneurial spirit was some time in Std4 (Grade 6 to you young 'uns) with a little start-up called "Cupid Aint Stupid". 

I dealt primarily in matters-of-the-heart and would write custom love-letters and poems for a very reasonable R2 each. I was also the purveyor of fine hand-made twinsaver tissue flowers .

I made enough to buy a few chip rolls at break-time, but the business wasn't sustainable.

The type of people who didn't write their own love-letters were also the types who promised to pay up tomorrow. And the market for tissue flowers was soon overtraded after I gave tissue-flower making lessons for R3.

I never sold much else after that, apart from a few sticker sheets in Std5 and my old Archie comics much later on (a transaction I now regret).

But now I've hit on this idea of customising notebooks.

I'm a huge notebook phan-girl. I'm moleskine-verskrik, and the one I'm currently desecrating is a gorgeous leather-bound volume from Florence with the giglio embossed on the cover.

But I don't quite know where to start. Sites like cafepress.com offer exactly the type of arrangement I think would work for me, but after exchange rates, the final product is too expensive for the average blog reader to consider [Would you pay something like $12 for a notebook just because it had something clever on the cover?].

Are there any South African based print-on-demand set-ups?

Here are a few of the notebook cover ideas, taken from some of my more obscure blog-moments over the years:







Is this the kind of thing you'd willingly hand your credit card details over for?

12 comments:

S said...

I wouldn't but thats's just me being stingy on my student budget. However, if your question also implies are there people out there who would pay for this?
Hell yes!
Have you seen those little thingies and cards and purpled teddy bears and little magnets and keychains at Exclusive books and Cardies and other overpriced trinket places? They sell for alot, and they sell! Because they're clever.

I've always wanted a moleskine, but they're so damn expensive I'd be even scared to write in them. Plus they're just like a very arrogantly proud form of a notebook.

Shafinaaz Hassim said...

they fold! i love that one :)

ZK said...

i would get one :) just cause its yours
though moleskins are expensive sigh
but going to invest in a moleskin diary for next year
just saw the ones in exclusive books and I WANT I WANT
like a small kid I WANT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nafisa said...

Lol, very witty.

I love buying custom stuff like this because it is unique.

sara said...

check out etsy.com
people pay a lot for stuff on there.

Princess said...

Would certainly get one...hmm now you got me thinking :) make quick and get some printed we would def buy it!!!!

Az said...

I LOVE the second last one...the "No Fucking Half Measures" LOL...if you knew me, you'd know that is SOOOO me!! I'm an extremist. lol

KiLLa said...

Get a hot chick to sell it to me..

salma m said...

if u sell the diaries that zk talks about, with a saaleha-comment, like the ones you've got in this blog post - i'd SO buy it from you.. and i'd even pay the postage to have it sent to durbs for me ;) -seriously- ... on a large-scale, i see the potential for buying a heck of a lot of chip rolls. good luck, babes xx

Anonymous said...

fuck yes.

that one 'i love like i hate'.

gimme any kind of merchandising with that branded on.

kickass, saaleha, i always knew you did.

Anonymous said...

Not really, no. It's basically the same concept as having a T-shirt with a clever phrase on it.

Except you'd wear the t-shirt and that would put it in the public eye more.

The notebook is more hidden.

And anyway, it's pretty easy for someone to just add such a cover phrase onto their own notebook. We used to cover our schoolbooks in whatever we wanted to identify ourselves with - pictures or whatever.

I'm much more interested in the idea of blog-books (or 'blooks', as they're called) - putting a person's blog into a book format.

Reading on a screen will never match the feeling of holding a book in your hands.

Anonymous said...

mmm...a little bit of colour and crazy design...yeah i would buy it.
i love the quotes...especially the origami one and the "wan" one.
hehehe.
moleskin is sooo awesome.
i have the ones that come 3 in a pack, however, it's not that leather bound stuff which i so want!!
i am a sucker for pretty notebooks.
i love sitting at the blank notebook section at EB.
husband bought me an awesome one once...wrote a whole lot of crap in there...and now i hide it away so no one can see it!
it has a very old-school hollywood feel to it...i love it!

etsy.com rocks....i'm about to whore off some of my goodies (that just sounds dirty), once i receive my box from farmland with all the goodies inside it...
will let you know how it goes!!!

Profane. Profound. What's your poison?