Derek's Blog

Facing a 2-week break leaves me with very little time to get things done in August. For me, this is a challenge and an opportunity. In Fashion, everything seems to go last minute. I have to get used to this.

In my daily job, someone asked me 2 weeks ago to fill out some kind of spreadsheet. It was due on the 31^st of July. These kinds of deadlines make people lazy. Including me, I didn’t start working on it till this afternoon. In my new business, this would be impossible. If something needs to be done, it will probably be yesterday. I like working on tight schedules, it makes me feel busy and I prefer being busy instead of laid back. I’ve been laud back for 6 months, when my department was made redundant and I was just sitting there doing nothing.

This week I learned that I have 3 major stimulators on my day-off (Wednesday), the first is my cleaner, she comes in very early so I can’t sleep very long and I can’t sit around the house doing nothing. The other 2 are my kittens; they get up really early in the morning, begging for attention and food. They also make me focused on what I do when I’m at home. If I’m sitting behind my laptop, being quiet, they will be quiet too instead of running around.

Also, I had 2 good meetings on Wednesday, with 2 fashion designers. They were both very different and gave me a lot of information. The information helped me with both the creative process and the financial process. It will enable me more to map the potential costs and investments for my start-up.

As described last week, I’m still looking for a place to work in Amsterdam. One of the designers helped me out by laying out the kind of space a fashion designer requires to work in. Now I know exactly what I need. I sincerely hope that one of you readers from The Netherlands can give me some tips for me!

Next week will be another round of meetings; I hope to see some people from the business as well, so I can have a good feeling about Applestreet when I’m heading off on holiday.

Derek Tigges