I have been a bridesmaid five times: Jennie (floor-length yellow satin), Amy (anything sleeveless in a color other than black), Leah (anything sleeveless, but only in black), Arielle (whatever I wanted, because my primary role was to help produce the wedding—in Spanish, in Spain), and Jamie (this one was both a friendship wild-card and fashion wild-card; I showed up in black patent-leather cowboy boots and a silk print dress to stand up for a relatively recent friend with whom I am no longer friends). I have seen many, many people panic about getting married. I myself have never panicked about getting married—like all good spinsters, I have instead panicked about not getting married, but fortunately I’ve grown out of that, along with recently transitioning out of spinsterhood.

"100 Reasons to Panic about Getting Married" book soothes wedding jitters. Hopefully.

I will tell you that the bride in the above list who panicked the most before getting married is the one whose marriage ended in divorce (though she’s now happily remarried), and the things she was terrified about immediately beforehand (to the point where she puked before walking down the aisle, already dolled up in her dress—talk about holding someone’s hair!) were, as she only narrated in retrospect, the exact things that brought down the marriage. She knew, but went through with it anyway, for a variety of reasons—one of which was plain old hope. You know, hope that he’ll change, that you’ll change, that things will get better rather than worse—false hope. Of the other brides, most are now past the ten-year mark with their marriages, with at least one kid, and they have helped to disabuse me of my tendency to idealize all things marriage-and-children. Apparently it gets less sexy and romantic over time, especially once the kids enter the scene. If the couple can make it to the empty-nest phase, however, marital happiness often returns (or so I’ve read).

It's a double-edged sword, highlighting a universal fear about marriage—and also a dose of palliative reality.

We recently came out with two little books that I just love: 100 Things to Panic About Getting Married  and 100 Things to Panic About Having a Baby. As we descend into the June wedding season (right now we’re just in the pre-game), why not think about weddings and marriage and my inexplicable affection for the TV show Just Say Yes to the Dress? When Knock Knock had greeting cards (oh, how I do miss them, but what a not-so-profitable pain in the butt they were to create and distribute), we had a series called “Now that you’re . . .” that included “Now that you’re engaged . . .” and “Now that you’re married . . .” etc. We were going through our retired cards a while back and this series prompted the “100 Things to Panic About” concept. Because no one has enough to panic about already, right? I will admit, being the most cynical and dark sensibility in the group, that I thought the 100 reasons to panic was perfectly adequate without the slightest bit of leavening. You know, like matzoh. Fortunately, however, here at Knock Knock we are well balanced in complementary work and emotional habits, and the nice ladies in editorial determined just the right way to make this book and its 100 Reasons to Panic About Having a Baby sibling (and, one conjectures, future titles in the series) both funny and reassuring by undercutting each of the 100 fears with a dose of palliative reality.

Our "Now that you're . . ." engaged greeting card helped prompt our "100 Reasons to Panic" books.

I often say of myself that I am drawn to tipping sacred cows. If you tell me not to mention something, it’s all I want to blurt out. I know that I’m not alone in this, and as a matter of fact, this apple didn’t splat too far from my rotten family tree. My ninety-one-year-old paternal grandmother, a character and pistol if ever there was one, is childlike and compulsive in her need to reveal anything she’s been told to keep secret, in her increased desire to converse about topics that have been declared inappropriate for present company (favorite topic: other people’s weight gain), in her inability to refrain from repeating that which has already gotten her in trouble multiple times. At the very least, for the most part, I try publicly to be polite and considerate of individual people’s feelings. But cultural feelings? Fuck those. You want me to buy into the Judeo-Christian industrial complex? I’ve got a Jesus joke for you. Want to tell me about your belief in homeopathy? I wrote a section in The Complete Manual of Things That Might Kill You called “The World’s Most Expensive Pee” about vitamins and supplements and other stuff that somehow gets a pass from our otherwise solid belief in the scientific method. If you are overly earnest and dedicated to an indefensible idea or deluded fantasy (you know, like most religions), I am genetically inclined to mock you. I’m sorry—it’s really not personal, and if you’re going to believe deeply in something, like a faith, shouldn’t you be secure enough to withstand anybody else’s tirade rather than getting the panties in a bunch because of some political cartoon that didn’t treat your prophet with what you and you alone have deemed to be the proper degree of respect?

The truth is funny, and telling the truth is a stress release valve. We’re all scared. We’re scared of puberty and growing up and college and friendship and love and marriage and parenthood and poverty and injury and aging and death. (And of fat. We’re really scared of fat.) It’s the Western way to avoid that which scares us, which is in part what makes us overly earnest. So rather than taking offense when someone (possibly me—in this very post, no less) tips your Shroud of Turin, maybe think about how lightness of heart, even when applied to something you hold very, very dear, might be a good thing for the world.

Our "Now that you're . . ." married greeting card also inspired our "100 Reasons to Panic" books. See? Worrying never gets old.

One of the treatments for phobias is desensitization, something we outlined in The Complete Manual of Things That Might Kill You. The idea is that if you’re repeatedly exposed to that which terrifies you irrationally and you’re able to see that the outcome is just fine, you’ll be able to let go of your phobia. That, of course, is some of the impetus behind and draw around the 100 Reasons to Panic books. When you think about it, humor also often functions as a form of desensitization, allowing us to put out into the open and then laugh at the things that most disturb us, in the process melting away the fear and shame.

So if you’re planning a June wedding, go right ahead and get married, even though there are at least 100 reasons to panic about it. Do know that you’ll likely be dissatisfied in about ten years, but you can look forward to once again satisfied another ten years down the road, if the studies know what they’re talking about. Spend lots of money on your big party, wear a $2,000-and-up dress, and question what it’s all about. Then, right before you move to your waiting position at the altar or walk down the aisle, read 100 Reasons to Panic About Getting Married. Because, oddly, it’ll make you feel better.

As many of you may know, when I founded Knock Knock, in 2002, there wasn’t much out there that was smart and funny. Corporate homogenization and lowest-common-denominator pandering ruled the shelves. I was proud and honored that Knock Knock was able to change this within the gift and stationery industry, and we’ve had a good long run of success with this strategy, a track record for which I and the team members are endlessly grateful.

As the sayings go, however, all good things must come to an end, but fortunately, every ending is actually a new beginning. Today I’m contented to announce that Knock Knock’s voice will be changing, effective immediately, in order to stay current in the marketplace. No longer will we strive for wit or humor. Instead of putting the fun in functional, we will strive to put the unction* in functional.

The Knock Knock team feels certain that this change is in the best interests of our loyal customer base, and I believe I speak for the group when I say that we are immensely relieved to no longer have the pressure of trying to be funny all the time.

For further information on our solemn new approach, please see the official press release and the video we’ve made to provide examples of the changes we’ll be making.

Click here to see our new unfunny products for Fall 2013.

*Definition of UNCTION from merriam-webster.com:
3b : exaggerated, assumed, or superficial earnestness of language or manner : unctuousness

Yours truly with the world’s largest nametag, also known as “the license plate.” Bonus? You can’t forget to take it off

During the week of February 25, I was lucky enough to attend the TEDActive conference. I’ve been a fan of TED Talks since I first saw them on my very first Virgin American flight (both things were great improvements in my life), and I’d heard of TED for five or so years before that, but it sounded like kind of a wonky, exclusive, male-leaning thing. A friend of mine, Grace Hawthorne, formerly publisher and co-founder of ReadyMade magazine, was attending as an exhibitor in the Lab area with her new company, Paper Punk, and she said, “You should come!”

Well, that’s all it takes to get me to spend a few thousand bucks (or, more accurately, to get Knock Knock to spend a few thousand bucks) and cancel my life for the week—just press Enter. No need to actually look into what TEDActive is, vs. the main TED Live conference; I somehow made up in my head that it would be like an event version of the Exploratorium (one of my favorite places in the whole world). You know, because Grace was in the “Lab” and all.

TEDLive has been in Long Beach for the last five years, post-Monterey, and TEDActive in Palm Springs, formerly Aspen. In 2014 they’re going to move to Vancouver and Whistler, respectively. For maybe only the third time in my life (not very many for an Angeleno), I drove to the Palm Springs–adjacent La Quinta and checked in to the La Quinta Resort, notable for being the one of only two hotels in the United States to have their towns named after them. (I learned this important piece of trivia from the in-room hotel instruction guide, which I always read from cover to cover upon checking in. Really.)

The theme of the conference was “Young, Wise, Undiscovered.” I don't think I mentioned that the overall event design—site, signage, graphic—was superb. This was our guidebook, a lovely linen bookcloth stamped with matte foil. Sumptuous.

I sauntered off to register and pick up what turned out to be a LOT of swag. Nice swag. Expensive swag. Including a Jawbone UP Band, no less! (So far I neither “know [my]self better” nor “live better,” but I don’t blame them. If I had to say, though, I prefer my Jawbone Bluetooth speaker to the UP Band.) And the crowning glory? The largest name badge I have ever seen in my forty-three years on this earth, which I later learned was nicknamed “the license plate.” At least I never forgot to take it off at the end of the day.

For the first session, I entered the main hall, a large conference area outfitted with couches, easy chairs, and beanbags provided by Steelcase (one of the triumvirate of my favorite furniture companies, joined by Herman Miller and Knoll) and two large screens on the wall. Imagine my surprise, given my Exploratorium theory, to learn that TEDActive is (I thought at first) merely a simulcast of TEDLive. “I came all this way and paid money just to watch video I could have watched on my computer?” I thought, with my characteristically open mind.

And it was amazing.

Between the crowd energy, the comfy seating, and the impressive telecommunications setup, it may just have been better than sitting in the auditorium seating of TEDLive, where I’m guessing that most people are only able to see the close-ups on a screen anyway, like at a Bruce Springsteen concert.

I’ve been fortunate to have a few experiences in my life that I characterize as “amusement parks for literate, intellectual adults.” (Grateful Dead shows don’t count, even though I did see god and an astonishing number of prisms when I was in college.) One was the Venice Biennale, a city-wide international art show that takes over all of Venice (Italy), for which I got to attend the festive opening, or vernissage, meaning lots of good parties with free booze. Another was my 2011 visit to Design Indaba, in Cape Town, South Africa, where I was honored to be a speaker. These events are like county fairs for people who are into culture and intelligence and not so much concerned with prize heifers.

I asked the people I met—and everybody was so invariably friendly and welcoming that I began to plot the utopia into which I would transform my neighborhood upon returning—why they’d chosen TEDActive over TEDLive. While many of them professed to having a bit of a chip on their shoulder about not having been accepted to attend TEDLive, a competitive entry given that there are so many returning attendees from 30 years of previous TEDs, they also extolled the more informal, sociable, partying atmosphere of TEDActive, which takes place on a shared resort campus among 600 people, vs. the intellectual celebrity–driven, exclusive, private party­–oriented, auditorium-seaterly 2,000-person TEDLive. One LA acquaintance of mine who’d been to both, Eames Demetrios, whose Kcymaerxthaere is one of the most interesting cerebral pieces of long-term performance art I’ve ever seen, indeed characterized it as above, and with the benefit of firsthand comparison between both, he chooses TEDActive, where he can see and talk to friends rather than miss running into them amid the hordes of TEDLive.

One of Sebastião Salgado’s landscapes, a new direction for him. Courtesy Taschen.

As some of you may have gleaned from (a) Knock Knock; or (b) past posts, I am a sucker (really, more a geek) for good organization, systems, and logistics. On that front, I was blown away by the TED organization. The parties, dinners, food, lunches, meet-and-greets, app, etc., were so top-notch that it made me want to come work for them.

But that’s all mere intro. Now on to a smattering of the talks themselves, those that particularly impressed me, in their conference order (note that few of the talks have been uploaded to the TED site yet; most links are to talk summaries, but I’ve bolded those links that are actual talks):

• Sebastião Salgado. Long one of my favorite photographers for his devastating images of inhumane working and living conditions, he described how he began ailing and went to the doctor in part because “I was producing no semen, except with my wife.” The doctor told him that he’d seen too much misery and was somaticizing it, so after a break, Salgado began photographing landscapes, all just as moving and meaningful.
• Stuart Firestein. He’s my new older-smart-man crush. He studies ignorance. I could scarcely contain my tingling.
• Phil Hansen. An artist who developed a debilitating tremor from overly painstaking pointillism, Hansen had to adapt his art to his disability. By embracing his limitations (or—and this expression and its corollary, as always, make me gag a little—“thinking inside the box”), he flourished with a more diverse body of work than he would have without the limitation, though I found myself wondering if he might want to choose some different subject matter in addition to executing in so many different media. His art with matches, though, is not to be missed.
• Meg Jay. While her talk and research doesn’t have the primary-source genius of some of the others (more New Yorker than The Journal of American Medical Association), and she lacked the charisma of some of the more performative presenters, her point resonated loudly: twentysomethings, especially women, need to cast off the idea that the twenties don’t count, rejecting the extension of adolescence into the third decade. A hallelujah resounded from those of us who sometimes struggle with working with or counseling millennials.

Liu Bolin in full camouflage. Yes, there’s a person in there. Do you understand from the art that our humanism is being overtaken by commerce? Courtesy Eli Klein Fine Art.

• Liu Bolin. Another artist whose work I’d followed pre-TED, the Beijing-based Bolin camouflages himself into scenes with paint. It’s amazing how something that could be one-note somehow manages to sustain its power.

• Amanda Palmer. Also known as Amanda Fucking Palmer (ergo I liked her from the get-go), Palmer talked about her music career and busking and Kickstarter as business models. She later performed two pieces that just rocked and wisdomed.
• Stewart Brand. OMG. Did you know people were resurrecting extinct creatures using DNA, a process called “de-extinction”? OMG.
• Kate Stone. As a paper-o-phile, I was completely titillated by Stone’s success in printing—yes, printing!—electronics onto paper with touch-sensitive inks. Also, and this wasn’t part of the talk, she’s a successful-in-the-world male-to-female transgendered woman, a representation of courage and selfhood that’s inspiring to see.
• Leyla Acaroglu. Again, as a product designer, I was particularly struck by the way Acaroglu approached sustainability in industrial design (especially since I think most pretensions to sustainability are bullshit). Also, I liked her haircut and her accent.
• Allan Savory. It turns out that “desertification” of arable land is a big problem worldwide. Previously the culprit was thought to be overgrazing, but it turns out it’s sort of the opposite. Savory has devoted his life to reversing desertification, in part because of his devastating experience of ordering the killing of forty thousand elephants.
• 

  Ron Finley, renegade farmer and total hero.

  Ron Finley. I actually am going to work (volunteer) for the Los Angeles–based Ron Finley, a somewhat unlikely food and gardening activist whose vision brings agency and fresh food to inner-city grocery deserts. He brought the house down.

• John McWhorter. Not a revolutionary talk, but an interesting one for those of us interested in the evolution of language. McWhorter convinced me, someone who believes language is in a constant state of decline, that texting mores (LOL’s, r’s, u’s, ur’s, and the like) are actually representations of spoken language, not written, and as such are just another extension of how we communicate.
• Kees Moeliker. A serious but hilarious talk about live birds who have sex with dead birds, some of whom are of the same gender, a phenomenon he memorialized in an academic paper that was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize (for improbable research). I was somewhat traumatized, however, by my first glimpse of a duck penis. Damn, I wish this talk were up already.
  

  Seriously. I was traumatized by the sight of my first duck penis.

• Hyeonseo Lee. A rare and tragic glimpse into life in North Korea from someone who got out.
• Christopher Ryan. An even-handed anthropological look at monogamy vs. polyamory.
• Dan Pallotta. This might be the talk to listen to if you only listen to one. Pallotta completely changed my mind about how nonprofits and charities should be viewed and run.
• Julia Sweeney. This might be the second talk to listen to if you only listen to two. I’ve long been a fan of Sweeney’s since watching her live storytelling performances at the Uncabaret in the late 1990s. Sweeney sums up all of TED 2013 in some eighteen minutes—brilliantly! Double damn, I wish this talk were up. You’d get the whole shebang in one video!

So overall, what was TED’s impact on me? Believe it or not, it gave me hope. I saw serious people grappling with serious issues in productive, practical, apolitical ways. I witnessed the passion of people whose careers are callings. There were only a few people I met whom I didn’t like (a record for me). TEDActive made me want to engage more fully in the world, and even though that impulse faded away like my Palm Springs tan, it’s still reassuring that it’s actually possible for me to feel it.

I was accepted to attend TEDLive 2014, but I didn’t tell anybody at TEDActive 2013. Secretly I’d rather be at Whistler for TEDActive 2014—resort, beauty, snow, togetherness, some of the great people I met—but I feel like I have to just try nursing from the mother teat to see what it’s all about. I have a feeling that the downside of going to TEDLive as a novice is going to be social isolation because I’m guessing I won’t be invited to the Nobel Prize–winner dinners, as I don’t know any. I do have one potential ace in the hole, though—an international VIP who may be speaking at TED 2014, whose wife I’m good friends with. If that ends up working out, I am going to ride their VIP-soiree coattails so hard they’ll wag.

______________________________________________________________________
P.S. Here’s one good article I read about the experience of attending TED. And here are spot-on Onion parodies of TED Talks.

P.P.S. I don’t know why I didn’t think to take more pictures. It never occurred to me that I might want to share the experience, say, by blogging about it.

For the monthly Head Honcho Hello, which I know all of you have marked on your calendars to read, I am usually tasked with coming up with my own topics. For this one, however, our gloriously brilliant and beautiful digital and marketing coordinator, Melanie Gasmen, had a couple suggestions of topics to tie in with upcoming outreach efforts:

1. Pet peeves
2. Reasons to panic about having children
3. My own WTF moment

I lust after this man. Unfortunately, he’s dead. Meet my lover, William James.

Just so you know, I try to exist on as much of a “need to think” basis as I can—meaning my brain is only so big and there’s so much stuff going on, why think about things that don’t require thought? It’s one of the reasons I originally got GPS in my car. Even though I know my way around pretty well, why bother with figuring out exact directions for a new destination? It’s also the subject of one of my favorite quotes ever, which I do believe I’ve mentioned here before in reference to habit formation and new year’s resolutions, from the psychologist William James, brother of novelist Henry:

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all.

If other people just wrote down what they had to do on a To Do Pad, then I wouldn’t have to wake up in the middle of the night wondering if the to-dos are to-done!

“Need to think” plays a big role in my work life. It’s one of the reasons why it’s so important to have coworkers who are really on top of things. When I delegate something or pass a project along to the appropriate person, I can, in most cases, let it go from my mind because I know the newly responsible party will take care of it and come back to me when it’s my turn again. Of course there are people in every group, organization, or family who cannot be trusted do to this reliably, so with them you have to keep that thing you passed along in the back of your mind just in case it slips through their cracks and you have to follow up. It’s one of the least favorite things to take up space in my brain because now the thing is not truly off my list and it’s not truly on theirs. It causes me to I lie awake at night thinking, “What do I have to follow up on?” or something will pop into my head to bolt me awake: “Wait, I never heard back from _____ on _____!” I don’t think these people realize what a mental intrusion it is when they are not trustworthy with tasks and other responsibilities they’ve taken on.

Which is an excellent segue into pet peeves. Oh, dear reader, would that I did not have such a bounty of pet peeves. I am a one-person irritation machine, and the only person being hurt is me. Take driving, generator of many, many pet peeves. When people do something idiotic, don’t use their turn signal, or otherwise exhibit complete and total selfishness and/or

self-involvement, I feel I must school them so that they will not do it again. Schooling them entails driving up next to them, looking at them piercingly and searchingly so that I can know what such an asshole/moron looks like (somehow, whenever I see them, no matter who they are or what they look like, I feel my assessment of them has been proven by their

looks/demeanor). Schooling them can involve a honk of the horn that isn’t necessary for safety; the finger; a verbal “Have you ever heard of a turn signal?”; or, in the case of bike riding, a swift open-handed thump to their trunk, the hollowness of which makes a startlingly loud noise and hopefully, for just a second, makes them think they hit someone. A few other pet peeves, in no particular order:

• When a cashier puts the bills in your hand before giving you the change, then pours the change on top of the bills. There is no way to recover from that with just one hand without dropping change! Put the change in the palm, and the bills in next. Doesn’t everybody know that?
• People who write emails that say merely “How are you?” It’s like an obligation hit-and-run. I’ve started writing back, “Fine, and you?”
• The phrase “You go, girl,” and worse, “U go girl” (note both the “U” and the absence of comma).
• The request “I’d like to pick your brain,” especially when offered up in exchange for lunch, as if lunch were something great I would otherwise be going without.
• Short boots, especially the slouchy ones. They give everyone cankles.

Left to right: 1. If these boots give Sienna Miller cankles, do you really think they’re going to look good on you? 2. At least these boots make no bones about their cankle aspirations (thank you, Givenchy). 3. I was under the impression that we’d eradicated the fashion cankle after the 1980s; unfortunately, like polio, it appears to be back.

The problem with pet peeves, however, is that they almost never result in behavioral change in others and they bring about higher stress levels and upset in you. Which means you’re the loser. Which means that the winner is the person who leaves her shopping cart in the middle of the aisle because she’s the only one in the universe and has no idea what’s going around her—but she’s probably much, much happier than you because she’s the only one in the universe and has no idea what’s going around her. See? Self-awareness is a curse.

On to the reasons to panic about having children. There are many. For one, my nickname for the second kid is “The marriage killer.” Even though I hear from the frontlines that parenting is, like the Army, “the toughest job you’ll ever love,” nobody appears to wish they could reverse time and not have had their children, nor do they want to return them to the shelter from which they came. So in her worst moments, this barren spinster says, “Have your goddamn children and shut up with your panic because you chose this and you won’t want to have taken it back and your kids are kind of annoying to boot.” That said, I really hope you buy our incredibly cute and insightful book 100 Reasons to Panic About Having a Baby.

My own WTF moment amid this jumble of mercilessly social-media-driven topics? How, dear reader, do we choose just one? The sad fact of the moment is, I know I’ve had a million in the last week alone, and WTFs are pretty much all I talk about with my friends, but now I can’t think of anything under pressure—in fact, you could determine that Jen Bilik having nothing to say is a WTF moment. WTF?

Black and white, upper left picture, left to right: Mel Gasmen, our genius digital and marketing coordinator; me; Sara Hartman, our savvy ecommmerce manager; Trish Abbot, the indispensable VP of brand development. Color picture: Jim Papscoe, our president, joins us, looking oddly like one of the Village People.

I write this month’s Head Honcho Hello from my Times Square hotel room on a break from one of the three tradeshows for which Knock Knock mounts its own booth, the Spring New York International Gift Fair (NYIGF). I must say that at this point in my career it is more fun to write about tradeshows in a hotel bed than it is to actually be at the tradeshows. I have become somewhat internally infamous for flying all the way to New York, showing up at the Javits Center, and, after walking the aisles to ogle the landscape of the marketplace, somewhat antsily announcing that I have work to do at the hotel. It’s a far cry from when I had to manage setup and staff the booth myself all day, every day, then break down the whole caboodle.

The true pleasure of the tradeshows is seeing the Knock Knock brand writ large, all in one sweep, much as an artist much appreciate seeing his/her work all up at once for an exhibition. It gives me a bird’s-eye view of what we’ve done, past and present, all at once, and an opportunity to suss out the larger patterns that will govern what we do in the future. Despite my (permanent) tradeshow fatigue, I almost always leave the shows feeling enthused and inspired. And it’s also a great opportunity to spend some fantastic social time with the team—last night we all tied one(s) on at the gift industry’s AIDS charity, Gift for Life, which has a gala event on the first Sunday of each January NYIGF. I seem to recall having performed some embarrassing dancing. And there were photos (see top right).

Each time I enter the Javits Center, however, my first thought is, “Oh my god, there is so much stuff in the world. Do we need this stuff? Why are we making more stuff? I make stuff. I am part of the world stuff machine.” From ceramic dogs to creepy dolls to cloyingly scented unctions to aprons with insightful proclamations like “Danger! Men Cooking!” one can instantly understand why the United States has a trade deficit with China and why the American storage industry is thriving. But then I spend some time in our booth and get the luxury of fielding compliments on, stories about, and laughter in response to our work, and I feel a little better about what we do. I mean, I actually feel great about what we do—proud and great—but amid a sea of stuff-stuff-stuff it’s hard not to feel like part of some problem or another.

Our Spring line on display. A busy booth is a happy booth.

On these New York trips, two to three times per year (May for the National Stationery Show and August for the Fall NYIGF), I always tack on a bunch of other meetings: desksides with editors for PR, in which I visit them at their office with a bag of new products and do a little dog-and-pony-show about them, pitching for future inclusion; various consultancies; and time with retailers, reps, and buyers. Even though I used to live in New York City and have lots of friends and some family here, Manhattan has become a work destination as I’ve made shorter and shorter trips to get in and out as fast as I possibly can, leaving less time for personal get-togethers. This is a mistake. I miss my New York people, and I miss slurping down the marrow of the city! But I suppose if I were to make a longer trip to accommodate personal recreation, it would probably be prudent to do it for the May show. Weather-wise, August and January pretty much suck.

The breakout bestseller. Because isn't love about filling in the blanks anyway?

I am inordinately proud of the Spring 2013 list, especially its amazing array of books. Our What I Love About You journal is flying off the shelves, a breakout hit. It was inspired by a handmade book I made years ago for my aunt Sue on the occasion of her fiftieth birthday, recounting, one per page, fifty things I loved about her, as well as by a book that our editor Kate’s boyfriend made for her. You fill it in yourself for a loved one—just in time for (ugh) Valentine’s Day. I am sad to report that two copies have been stolen from our booth display at the show so far—who are these people with no morals, and why don’t they behave? We have a whole new party line, including balloons, samples of which are flying high in the booth thanks to a sweet little helium tank we’re keeping in the booth closet. Apparently they have to be repumped every morning. I particularly love these wine tags. Also making enthusiastic inroads are our guest books, for dinner parties and bathrooms. The bathroom one is, I think, so terribly clever, and I just love the way the graphic design came out. Finally, we have two little books that aren’t yet on the website, probably because they haven’t hit the warehouse: 100 Reasons to Panic About Getting Married and 100 Reasons to Panic About Having a Baby. These morsels are perfectly giftable, sweetly illustrated, and wryfully on-point. The team really outdid themselves this season.

The Bathroom Guestbook provides you the opportunity to leave desirable evidence of your trip to their commode. Not the undesirable kind.

Okay—now I’m off to meet a fellow entrepreneur, a generous fix-up from another entrepreneur who thinks we’d hit it off, at her wine and cupcake bar, Sweet Revenge, in the West Village. Then I get to have dinner with my cousin. Tomorrow is part consultancy, part tradeshow walking, then I have the honor of being interviewed by the inimitable Debbie Millman for her podcast, Design Matters. Wednesday is an all-day marketing consultancy, then back on Thursday. Of course, all of this will be over by the time you’ve read this, on Friday, February 1. But we can always reminisce together, no?

Happy 2013, FOKKers, friends, loved ones, and others!

A few years ago, my cousin and I threw a party founded on truth and self-awareness. This was part of the invite.

I wish I could say that I’d stayed up until midnight last night. My New Year’s Eve gang and I had all caveated our get-together by saying we weren’t sure we’d make it to 12:00 a.m. At a certain point in the evening, I yawned and determined it felt really, really late, so I looked at the clock: 9:40. Oy vey. So, with assistance from the Internet and DVR technology, we forced New Year’s Eve.

In Spain, the New Year’s tradition is to put a grape in one’s mouth with each of the clock’s twelve gongs during the first twelve seconds of the year, “las doce uvas de la suerte,” thought to bode good luck for each of the twelve months as well as ward off witchcraft. We seven adults and five kids crowded into our hosts’ home office in front of the computer and, led by my friends visiting from Granada, watched a replay of a Spanish New Year’s broadcast and stuffed our mouths, leaking grape juice on our pecs but all managing to choke the twelve grapes down. Then we returned to the den to watch the paused 10:00 p.m. replay of New York’s countdown, though somehow it turned out instead to be a co-broadcast of New Orleans (a fleur-de-lis rather than a ball) and Nashville (a musical note rather than a ball) helmed by television personalities with way too much makeup and microphones that looked like large, flesh-colored warts.

We returned home, well sated from the friendship and copious amounts of caviar and blinis, whereupon I hopped onto Facebook to make and break my one and only New Year’s resolution: “In 2013, I vow not to be so annoyed by the annoying phrase ‘love and light.’” Just typing it out annoyed me—resolution broken. If you’re not familiar with these words, they’re the latest “namaste,” a piously overearnest and, to my mind, cloyingly fake way to say “thinking of you,” etc. “Sending you love and light” is its most frequent usage, often in response to someone’s woes as expressed through social media, generally by otherwise lovely folks who attend Burning Man. I think I’m going to start saying “Sending you indifference and sound” instead, because “Sending you hatred and darkness” is a little too negative.

“New year, new you” has been January’s American marketing thrust for years now. Monthly magazines pretty much close their January issues by October and November, having finished the writing, editing, photographing, and typesetting of articles on cleanses, colonics, and canoeing to help us feel like we’re going to be better versions of ourselves with the swipe of the clock’s hands. This follows the December issues’ discussions of how we should implement change year-round, not just in honor of the new year, in keeping with the popular media oscillation of inventing a problem then solving it for you then reinventing the same problem then solving it for you, as tied to the purchase of product.

One of my favorite retired products, from which I am sharing with you the pamphlet "On Resolve" to help you understand habit formation, should you be inclined toward New Year's resolutionary activity.

I personally am fascinated by theories and research on habit formation, in part because I suck at good habits (though I have been flossing regularly for some time now, retaining a mouth that’s cost so much over the years that if I were to die on Law & Order, they’d say, “Someone must be looking for her—that is very expensive dental work”; “heavy is the head that wears the crown,” they say of kings, queens, and bosses. In my case, heavy is the mouth that contains twenty crowns, one on each molar). In 2004, this interest in the implementation of new habits drove me to create “The Resolution Tracking System,” a retired Knock Knock product I believe I’ve blogged about previously but am too lazy to hunt down.

My favorite thing about “The Resolution Tracking System” was its introductory treatise, “On Resolve,” a brief overview of habit formation containing one of my favorite quotes ever, from the late-nineteenth-century psychologist William James (brother of novelist Henry):

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all.

Until a few years ago, that was me and my flossing, a nightly internal argument that took longer and required more energy than the act itself. In recent years I’ve tried to live on a “need to think” basis (parallel to the better-known “need-to-know basis”), automatizing or delegating (e.g., to GPS) those things that should not require thought, thus freeing my brain for more important and creative affairs as well as for television.

My other favorite aspect of researching for “The Resolution Tracking System” was my discovery of the concept of SMART goals. The acronym varies slightly from source to source, but I have settled on Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timed. For example, if I want to “play more video games in 2013,” I can’t express it in that manner and succeed. Instead, I must plan to “spend an hour a day playing Grand Theft Auto, hijacking fourteen cars without running into law enforcement before January 15, 2012.”

Other than my blink-and-you-missed-it vow of tolerance for “love and light,” I’m not on a resolution kick for this inaugural month. Too many made and broken over the years, as celebrated a while back by me and my cousin at a break-your-resolution party. Instead, I’m going to keep on trying to improve the things I suck at, one day at a time, as I’ve been doing, with widely varying results, every day of every year since I first realized I sucked at a lot of things. Just in case you want to take the resolutionary plunge, however, I would like you to have the benefit of “On Resolution,” downloadable right here, right now.

It's important to start the year off on the right fact.

In the meantime, I will make and fulfill just one more New Year’s vow: to wish you all the best for 2013 (actually, that’s the second time, as I also did it at the beginning of this post). I and the rest of Knock Knock look forward to hanging out and communicating with you virtually—and if we’re lucky, IRL every so often—throughout 2013, which, in case you were wondering, is not a prime number despite the “13,” as it can be factored to 3 x 11 x 61.

Happy new year, FOKKers!

The second sign welcoming people into the party. The first posed the question, "OMFG, has it been 10 years already?"

Do you, any of you, have social anxiety? That weird thing that makes you dread something that’s supposed to be a great time, even though you know intellectually you’ll probably have fun and forget about yourself once the shindig actually starts? The perverse instinct to cancel and run and hide with some ice cream and TV even though everybody thinks you’re outgoing?

That’s what I had going into the ten-year-anniversary party. Not to mention that it was a hell of a lot of work to put on. As someone who’s never planned a wedding (bridesmaid five times, though, thank you very much), I really had no idea. It’s a party. In a space. With people and food and drinks and decorations. What, Trish? What’s that you say? You think we need a party planner? Pshaw.

Trish was right. (She usually is.) It was such a big project that, as the day approached, I was not only dreading it irrationally and agoraphobically, I and the party team quite understandably couldn’t wait for the post-work relief that would set in once the heavy lifting was over.

But you know what?

IT WAS A MAGICAL NIGHT.

Social anxiety be gone. Work be worth it. People be incredible. Evening be beautiful. Triumph be palpable. Party be rock star.

Trish, Craig, me, and Jim—festive captains of the ship!

In general, gratitude—at least the self-help modality version of it—bugs the shit out of me. “Blessings,” people say. “In gratitude.” Yeah? I mock your Prius bull-hockey with my namaste hands. So imagine my surprise when I noticed myself feeling GRATEFUL. Tear-in-the-eye grateful. Non-mocking-namaste-hands grateful. Therapist-would-be-proud-of-me grateful. Pocket-full-of-sixpence grateful.

Because of this, right now, for one time and one time only, I’m going to do what I’d vowed never to do—make a gratitude list. The kind that Oprah says will make me a better person if I do it every day. But that’s not why I’m doing it—I’m doing it because I really, truly, and uncharacteristically want to count my and Knock Knock’s blessings. And I’m going to make it eleven just for the hell of it, and because ten years is actually sort of eleven years when you count them on your hands.

1. A kick-ass ten-year-anniversary party that truly felt culminative and triumphant and symbolic, filled with Knock Knockers past and present (and who knows, maybe future?), trusted and relied-upon vendors and consultants, friends of Knock Knock, friends of Knock Knockers, up-and-coming young product designers and their creations, neighbors, FOKKers (shout out to August FOKKer of the month Ariana, who came and surprised us from San Bernardino and made my night!), and even a very small smattering of (other people’s) family. A party that looked as good as it felt, that went off flawlessly, that included mixed drinks called the High Five and the Pep Talk, that offered cheeses with unpronounceable names from local shepherds served by delightful individuals in orange silk bowties. A party filled with art and music. A party at which all attendees actually looked like they wanted to be there.
2. 

   The first Knock Knock catalog, the first Knock Knock product (pre–Knock Knock), and lots of gorgeous cheese.

   An amazing Knock Knock team. Really and truly and unforgettably. A more dedicated, skilled, hard-working team you will not find—because we get shit DONE. Shout-outs here to Jim and Craig and Trish, who manage the whole enterprise with me; Mia and Miguel and Aimée in design; Patricia in product development; Shane and Will in production; Erin and Jamie and Kate and Dayna in editorial; Melanie in marketing and Sara in web; Elyse and Chelsea in manufacturing; Gil and Paul in ops and customer service; Jazzlyn and Lena and Paul in customer service; Travis and Lonnie in sales; and Odi in accounting. And all of our sales reps all around the country. And our distributors all around the world. And our PR agency and lawyers and IT consultants and accounting firms. But not Jesus. I’m sorry. I’m just not going to be thanking Jesus here.

3. Getting to make creative, fun, interesting stuff we believe in. Yes, there are the craven marketplace bestsellers like all the WTF products, all of which seem to sell no matter how little creativity we put into them, but we work at a company where we brainstorm about reasons to have sex, write books about drunken toasting, and design snow globes. Right? Right? And a creative corollary here: I’m grateful for a workplace in which we can swear and talk about untoward things and not have to dress up.
4. Having people buy creative, fun, interesting stuff we believe in. Oh, you retailers and buyers and FOKKers, how wonderful are you to allow us to do what we do? If you didn’t buy it, we wouldn’t be able to keep making it. If you didn’t interact with us on social media and in stores and at tradeshows, we would feel alone and blue. You get it, we get it, let’s get it together! We’ve got it together, FOKKers, you and Knock Knock. And might I just add that I am also thankful for 2012 being one of the best sales years we’ve ever had, with incredible opportunities popping up left and right. It’ll all combine to be our most profitable year, too, and if you’ve been following the year-by-year history of Knock Knock on this blog (see postscript below), you know how important that is for us!
   

   Just as the party was starting. A few great Knock Knockers in this one: Chelsea, Will, Sara, Jim, me, Craig, Trish, and possibly a couple others I can't make out. Doesn't everybody look great in their Saturday best?

5. Offices we love in a place we love. We are so fortunate to be in the Electric Avenue Studios, with our perch recently expanded into four units from three. It’s a creative, light-filled, open space within walking distance to great lunch places and even the beach (though nobody seems to go from work) in the land of eternal sunshine and the neighborhood of cool breezes, a place where we can walk and bike and generally flout the Los Angeles cars-only reputation.
6. The fact that we made it ten years. Wow. Ten years. Lots of businesses don’t make it to five. When I started Knock Knock, a couple people in my life told me they first thought, “Well, that stuff is great, but what other things can they do?” Each time we brought out a new list, they thought, “Okay, surely they’ve exhausted the ideas now.” The fact that we made a ten-year-perservering company out of consistently innovative and fresh creativity—with major mistakes and missteps and disasters and meltdowns and injuries and teaching “opportunities” along the way—is something to be grateful for, no doubt about it.
7. Other smart people. Early on, I determined that I wanted Knock Knock to function in part as a think tank in the following manner: really smart people coming together to grapple with and debate about interesting challenges and issues (one of the definitions of an interesting problem is one you haven’t had before). I like smart people. I like learning from others. I like it when other smart people constantly spur you to bring your A-game. I like it when there are people around you who are better at what they do than you are. Done, and done!
   

   The amazing AmDC new product design show, Fun / Functional. Such beautiful and witty designs, along with many of their beautiful and witty designers!

8. Knowing how to do this thing we call business. It was so terrifying when I/we had no idea what we were doing or how to do it. Now I’m reasonably seasoned and not a bad businesswoman. For the most part, I truly know how to run Knock Knock, and I know how to do the critical thinking work to figure out the things I don’t yet know. And we’re big enough and functional enough to attract and compensate other people who know what they’re doing, people who’ve had prior experience doing things (vs. reinventing the wheel over and over again), people who can say things like “There might be a better way to do this” or “Let’s create a system or process for that” or “Jen, you’re full of shit.”
9. Having the financial support we needed. We got help for about seven years, which culminated in our becoming debt-free in 2012. Knock Knock’s financial history is unique. It’s one of the areas in which we had an extremely lucky break, and we were able to get to where we are today without many of the financial struggles other growing companies have faced. Sometimes people feel that if others get help financially, what they’re doing isn’t worthwhile. It’s probably an envy thing, and to be sure, it isn’t fair whose endeavors get supported by easy money and whose don’t. But when you and the team work really, really goddamned hard to do something innovative that succeeds in the marketplace year after year (not easy to do, let me tell you), does the fact that you’ve had a couple legs up discount what you’ve done? I don’t think so.
10. A return to a reasonable work-life balance. This is partly personal and partly across the company. That first six years of ninety-hour weeks and untold stress and chaos took a TOLL on me. I still haven’t gotten back to certain pre–Knock Knock standards of life and self (though of course in so many other areas, I’ve greatly surpassed where I was before Knock Knock), but at least there’s the possibility of doing it, and I’m working on it (why, oh why does life require so much work on oneself? it’s exhausting! will it ever end?). It’s also across the company. Knock Knock is so much more orderly and sane than it was in the early years, with most people working normal hours most of the time and knowing what they’re supposed to be doing when. (Yes, this last creative development season, the one that just ended, Spring 2013, was an anachronistic killer, but it’s now over, thank god.)
11. Unending excitement at the prospect of new opportunities and the future. We have compiled a team that does not prefer complacency and status quo—in fact, people who drift in that direction don’t end up doing well at Knock Knock. But for those who love stimulation like I do? People who are easily bored and like to tackle new endeavors? People who are curious about almost everything and don’t say things like “That’s not my job”? It’s the best! On a strategy level, our planning is well into 2014. We’re thinking about things we’ve never thought about before, on scales that would previously have been nothing more than unachievable fantasy. This shit is FUN!

The smiling faces I saw as I gave the speech for the evening. I think I kept it short enough!

So. I end my gratitude list by saying thank you. Thank you to everybody who’s made this ten years possible. Thank you to everybody who’s survived difficult times with and for us and has the scars to prove it. Thank you to everybody who’s celebrated with us, near us, or on us. Because you must know—for a pessimistic, self-flagellating curmudgeon like me to feel so lucky even for a moment is no small thing.

Thank you.

See you at the twenty-year-anniversary party!

P.S. Even though the postscript is dead, I do feel it’s important to let you know that I am aware I only got up to 2007 in my year-by-year narration of Knock Knock’s history. That’s six posts out of the eleven required, a majority. I do still plan to finish this project, and who knows, maybe I’ll make a book out of it, and it will come with a CD of music to slit your wrists by—like Mazzy Star. And a book isn’t too far off—it turns out that the median length for all books is 64,000 words, and I’ve already written (not including this post) 29,138. Because, as we’ve said from the very beginning, why use fewer words when you could use more?

2007: THE BREAKDOWN

2007 Overview: The sixth year. Yeah, it was still kind of miserable. A friend of mine is starting a new company right now and he’s enjoying that unique combination of high demand and difficulty fulfilling logistically—he just wrote this blog post about it, and boy did it resonate. He said to me, “I’m feeling SO FUCKED at the moment,” and I get it. He’s in a position where he can’t back out, he can only move forward, no matter the consequences. I sent him an adage that has long resonated with me: “The only way out is through.” In 2007, the only way out was through, but I finally decided I wanted actual out and began to work toward selling the company late in the year and during most of 2008. But even that out would prove impossible. “The only way out is through.”

2007 was the outrageous turnover year. The have-to-hire-lots-of-people really fast year. The “Fuck, everybody can quit except me year.” Really—you’ll see as you read on that it’s just one person after another (including our entire design team at once). Of course, much of that could be a testament to the difficulty of working at Knock Knock at that time, and to my persistent bitchiness. But you know what? It’s also just dumb bad luck and the fact that people time their departures for their own needs, not the company’s, and who can blame them? (Well, I can, not that it does me—or them—any good.)

But 2007 was also the year in which a lot gelled, most notably my co-leadership relationships with the VP of sales and the VP of creative services, successful collaborations that extend to this day. In key ways, they stopped being employees and started being more like partners. We hired an amazing managing editor, our first real editorial hire, and she was key in the process of transferring Knock Knock editorial out of my head and into a form that was teachable to others. We also almost killed ourselves putting out eight books in eight months. You know, books we pretty much wrote ourselves and/or led a motley crew of freelancers through, word by word. One of those, The Complete Manual of Things That Might Kill You, is still a bestseller for us.

And so. In the wake of all the turnover, I decided that I’d had it. I was good at creative and Excel, but I sucked at everything else. It was time to get the hell out. I knew I’d have to stay with Knock Knock post-sale for at least three years, so selling the company wasn’t an immediate fix, but at least I could get the process started before the complete and total nervous breakdown. I now think one of the characteristics of adulthood is that it’s really hard to get out of things. As another friend of mine recently wrote on her blog, “There’s no right way to run away.”

January 2007:

• The art director is promoted to VP of creative services. She has truly been the first person with whom I’ve felt I had a co-leader (other than, briefly, the ex-boyfriend). The VP of sales is the second, coming along two years later, and the three of us are proving to be a solid team. One of the primary challenges of being an entrepreneur is that until you are sizable enough to hire people to do the things at which you suck, you must stumble along doing them and hope that things will be okay until you either get better at them and/or hire someone else to do them. My two biggest issues as an entrepreneur have been managing people and overseeing finances. I am lucky to have the backstop of funds availability to soften the finances part, and now that I have the VP of creative services and the VP of sales, I have the start of a solid enough management team to help buffer the people part.
• At an all-company meeting after we all return from vacation (KK somewhat closes down between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day), I talk about the fact that we are professionalizing as a company, especially in the realm of departments (i.e., we now have them). We have individuals in charge of distribution and ops, accounting, production, sales, customer service, and design—single-point failure in almost all, to be sure, but the seeds have been planted. I also note that we are lean and mean, the best team ever, and that we have achieved our goal of having sales samples ready to go out before the new year, a gargantuan task.
• I am neck-deep in production on KK’s first books, to be released with our Fall 2007 list. We initially set out to do 18, of which we will accomplish 7. I am creating outlines and contributor packages for them so I can farm chunks out to the 75 freelancers I interviewed between Christmas and New Year’s.
• Because we don’t yet have adequate alternative manufacturing sources, we are in the position of either placing an order with the crooked manufacturing broker for Family Travel, our first Target program, or not doing it at all. We attempt to protect ourselves by creating what we have now realized is standard for manufacturing purchase orders, terms and conditions, and the crooked manufacturing broker fights us every step of the way. It will take months—and many attorneys and their fees—to hit upon a mutually agreeable set of terms and conditions, and it will go right up until the final minute, an unnecessary and stressful game of brinksmanship. It is clear that both the crooked manufacturing broker and his cut-rate attorney (AOL address, anyone?) are merely throwing out slimy, petulant roadblocks.
• 

  Oh, my sweet rambunctious Paco, loving and narcissistic, a snuggly sweet self-centered eternally adolescent boy. And he kept Maisie young almost until the end with top-notch wrestling.

  Paco the golden retriever arrives. He is five months old and comes to me through a friend who is a dog trainer. His first family has won him at a benefit auction but they have since determined he is vicious and untrainable with reference to their also apparently untrainable two-year-old daughter. Having always loved golden retrievers, this one suits my rescue ethic just enough and now it is Paco and Maisie the dynamic duo.

February 2007:

• We begin planning our second program for Target as well as a series of product for Michaels. With our new VP of sales, we are able to take advantage of all the mass retailer interest and have high hopes for the Ding Dong brand.
• The backs and forths on the books are insane. As, clearly, am I. To get these books produced with random Craigslist applicants is going to be a feat of superhuman impossibility. In order to manage it all, I have produced the project management spreadsheet to end all. I will need some in-house help very soon.

Okay. This was the insane project management spreadsheet for the Fall 2007 books. At the top you can see all the tabs/worksheets in the workbook (yes, these usually show up at the bottom of an Excel doc, but this is an extra-special visual patchwork). The big image in the background shows the outline and assignments for "The Takeout Cookbook"; the one on the upper right is for "The Savvy Convert's Guide to Choosing a Religion"; and the one at the bottom is for "The Complete Manual of Things that Might Kill You." The most intricate sheets, sadly, have lots of people's names on them, so I can't share here, but boy are they OCD! Oh, so proud.

March 2007:

• We wisely reduce the Fall 2007 book release from 18 to 10 titles.
• Our accounting manager resigns, which is a surprise to me. In general, when something surprises you as a leader, it means you were ignoring, overlooking, or neglecting something. Most people’s decisions to leave, I will say, have, over the ten years, not been a surprise to me. In this particular case, I have not been aware that she was unhappy, and I did not know that she felt she was underpaid (or that she was, in fact, by industry standards being underpaid). I am concerned that she felt she could not come to me to (a) let me know she was unhappy; and (b) tell me that she needed and deserved a raise. I admit I did not know she was underpaid, and that with all I have on my plate, I am not keeping track of accounting industry salaries or of the changing needs of her position. I tell her that when I hire a new position, I investigate competitive salaries at that time, and almost never turn to it again except at critical salary revisions. This also brings to mind something I am learning over my years of running Knock Knock: for the most part, women do not ask for raises or negotiate very well for those raises. Either they become ineffectively emotional (i.e., angry that they’re not paid enough—before they’ve asked for a raise—to they point that they alienate their audience) and do not bring facts to back their request up, or they ask very timidly for too little. As an employer, my job is to keep overall personnel costs down, and I’m generally juggling unforeseen expenses over which I have no control, trying to keep all of us employed and paid. I have at times given people bigger raises than they’ve asked for, and of course we most frequently give raises that are not asked for at salary review time. But one of the key things I feel women must do to achieve pay parity is learn how to negotiate on their own behalfs. In any case, I and the accounting manager are able to talk openly about her concerns and I grant her the significant raise she deserves. However, I will also learn another lesson (which will not cement itself in my gut until I make this mistake a couple more times): never talk someone into staying, as the original reasons they resigned—and the original reasons you were also perhaps unhappy with their performance—will undoubtedly come up again. In truth, neither of you buys much time or satisfaction. At the time, however, I feel (incorrectly, I will soon learn) I have both assuaged her resentment and dodged a bullet.
• We make one of the most important hires of Knock Knock’s history, a managing editor. This is the first editorial position we have had at Knock Knock. Until now it has been all me, plus a sporadic freelancer here and there. This managing editor will prove vital in transitioning Knock Knock’s editorial output out of my head and into systems. She and I will work oh-so-closely together and she will prove adept at turning my “This is how I do it” brain dumps into standard operating procedure as well as communicating the Knock Knock approach both to freelancers to come and to the editorial department she will subsequently grow. For now, I am breathtakingly relieved to have a comrade in this book morass. Despite the managing editor’s stamina and strength, however, this season of book production will just about break her, and we will go through freelancers like frontliners at Normandy. Wow—that’s probably an inappropriate analogy. But in our own ways, it kind of felt like Saving Private Ryan.
• Knock Knock begins to work with the one freelancer from these Craigslist days who will prove to be an ongoing asset to the team, an editor at large who is still with us today. One out of seventy-five ain’t bad!
• I quit smoking. Again. And pretty much for good this time (at least as of this posting). I’m sure this only proves to make me more lovely to work with.
• Knock Knock has worked with one PR agency for its entire existence, a boutique agency run by a delightful and talented friend of mine. However, we are hankering for more marketing-level, big-picture guidance than we are getting and decide to make a change. We make this change based on one recommendation, from someone whom I respect and admire greatly, without going through a compare-and-contrast RFP process. We will make this mistake once again, in 2008, with a web development firm. We have concerns about the new agency from the beginning, especially around personality and ego conflicts. We fly to Los Angeles the key people from the New York–based agency for launch sessions and become increasingly worried, but overrule these gut feelings because of the agency’s accomplishments and the source of the original referral. Plus, we’ve already made the commitment.

Oh, Rachael. How honored we were to share "People" with you in May 2007.

May 2007:

• Knock Knock breaks into one of my favorite media behemoths, People Magazine, to which I have subscribed since my grandmother started sending it to me in college.
• We postpone another book, The Savvy Convert’s Guide to Choosing a Religion, which I will write almost single-handedly, with the help of one researcher, for our Fall 2008 season.

June 2007:

• At an all-company meeting, I announce that we have increased personnel by 50 percent in 3 months. This primarily comprises assistant-level positions: accounting, production, etc., taking us further away from single-point failure. I talk about the evolving company culture and major projects that lie ahead. I also note that the VP of sales, the VP of creative services, and I are going to have an offsite retreat to examine where we are going and how, after which we will report our thoughts to the team.
• The management retreat, at the Ojai Valley Inn and Spa, is an unmitigated success in terms of bonding the three of us as a management team and beginning to get ahead of the company with respect to strategy—starting to steer the company rather than letting ourselves be buffeted by chaotic, unrelenting (thank god) demand. We are so relieved to be there together that I make the mistake of snapping a picture of us drinking comically large beers and sending it back to the office; I soon learn that this has fomented resentment among the hardworking troops back at headquarters (mostly, I will also later learn, bitched about by one person in particular, someone who will over time do great morale damage in her role as toxic gossip). At one dinner, the VP of sales and the VP of creative services take an opportunity to talk to me about my problematic management and people skills. I cry, but then again, I always cry, and I thank them for being honest with me. They are surprised to learn that I don’t always know when I’m being a bitch. I also am not sure whether they truly realize how much stress I am under—it’s a lot easier to be nice when you’re not worried about everything. We return from this retreat and announce to the team:
• We must get out of the trenches in order to plan, identifying opportunities and sticking with them. “Quantity isn’t necessarily return.”
• When we’re in the trenches with unreasonable deadlines, it’s easy to lose sight of what we’re doing this for. The management team commits to taking more time with the company for vision and team development.
• We’re doing this because we love to do it and because we need to make the company profitable in 2008 and 2009.
• We need to implement multiple tiers of development: Long-term —> design —> mass execution.
• We propose an orderly schedule for KK products and books, mass opportunities, and KK marketing.
• We characterize a regular rhythm of Spring releases for new KK piecetypes and Fall releases for books and line extensions.
• We will not do books again until Fall 2008, rather than Spring 2008, because we need longer lead-time.
• In order to catch up, for Spring 2008 we will only do 5 new lines of 6 SKUs each, developing on existing piecetypes.
• We plan on 8 mass programs, with different degrees of customization (to this point, we are seeing mass as a dilution of our signature products, a strategy that will not work for us and which we will have to radically rethink in coming years), and 1 licensing program (calendars) for 2008.
• We must fit our degree of perfectionism to the audience.
• We will revamp the website in 2008, in time for holiday 2008.

• After repeated clashes, I let the new PR agency know that I don’t think it’s a good fit and we’d like to move on. I am certain that on this phone call they will say “Yep, we have been feeling the same way,” but instead I find them shocked and aghast. After yelling at me for a while, they hang up on me. They then proceed to write me haranguing, unprofessional emails and bother us about paying them when we are up to date on our billing. There are lots of all caps in the emails, recitations of prior bona fides and accomplishments, positive self-comparisons to our previous PR agency, and phrases like “Per hard feelings: Umm, yes, and it would be a bit naive of you to think otherwise.” And there lies one of my overall experiences of being in charge: you get to bear the brunt of all the outside, and inside, guff. Punch in the gut? Check.
• Our previous PR agency is, fortunately, gracious and non-ego-driven enough to take us back, and it is like sliding into a nice warm swimming pool in the sun.
• I find myself copying and pasting the same emails to friends with whom I’ve dropped out of contact. One bespoke email, to my godmother, reads as follows: “I’m still buried in an interminable haze of 7-day weeks and 13-hour days. I’ve had 3 days off—literally—since before Christmas, and 2 of them were for Bruce’s wedding and the other was because I got sick. I committed to doing too many book projects, and I’ve taken the entire team down with me, and things are incredibly behind, and I have no choice but to finish. I keep trying to throw myself in front of the bus so the team doesn’t suffer more than they already have, but there are only so many hours in a 7-day week. I’m doing okay, but I’m exhausted and wanting a personal life and ready never to do this again. It’ll be over at the end of June (it was supposed to be over in mid-May). The lateness has all kinds of other ramifications for the business, so in addition to trying to fight through to finish, I’m having to put out fires left and right. Totally all my own doing, and now I have to get myself—and the team—out of it. I know I’ve been a workaholic before, but I think I’m finally ready to hang up that hat and move on to a normal life. Or at least semi-normal, as much as any business owner can expect.”
• We have received several overtures from calendar publishers to create calendars with them. Because calendars are dated, meaning, they have actual dates on them and so are obsolete the minute the new year comes along, they require special skill in determining manufacturing quantities and in selling them in to accounts. I know this from my time as a book editor, when I also worked on calendars, which are just about the most mind-numbing things to proofread you can possibly think of—one number’s wrong and the entire calendar is worthless. We are sifting through the offers and moving them along but have our heart set on one particular publisher, whose representative, a senior executive, gets back to us only erratically. Though we will move forward with them in 2008, the deal will ultimately be thwarted, in part by erratic communication. I find myself thinking of the much-paraphrased Maya Angelou quote, “The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them.”

July 2007:

• The VP of sales and I once again travel to Target. The buyer who was a fan of Knock Knock and who championed us has left (for a personal relocation, but we also learn that Target and other mass retailers move buyers to different departments every two years in part so they don’t get too attached to their manufacturers) and we are working with another buyer. This new buyer is a finance person rather than a product person, which I will come to realize is the norm. The buyers give manufacturers loose parameters (e.g., season, event, etc.) and it is up to the manufacturers to create good-selling product. One anecdote: Though we did not have confidence in luggage tags as a piecetype for the Family Travel program, the original buyer had pushed us to include them and told us she’d take responsibility if they sold poorly. It turns out that they were the only product in the lineup that sold poorly—very poorly—and they brought down our average sell-through. The new buyer points this out and I begin to say, “The previous buyer wanted us to do luggage . . .” and she interrupts me with a look that says “No excuses.” This and a few other incidents will be lessons to us that we and only we will be blamed for poor-selling product, no matter its genesis, so we must learn to resist when buyers ask us to create product in which we do not have faith. When the VP of sales and I are boarding the plane on the way home, I see something dangling out of the business-class overhead bin as we make our way to coach. I point up and he sees it, too: a piece of carry-on luggage adorned with one of our Family Travel luggage tags.
• Our two designers, our entire design team but for a very new (and very junior) junior designer, the design team that has done so well for Knock Knock over recent years, tell us they are quitting to start their own business. We did not see this coming in the slightest—in fact, during the June reviews, when asked about their goals and plans for the future, they indicated their commitment and happiness and thanked us for their positive reviews and salary increases. We are beyond shocked. They feel they are being generous when they offer us three weeks’ notice, not experienced enough to realize how difficult it is to hire so quickly and have no overlap, despite the fact that they have no immediately following commitments or urgency in next steps for their company. When I react in the moment with angry disappointment, one of them says, “You followed your dream, Jen. Now we get to follow our dream.” To cover, we negotiate with them a pricey freelance stint. We will miss them dearly, remember them fondly, and always look back at them as a high point in Knock Knock’s design history, and we will not gel with another design team for quite some time.
• The VP of creative services immediately sets to hiring designers as well as securing the production team, another pricey proposition because critical departures not only make other people nervous, they also inform the remaining mainstays that they are so vital almost any salary demand will be met. Turnover is expensive on many, many levels. I cancel my birthday party and go hide under a pillow without regard for the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup stains.
• 

  Check out the Self-Hurt series! Such good info in these babies. Do you get it? "Self-help," "self-hurt"? And they actually worked, meaning, if you did the instructions exactly the opposite, you could drive well, lose weight, train your dog, save money, raise well-adjusted kids, and/or get shit done on time. FYI, only "How to Traumatize Your Children" did well. In fact, an updated version of it still on our list/website in updated form and performing quite well.

  We have finally, finally finished the Fall 2007 books: six Self-Hurt titles, The Complete Manual of Things That Might Kill You, and The Takeout Cookbook—eight books in eight months. It has been a herculean, almost fatal task. We all but researched and wrote them ourselves, given the challenges of working with freelancers in the way I’d though would be so easy. The managing editor, the great freelancer who is still with us, and I go out to a decadent, boozy lunch.

• The junior designer quits before the two main designers have even left the building. She has only been with us since January, and she is problematic, but it is clear she is quitting primarily because she sees others jumping ship, and that annoys us all the more. For a few days during her notice period she fails to show up without even the courtesy of a call. I will take great pleasure over the years in checking her LinkedIn to confirm that indeed she will not or cannot hold a job for longer than six months, though I am sure, given that she exhibits the worst of Millennial characteristics, she does not think this is a problem.

August 2007:

• We make the Inc. 5000 list, a national list of the most rapidly growing companies in the United States. Out of 5,000, we rank 901. This is an objectively proud honor, and it results in lots of unsolicited and aggressive phone calls from companies that make plaques asking if I would like to have a commemorative plaque made. We will apply for and make the list for three more years, and each time I will have to duck calls from the plaque makers.
• The fast hiring in design continues. Unfortunately, the speed will show, and the turnover and problems with the team are far from over.
• I continue to get yucky emails from the old PR firm, including “We were going to take the high road . . . In any event, we don’t see a heck of a lot coming out of your old-new association . . . and, we’ve been looking. Are we a bit bitter? Umm, yeah, I’m not one to circumlocute, so, yes. Cheers.” Plus: “Happy to have given you that idea . . . and glad to see you used it.” Really? REALLY?
• I receive a fan note from a prominent graphic designer: “You’re my total hero. I keep telling people how much I respect what you’re doing. Because you’re doing it right. That’s the way to make really cool product: Produce it yourself! And you put your own money on the line. You didn’t inherit anything or have a sugar daddy. You rock.” I think to myself, what a great compliment! And then I think to myself, “How does he know that I don’t have a sugar daddy/uncle? How does he know I haven’t inherited anything? And if I did, does that invalidate what I’ve done, what we’ve done?” I ponder the meaning of money and access to it, and how its abundance invalidates in other people’s eyes just about anything you do, makes meaningless how hard you’ve worked, nullifies the fact that you’ve done something that others could not have done no matter how much money they had. Money, in short, is very funny. Or not very funny at all.
• I attend my twenty-year high school reunion, burdened with the shame of weight gain, non-marriage, and non-procreation. People who have only married and had children talk only of their families and feel inferior because they have not had business success but make me feel inferior because they talk only of their families. It will be my least-favorite reunion, vs. my class’s other two, the tenth and the twenty-fifth, but it is during this trip that I finally realize that after years of thinking I would someday (an always vague and unspecified someday) move back to the Bay Area, now I really want to. I really want to move back to the Bay Area, but I can’t.
  

  Love this book. Nobody got it. Isn't it clear to you from the title that this is a fascinating history of our progression toward outsourcing our food preparation? With illustrations?

September 2007:

• The first review of our books comes out! A nice little piece in the Sacramento Bee puts our Fall 2007 release on the public map.
• The VP of creative services, my right hand and compadre, tells me that at the end of the year, she and her husband and son are leaving Los Angeles to move to the Bay Area to be closer to family. She would like to continue working with Knock Knock remotely in some capacity, however. My first thought is “I want to quit my job and move to the Bay Area.” It hits me that I am the only one who cannot quit. The business can burn around me, people can leave in droves, but I must stay.
• I call my uncle and tell him that I need to come see him in New York—immediately. I buy the first first-class plane ticket I’ve ever purchased because, so last minute, it’s the same price as coach. I talk it through with him and we determine that it makes sense for me to sell the company. I set out to get all of KK’s acquisition ducks in a row, choreograph an exit strategy, identify potential buyers, and execute a sale. I know that any buyer would want me to stay on for at least a 3-year contract, so I want to do something before I actually keel over.
• I attend a one-day conference on mergers and acquisitions put on by business brokers—meaning, they offer the conference for free but then hope to have your business in selling your business. They talk a lot about value propositions in a hotel conference room near LAX. They will not become my BFFs.
• The accounting manager resigns. It is not clear whether the accounting assistant will stay in the face of her resignation.
• I tell the VP of sales about what’s going on with the VP of creative services. He tells me that he may quit if she leaves, given the extent to which she holds things together and acts as a buffer against my bitchiness.
  

  Yup, Core Ding Dong was basically Knock Knock Signature in different fonts, shapes, and colors. Why didn't it do well at Target? The general consensus was "People don't read. Too many words."

• Our second Target program, Core Ding Dong, a new styling of some of Knock Knock’s signature products, has hit the stores. I receive the following email from a customer: “Congratulations on your presence in Target! I was shopping there this week and a grocery list caught my eye on one of the endcaps. I’ve been using the All Out Of list for years (I think one of the items should be ‘love’). I wondered who made it and flipped it over, and lo and behold, Knock Knock was there! I literally squealed!! I cheered you on out loud and people must have thought I was a bit nuts. And I guess I am nuts about your products. So, congratulations! I hope you make lots and lots of money!” I realize that I am so caught up in KK’s internal struggles that I cannot even connect with how people are enjoying it out in the world. This email reminds me what we aredoing and why, and it makes me feel really good.
• I come up with a proposition to get the VP of creative services to stay for at least another year. It involves reduced hours, higher pay, and participation in the sale that I now feel is an inevitability. We come to an agreement over the next few months—she and her husband will endure a commuter marriage for one year, and she will single-mom it with her young toddler. In the end, however, they will not move; he will leave his San Francisco job at the year mark and they will settle in down south for the longer haul, and she is still with us. Thank. God. (And if you were wondering about my previous lesson, “Don’t convince somebody to stay if they don’t want to,” this was different because she did want to stay with Knock Knock, she just wanted to relocate.)
• We have our first nibble of interest from a television production company, about turning The Complete Manual of Things That Might Kill You into a television show. This is very exciting for us, and feels like vindication for how we killed ourselves over the books. It will not come to fruition, in part because our attorney impedes progress on the deal (more on that in 2008), but it will not be the last such offer. Because TV is not our business, it’s just plain fun, like going on a field trip to Hollywood.

October 2007:

• The VP of sales and the VP of creative services and I have another offsite strategy session. This time I do not send back a picture of the three of us drinking. The agenda includes the following points, including many words I thought I would never write or say, let alone even know what they mean:

• Tight, focused plan to maximize company value; “value enhancement” step of company evaluation and financial review, moving toward creation of offering memorandum
• Exit strategy: overview of sales process
• Necessary company documents: mission statement, positioning statement, product strategy, sales strategy. All figure into offering memorandum, document that must be prepared before sale process can begin (AKA “The Book”). Like creating a business plan, but includes past and future.
• I begin making television appearances on morning shows to promote the books, primarily the Self-Hurt series. Over about two months I will be on morning shows in Denver (in conjunction with the AIGA Conference), Austin (on a brief visit for pleasure), Phoenix (I fly there just for the interview), and Las Vegas (ditto). I learn a few things: weathermen walk around the studio and scratch themselves while the big-screen weather is up, untethered, with wireless microphones; all on-screen talent swear like sailors when the camera is off for a break and then go all bubbly the moment they are back; and I have a figure made for radio. Each time, all of this takes place around 5:00 a.m.
• Clearly not having learned from our first experience with books, we start work on our 2008 book release, six tomes for our new series concept, Lines for All Occasions. Also, I will finish The Savvy Convert’s Guide to Choosing a Religion, a task that will take all my free time in the new year.
• We decide to do a marketing consultancy with an outside firm, with the goals of defining ourselves more clearly, increasing profitability, and exploring exit strategies. This will prove an interesting experience. More on that in 2008.

November 2007:

• Because I don’t have enough on my plate, I start planning a home renovation. The VP of creative services warns me this may be too much to handle. She will be right.
• I make my last offer to buy Knockknock.com from the crazy person who’s not using it. I offer more than three times its appraisal amount, $35,000, in part because it will be a valuable asset in selling the company. I do not hear back.
• For Thanksgiving week, I travel to Banff to meet my cousin. I have been fighting a terrible and feverish flu in the two weeks beforehand but feel better by about a week before I leave. On the plane, I feel an all-new cold coming on. By the first morning I wake up in Banff, I am so sick that I might have trouble hauling myself out of a burning building. I am also experiencing continuous and copious nosebleeds. I get better after about three days then break a tooth (as soon as I get back I will have three root canals, and the penicillin from the root canals will give me a yeast infection). We try to ski on the second-to-last-day and I get altitude sickness. On the last day, we go on a hilly hike in the snow that involves crampon-like hiking boot attachments. I slip and fall on an exposed stone switchback step and immediately feel sharp pain in my ankle. I am certain it is just sprained, because it’s always just sprained. It takes an hour to hike the one mile out, downhill. I insist that we continue on to Lake Louise and that we not go to the hospital. The next day, I move through the airport in a wheelchair. My ankle is killing me. I go to work on Monday, but somebody says, “Go and get it X-rayed, you idiot!” (but not quite in those words), and I finally do. I have broken my leg in two places and will have a cast, walker, and boot for many, many weeks. I cancel and/or postpone multiple trips but am relieved I can still drive my stick-shift with the cast on (it’s the right leg, of course).

December 2007:

• Our UK distributor implodes in a cocaine and soccer scandal. Because the distribution climate and business model in the UK has changed, it will take us four years to get new UK distribution.
• The VP of sales and I travel to visit the company that had previously expressed interest in acquiring us. I let them know that I am ready to explore this option, and my overture is met with enthusiasm. This process will unfold over a good part of 2008.
• I join an executive development organization called Vistage in order to improve my executive skill-set (what a barfy sentence that is). I will be a part of Vistage for three years and it will help me immensely, though it will not end terribly well.
• Well before the end of the year, we have hired four new people in design and production as well as a new accounting manager and a manufacturing manager. Most of them will be problematic and will turn over relatively quickly. Hire slow, fire fast, and don’t hire people about whom you have a negative tickle in the gut—this will take us a while to learn.
  

  This was one of the top-selling cards in our Graphics Cards series, inspired by a trip to the Hallmark Store, during which I noticed how specific mass-market cards were: "For my favorite cousin's mother-in-law's dog on the occasion of his graduation from puppy school." I thought it might be easier to have it all in one. Goodbye, Knock Knock cards! We loved you well.

• We decide to discontinue creating greeting cards. While we love our greeting cards, we have encountered a number of issues with them:
• Because we manufacture the cards locally, as soon as we finish creating a product season, we immediately go into card development. This does not allow us to catch a breath, and their profitability (and average price point) does not justify the work that goes into them.
• While we have a few very successful card series (most notably our bold Graphics Cards and our Report Cards for Grownups), we are having difficulty following up on their success with such lines as Reality Rhymes, It’s Official, and Anatomy Is Destiny. We wonder whether we are two-trick ponies in this area.
• There is no aftermarket for loose (i.e., not boxed) cards, meaning we cannot close out or liquidate the ones that do not sell.
• Oddly, fulfilling cards is challenging, because they are easily dinged and bent. Also, they are strangely labor-intensive, because they must be bundled into packs of six with their envelopes. Retailers are also clamoring for plastic sleeves, which would be even more labor-intensive.
• As with wrapping paper, which we discontinued in 2004, we are finding that to go to the next level in greeting cards requires a certain level of commitment—go big or go home. In the cards’ case, that would mean hiring merchandisers to make sure retailers reorder when the cards go out of stock, along with a few other costly measures.
• We have an absolutely fantabulous holiday party at a local restaurant that will host our holiday parties for a few years to come. This year is one of our best. Despite the travails, we are all in high spirits (and drink many spirits). Before my toast, standing in front of the team and their significant others, I break a glass with my butter knife in an attempt to get everyone’s attention.

Our other best-selling cards series, Report Cards for Grownups, designed based on actual report cards from between 1850 and 1950 that I ordered from Ebay. This one, Aging, was our top-selling greeting card of all time, if I remember correctly.

High Points of 2007:

• Paco the golden retriever’s arrival.
• The success of our first Target program.
• The arrival of the pivotal and kick-ass managing editor.
• Pride at managing to put out eight great books in eight months.
• Getting our first TV offer on one of our books.
• Enjoying and making productive our first executive retreat.
• Bonding with the VP of sales and the VP of creative services as a dynamic trio management team.
• Discontinuing the greeting card line.
• Deciding to sell Knock Knock.

Low Points of 2007:

• The failure of our second program at Target.
• Killing ourselves to create eight books in eight months.
• Multiple resignations, including the entire design team.
• Having to bargain desperately and expensively to keep in place the people who didn’t resign.
• Changing PR agencies, landing in crazytown, and returning to our old PR agency, all in the space of three months.
• Deciding to sell Knock Knock.

Strangest Point of 2007: During appearances on several regional morning TV shows (you know, like Good Day Detroit!) to promote our Self-Hurt book series (with, might I add, call times at, say, 5:00 a.m.), watching the bright and shiny TV morning show anchors swear like sailors during commercial breaks then return to their bright and shiny, high-gloss, oh-my-god-you’re-too-cheerful selves.

Epiphany of 2007: All my adult life, starting in late college, I’d had the sense that I had something of my own to do creatively. I didn’t know what that something was, and it would take six years of active searching—what I call the “abyss years”—to start that something, Knock Knock. My twenties and early thirties were characterized by an unsatisfied drive to make my mark, and it wasn’t until Knock Knock that I felt I was operating on all cylinders, producing unique creativity that fulfilled me on a very deep level. While I was aware that Knock Knock was finally scratching that itch, it wasn’t until around 2007 that I realized the itch had been fully scratched. I had, in a way that resonated somewhere deep inside, made my mark, expressed my voice, produced my opus. While there were still plenty of things I wanted to do, both with Knock Knock and outside it, they wouldn’t be driven by this sense of desperate desire. There has been, ever since, a deep sense of peace and satisfaction about having made my mark. The only parallel such drive I’ve ever experienced is the one to have children. It goes beyond words and thought and even emotions, feels like it’s in my cells. I am assuming that when I have a child (which, in 2011 and 2012 I would actively start trying to do), that restless, insecure drive will be sated in the same way the creative one was. I see those of my close friends who are also creative at their roots who haven’t quite expressed their creativity in the way they’d hoped to and I recognize in them frustrated drive, even though they’ve done many other things in their lives (especially, with most of them, having children). I feel very, very lucky that I’ve had the opportunity to experience both the hunger and the satiation of my creative drive.

Whole Point of 2007: It would seem, perhaps, that the whole point of 2007 was deciding to sell the company. And that might be the case if we had indeed proceeded to sell the company. Certainly the decision to sell would lead to a process that would lead to my recommitting to keeping the company, which will be one of the whole points of 2008. For 2007, though, I think the most important point was finally identifying and trusting the right people to work with as a senior management team, and forging constructively honest, partnership-like relationships with those people, the VP of sales and the VP of creative services. Long may they live!

2007: THE PRODUCTS

New Bestseller of 2007: Vouchers. We wanted to do an update on relationship IOUs, and the idea was to style them like pre-computer airline tickets, on perforated cardstock. I still love love love the graphic design—deceptive in its simplicity, it was actually a lot of work to get exactly right. And, as mentioned above, The Complete Manual of Things that Might Kill You.

Can you tell these soon-to-be Knock Knock mainstays (at least for four or so years) were inspired by 1960s plane tickets? Isn't everything better with a receipt stub?

New Flop of 2007: Probably Self-Mailers, though we’ve had worse sellers. Oh—and the Takeout Cookbook. Nobody got it. “It’s not a cookbook?” It was more of a treatise on the history of outsourcing our food. “You would cook takeout?” Definitely a packaging and positioning blunder on our part, though I still do love it. Maybe we’ll reuse the content one day.

Alas and alack, our Self-Mailers did not single-handedly reverse the fortunes of the United States Postal Service.

Interesting New Product Note of 2007: We got our first offer to option our work for a TV series, from a very reputable production company, for The Complete Manual of Things that Might Kill You. Unfortunately, some legal foot-dragging killed it. Another option would go much further in 2008.

Quantity of New Products Released in 2007: 84

Quantity of New Cards Released in 2007: 84 (I know, weird that they’re the same number, right? but I double-checked)

Quantity of Products and Cards Retired in 2007: 222 (yes, a function of the ginormous and ill-considered expansion of the previous year)

Total Live Products and Cards at Year-End 2004: 324 (starting to approach a sane count once again)

2007: THE MONEY

2007 Revenue: $4,887,804

Year-Over-Year Growth from 2004: 48 percent

2007 Loss: 12 percent less than 2006’s loss

2007: THE PEOPLE

Number of full-time employees: 15

2007: THE BONUS

Our little nod to Magritte’s Ceci Ne Pas Une Pipe, our “This Is Not a Bookmark” holiday mailer.

2006: THE BREAKDOWN

The book that may have done me in, owing to its being the bible of the Machiavellian snake who stole as much as $1.5 million from Knock Knock. I still haven't read it.

2006 Overview: The fifth year. The year the evil, manipulating, thieving manufacturing broker’s activities escalated to their apex and I finally figured it out. The last of the truly horrible years (not that there wasn’t stress and horror to come, but at least there was some leavening in the bread). The year I shook free and decided to start running the company on my own.

Reading through my 2006 emails in order to remember and document this history was a doozy in and of itself. It’s like looking at another me, another business, another time, and thinking, “What the hell was she thinking, how the hell was she juggling it, and why the HELL didn’t she SEE WHAT WAS GOING ON?” I feel like a complete chump as I review what the manufacturing broker and consultant, whom I thought was a close friend and mentor, was doing to Knock Knock, as I contemplate the fact that I repeatedly said, “Oh no, he’d never do that to me” to those who warned me about him. I feel humiliated, mortified, ashamed. And fucking pissed. Fucking furious. Because I got fucking fucked. And you know what? Sometimes things are so bad that no phrase besides “fucking fucked” will describe it accurately.

So why did it happen to me and Knock Knock, and why didn’t it happen to industry peers? I was just discussing that with our former director of sales, the one who quit in 2005 in part because of the manipulative influence and negative impact of the Machiavellian manufacturing broker. She’s now back at Knock Knock in a newish and exciting capacity, and in our chitty-chatting, here’s what we came up with. Some other businesses were partnerships, so there was some balancing out and truth-telling going on between the partners. Most other businesses didn’t have easy access to money like I did, so they had to be more careful with it, and they didn’t have enough money to attract a vulture. Most other businesses grew more slowly and didn’t have to worry about importing hundreds of thousands of units of product with no experience. Knock Knock was exploding in a way that most small gift-and-specialty companies don’t, I had the money to make mistakes and support that growth, and I was utterly and completely overwhelmed—in short, I was a mark, and I acted like one.

The big picture is that the manufacturing broker was by 2006 acting as a business consultant as well as a vendor, meaning he saw all sides of our finances and could single-handedly fatten and harvest the golden goose (an apt metaphor for the manifestation of my own personal stress). Where he had originally quoted a 5 percent commission for his brokering services, it turned out he was pushing it to 50 percent, as well as calling for SKU (stock-keeping unit, consumer goods jargon for individual products) counts and manufacturing quantities that were inappropriately high for Knock Knock, growing our inventory and lining his wallet. Not to mention that he was doing a very poor job of it—quality was down, punctuality was nonexistent, defective product began to become a huge and expensive problem. Also, his impact on the team was exceedingly negative, especially starting in 2005.

Life Awards, which also came in a horizontal nameplate style. Aren't these fun? They each came with 6 interchangeable brass plates for swapping out according to whim, adhered via magnets. Don't you just love the confetti lining the boxes? Too bad these were so impossible—and, with their original factory, unethical—to manufacture.

Until I saw it, I didn’t see any of it. I paid him for it, and I thanked him for doing it because I didn’t think I was paying him enough.

Why did he do it? The company survived without having to downsize or decrease its output, and the amount he stole (on the order of $1.5 million) and the time period over which he did it (about 3.5 years) have become, believe it or not, smaller and smaller in the scope of Knock Knock’s entire existence. I’m well beyond what is the worst betrayal I’ve ever experienced. I think I’ve forgiven myself. But I can still shift into obsessive thinking about why he did it. Is he a sociopath with no conscience, as are, apparently, a disproportionately high number of CEOs and businesspeople (which I learned from a book on sociopaths that I read not too long ago, prompted by this This American Life episode and this TED Talk)? Is he so self-deluded that he talks himself into believing that his actions are justified, that he has a right to do what he does? Is he a compulsive liar? I personally think it’s the latter two. He doesn’t display certain qualities that sociopaths have. He appears to love his children. And there’s no doubt in my mind now that he is indeed a compulsive liar, someone who lies even when he doesn’t have to; an instinctive manipulator, someone who manipulates even when he doesn’t have to; and a megalomaniacal narcissist. And I mean all of those in the pathological and not the colloquial senses of the terms. His favorite business book—hell, probably his favorite book of all time—is the ancient Chinese masterwork on military strategy by Sun-Tzu, Art of War. He frequently suggested I read it. Clearly I should have.

Okay. I’m going to shift now to other stuff, then go to the month by month. In 2005, I’d come to the conclusion, helped along by the manufacturing broker, that more products meant more revenue, so I grew the list by 80 percent. FYI, that’s a lot. We did this by launching a new program of blank product, No. 2, and by “acquiring” (that term somewhat overstates it) a small t-shirt and card company started by a couple of actresses. Yes, overall it was a year populated with narcissists.

Because Knock Knock was hemorrhaging money, my uncle and his business team, who were acting as Knock Knock’s informal board, stipulated that I have a professionally prepared strategic plan put together for some visibility into the company’s future. This is what unveiled the fraud of the manufacturing broker.

I also made the most expensive hire of Knock Knock’s previous history, a true shift in playing field, bringing on a VP of sales with a resumé from large companies that read like a rocket ship. This utterly key person later became our COO and is now our president. He’s a golfer, but I don’t hold that against him.

January 2006:

I just loved the Dating Kit. From the Notification of Attraction Cards to the Relationship Resumé to the Sexual Release (not necessarily in that order), this was a masterpiece that didn't sell.

• We introduce what I still think is one of Knock Knock’s better releases, a corporate-themed (i.e., corporate-tweaking) program that included Life Awards, Corporate Flashcards, and Cubicle Note stickies. We also launch Nifty Notes and one of my favorite failed products of all time, the Procedural Dating Kit. Life Awards, however, entail the one social justice–shaking experience of my China manufacturing career—a factory in the hinterlands that consists of small rooms that reeked eye-wateringly of deadly chemicals, rooms in which people clearly both live and worke. To visit the factory takes a five-hour van ride (and I get horribly carsick—between that and the chemical smells, I will vomit upon arrival, always a good way to start a meeting) over roads both paved and dirt. To date, it’s the one time I’ve seen China much beyond its cities. Even though I do not feel ethically comfortable manufacturing at this factory, and will not do so again, it is also clear that people need and want these jobs despite their incompatibility with Western—and human—workplace standards; economic conditions outside the cities are desperate, and the factory cities I’ve been to started off in the last decade or two as small communities like this one.
• In large part thanks to the manufacturing broker and his accountant business partner, as well as an excellent new accounting manager who will help us take the company’s finances to the next level, we start to get reporting into place—daily sales, monthly financial statements, actually closing months. I’m finally starting to understand how accounting and finance should be run.
• Knock Knock products appear on The Today Show.
• The manufacturing broker is also co-overseeing sales, co-managing (never a good idea) our newish director of sales. In response to the latter’s more conservative projections, the former writes, “Given a 15 percent increase reported for a year that is considered poor, I’m doubling for 2006.” I’m sure it won’t surprise you when I report that we did not hit our numbers in 2006—but we sure will spend to them.
• One of our goals is to do business with Barnes & Noble. We are exceedingly excited to get a meeting with them at which they talk about floor displays, entire Knock Knock sections, and a Knock Knock publishing program. This ends up going just about nowhere and we do only minor business of little success with B&N over the years until 2012, when finally the seal is broken and Knock Knock can bust a seriously good move with them. Hallelujah to 2012.

February 2006:

• I go to St. Barth’s for a vacation with my uncle and his family during which I work most of the time (though I do manage to fit in snorkeling and yummy family dinners). On the plane ride home from New York City to Los Angeles, I am upgraded to business class and seated next to a beautiful woman who is being loudly and strenuously hit on from a few rows up by former New York City Council president Andrew Stein whom, oddly enough, I recognize. (This is an unnecessary detail but I feel it somehow adds to the surreality of the whole story.) She and I get to talking, in part about how slimy this man is, and how thick his hair and large his teeth. After quite a while, we get to the “What do you do?” part of the conversation. I describe Knock Knock, unsuccessfully. I list a few products. “Oh my GOD!” she exclaims. “I was staying with friends on St. Barth’s”—an odd coincidence, seeing as this is an NYC–LA flight—“and one afternoon my hostess hustled us all off the beach to go to a store in town because she wanted to show us the most amazing and witty product. I was like, ‘I want to stay on the beach!’ but she insisted and I went along. So we go to the bookstore, and she was right!” The woman then proceeds to tell me which are her favorite Knock Knock products and which ones she purchased, at St. Barth’s prices. Knowing that my uncle and his wife are huge boosters of Knock Knock, exceedingly proud to see our wares the world ’round, and that they are further inclined to know and vacation with people who run in beautiful and accomplished circles aswell as host them at their home in
  

  Dolph Lundgren, of Rocky IV fame, loves Knock Knock. It's a good story how I know that. You should read it.

  St. Barth’s, I think to myself, “Could it be that this woman is friends with my uncle and his wife?” So I ask her, “Who were you staying with on St. Barth’s?” certain that she will mention Bruce and Suzie. I feel I must insert a drumroll here, because the answer was so strange and unexpected that it’s vital the dear reader have to wait for it a minute. “Dolph Lundgren,” she replies. “He and his wife are two of my best friends.” Ba dump bump.

March 2006:

• When it comes to the history of Knock Knock, it will of course be the events that stand out, in some ways more of them bad than good, because the good ones will be a little less cataclysmic. Which makes it all the more important that I interject here how much I love Knock Knock’s creative team and output and activities right now. We are brainstorming at our highest potential. I am still writing and editing and proofreading just about everything, my second job in addition to running the company. In fact, until 2007, 98 percent of the words that come out of Knock Knock—from product copy to marketing copy to copy copy—will be by me. This is inordinately satisfying and inordinately stressful. As our art director and I will say for a good four or five years, “Jen is the bottleneck.” The design team is among the most creative we’ve ever had and we are in brainstorming and concepting sync, the fun part of the business, the part that takes less than 5 percent of our time, the cream in our coffee.

April 2006:

• We are putting the finishing touches on a new line, a sassy collection of t-shirts and greeting cards, originally started by two actresses, both of whom are very pretty and very funny. One has since become, if not a star, a visible success many of you would recognize. My thinking in purchasing this line and developing it with them is multiple-fold and, though a failure in this instance, will continue to date to be a strategic goal.
• Outsource some of the creative burden, not just in execution, but in concepting and brand identity.
• Share some of the marketing and PR burden, especially since it is thought that these actresses will be able to attract press coverage easily.
• Increase our offerings within our sensibility, but diversify for potential additional stores and channels of distribution, etc.
• Under the Who’s There Inc. umbrella (our actual corporate name), build different brands that can do different things.

Unfortunately, none of this will work as we’d hoped. The actresses are difficult, unreliable, and self-centered (surprise!). Others within Knock Knock think the line is a bad idea, but no one tells me. In fact, the demise of this line will be a turning point with the art director, later VP of creative services, now SVP of brand development, wherein I will say “Tell me if you think something!” and she will begin to do so, really the beginning of our working as a partnership and the beginning of Knock Knock being less of a monarchy.

• Though the Life Awards and Cubicle Notes were introduced into the marketplace in January, we still do not have inventory. The Life Awards are at a crisis point multiple times, almost canceled multiple times. The Cubicle Notes introduce me to something that continues to surprise everybody who’s not in the paper business: sticky notes are very, very difficult to manufacture well, and only 3M can really do it. Unfortunately, all consumers’ expectations are keyed to 3M products, so inferior sticky notes disappoint. We have sticky notes on every surface in the office in order to see how long they’ll stay up, how much they’ll curl, how they interact with different surfaces. We are reinventing the sticky note against our will. Manufacturing is late, defective, and riding on its own little hand basket to hell, and I can elicit accountability for it from no one. This may be the nadir of our problems with manufacturing and shipping on-time. I think about our philosophy (since updated) in which I’d stated that we “believe in shipping quality product on time.” When I wrote that, I was stupid enough to assume that this was a personal character choice. I had no idea that making that happen would involve countless moving parts, so many of them out of my control. I delete that sentence from the philosophy.
• We are profiled in Newsweek.
• I go to Spain to visit one of my closest friends in the world since I was eight years old. Her mother, who was my piano teacher throughout my youth and adolescence, is visiting as well. Though I am with some of the people I love most in the world, I spend much of the time working.
  

  I took a lot of pills in 2006. None of them had the effect indicated on the cover of our Take a Pill cards.

• In preparation for our Take a Pill card series (which alludes to our future A Foldout History of Antidepressants book) I obtain one pill each of the following: Prozac, Wellbutrin, and Paxil. The pharmacist is confused at the one-each dosage, and I do not put it on my insurance for fear of looking like a smorgasbord pill popper. Because Vicodin is a controlled substance, I end up borrowing that pill from a friend. I do not give it back.

May 2006:

• I have been nitpicking at a newly-hired senior designer who is not working out. He is forgetful and disorganized and cannot keep up with our pace, and his work and attitude are subpar. There is no question that I have been short and sharp with him, and I am still the all-purpose micromanager I started out to be. One Monday morning, I open my email to see “Open Letter to Knock Knock.” He has sent this to the entire team at 12:53 a.m. on Monday morning so that it’s unlikely I’ll be able to catch it in time to short-circuit it. In this letter, he airs his disgruntlements, not all of which have to do with me. He attributes a panic attack resulting in an embarrassing defecation incident to my “workplace bullying” and shares links on this “serious problem” that is “only currently prohibited by law in Canada.” While he is not wrong about some of what he’s reporting, the letter is retaliatory, vandalistic, and over the top. For example, I am not aware that I was doing the following: “Ms. Bilik’s comments have always been carefully constructed in such a way as to not constitute political incorrectness or verbal harassment (as it is defined by law).” I can only be grateful that I have accomplished such careful construction. It is a shitty start to a shitty week in a shitty month in a shitty year. This former senior designer (he also announced his immediate resignation and stated “do not attempt to  make  any further communication with me, whether by telephone, in person, email [including automated newsletters], or otherwise”) is not the only one with a shit problem on his hands. Or elsewhere.
• We debut a new booth design at the National Stationery Show in New York City. We have expanded our presence to a three-booth footprint and, in addition to introducing the actresses’ t-shirt and card line, we are premiering No. 2, our line of blank office products. We are so very proud of No. 2—the design and overall identity, the formats, the paper quality, the packaging, and it came entirely from the design team, led by the art director with very little originating input from me, the first such program.
  

  Oh, No. 2., how we nurtured and loved you so. RIP.

  Our SKU count has exploded. Target, the design-savvy big-box retailer of all time stops by the booth, and expresses interest in working with Knock Knock, a high watermark. At the show, the actresses behave like prima donnas, embarrassing us in the booth, and I almost send them home. There is way too much unnecessary drama and way too much perfume and porelessness (you know, from foundation makeup) and I begin to realize that it will be better to part ways, despite having poured so much money into a program that will be a no-go.

• While in New York, I meet with Knock Knock’s informal board, and I am read the riot act for our spending and lack of profitability. It is a true come-to-Jesus moment and I barely make it through the meeting without crying. They are, of course, correct, but it has never been put to me this bluntly and Knock Knock has never been this close to ceasing to exist. There is much talk of cost-cutting as well as a suggestion that I sell the company. There will certainly not be much more financial support. Fortunately, at the board’s earlier behest, I have begun an engagement with a consultant who will help put together the strategic plan for which the board has been asking. As this person will open my eyes to the manufacturing broker’s malfeasance, it is ironic that the recommendation for the consultant comes through the manufacturing broker’s business partner.

June 2006:

• I tell the actresses that we are discontinuing the program for business reasons, including lack of interest at the show (I don’t think we got more than three orders for the line). Though they have been paid fairly for their line (which would not have happened at all had I not stepped in; I revived it from moribundom) and all their work, they are furious. By accident, one of them sends me an email that is meant for the other in which they joke about what I will be saying to people about the line’s demise (after I have offered to have it come from them): “I am sure Jen wants to use this list for better purposes than a breakup letter—would be nice to have it come from us I suppose. Instead of ‘I can’t stand these too skinny bitches, and I am going to wait [for] the appropriate time and then sell t-shirts and check out Knock Knock! . . . P.S. I am really fat.’” We never sell the t-shirts and sadly their list is of no use to us. They are still skinny bitches (with big tits, might I say, one of the only characteristics we share), and I am still fat.
• I travel to Las Vegas to do a presentation at the How Design Conference, “How to Write and Design at the Same Time.” It is not my best public speaking performance, but the handout I prepare for it will become one of Knock Knock’s core proprietary creative documents.

July 2006:

• I make a big hire for Knock Knock, bringing on a big-guns VP of sales. I find him through the manufacturing broker’s business partner (also ironic, as he will outlast the Machiavellian manufacturing broker). This person will transition into our COO and then our president over the next six years and, with the soon-to-be-promoted art director, will start to comprise an actual management team with whom I can run the company.
  

  How could you not love it? The display alone was like six feet tall.

• I attend a weeklong “Business Principles for Design Professionals” at Harvard, a collaboration of AIGA and Harvard Business School. I am in heaven returning to school, now truly appreciative of consequence-free learning. I am also starving for business knowledge and discussion, something I don’t yet have with friends or peers. I meet people who will become mainstays in my life over subsequent years and have an altogether grand time. I realize how important it is to look up from my desk, outside of the Knock Knock office, and interact with people who aren’t employees. I will, of course, forget this within the month. While in Cambridge, I am surprised to see a Harvard Square store window full of No. 2. I am with fellow students when I walk by, and the timing of being able to show off to them is so primo it seems too good to be true.
• While I am in Cambridge, I receive a letter from an industry peer accusing Knock Knock of knocking her company off. It’s the first time we’ve ever been accused of this (and I think there will only be one more, and a totally crazy on at that, over the next six years), and it feels awful. She has no legal leg to stand on, but it is a painful and not uncostly episode.

August 2006:

• The strategic plan is finished and the consultant and I present it to the informal board in New York City. One of the most glaring revelations is that we are paying way too much for manufacturing, and that I have made the following structural errors in Knock Knock’s relationship with the manufacturing broker:
• No contract or written agreement.
• No competitive bidding (only working with one vendor).
• Working on a commission basis but not seeing original invoicing documents.
• Having all our eggs in one basket, i.e., single-point failure, i.e., we’re screwed.
• Mixing up a personal relationship and a business relationship (a friendship, not a romance, sadly; at least if it had been a romance, I could have had a little more fun with it).
• Allowing for conflict-of-interest functions to be taking place, e.g., the same person making money from manufacturing orders is the one who’s setting manufacturing quantities.

The consultant estimates that the manufacturing pricing may be as high as 30 percent over what it should be, based on his experience. We leave New York with an approved plan.

• I hire the consultant as a sort of part-time CFO. He offers to be the bad guy in the relationship between myself and the manufacturing broker. I think that I may have found a potential business overseer. I do not yet realize that I am going from person to person—boyfriend, incompetent director of operations, crooked manufacturing broker, MBA consultant—like the chick in that children’s book Are You My Mother? I once saw a Craigslist ad that said “Visionary seeks functionary,” precisely what I wanted. I have been asking the wrong people “Are you my partner? Are you my partner?” After 2006, I will finally realize that it’s me. I am my partner. I am my mother. I still miss my mother. I will always miss my mother.

September 2006:

• One of the reasons I have hired the new VP of sales is for his experience in selling to and negotiating with key accounts, specifically mass retailers. The manufacturing broker–slash–sales consultant has said that he can do this, but everything he’s ventured has fallen through, despite Knock Knock’s countless hours spent developing spec products that never get purchased. The VP of sales and I travel together to Minneapolis and obtain our first Target program, a customized promotional group of products around the theme of “family travel” to set in early summer 2007. We are overjoyed, excited, proud. The products will be customized rather than our signature catalogued products for a few reasons:
• Mass retailers cannot maintain boutique manufacturers’ suggested retail prices for signature product. To lower the SRPs for select accounts would undersell a manufacturer’s (Knock Knock’s) other retailers.
  

  Our first program for Target, a customized "family travel" collection. I'm still immensely proud of this—the art director and designers did a beautiful job with an aesthetic that fell slightly outside Knock Knock signature.

• We cannot manufacture many of our products at a cost low enough to hit a mass retailer’s desired prices, so in most cases we need to “down-spec” product—use lighter-weight paper, take away extras such as die-cutting or foil-stamping, include fewer pages, etc. This means a custom run.
• Non-mass retailers do not want to see the same products they are selling in their stores in mass outlets. Their stock in trade is curating special items, while mass focuses on value. While I personally—and many of my colleagues—do not believe that having the same products at mass and at specialty undercuts their sales in specialty, the specialty retailers do believe that, so we have to respect it. The reason I don’t believe it is because I feel that shopping is defined more by activity than by purchase—if someone is at K-Mart, they are there for a particular reason and don’t buy something and say, “Oh good, now I don’t have to go to a boutique.” When people are in boutiques, they’re there because they want the experience of strolling and browsing. My thoughts. This overall issue is called “channel conflict,” meaning concerns around different sales categories cannibalizing one another. Another example: retailers hate that manufacturers have direct-to-consumer ecommerce websites, even though all of us do.
• Finally, the programs we and other such boutique manufacturers do are “promotional” rather than “in-line.” Promotional programs are those that appear in the stores for a specific “drive period,” generally seasonal, e.g., back to school, holiday, family travel (early summer), etc. These drive periods are usually 8 weeks long. Promotional products are on endcaps and floor displays rather than in the aisle. “In-line” refers to products that are in the aisles—those are products that are, for the most part, regularly stocked and replenished, sold year-round rather than for short periods. Promotional programs almost always consist of customized rather than stock catalogued product from boutique manufacturers.

• Gross substances are currently hitting the ceiling fan, raining toxicity down on unprotected heads, namely mine, with respect to the manufacturing broker. The consultant and I are attempting, as diplomatically and professionally as possible, to interject some transparency into a manufacturing relationship that bills some $1.5 million per year. We are inquiring into such possibilities as seeing original invoices, given that this is a commissioned relationship; confirming in writing the commission amount; establishing industry-standard 30-day payment terms, with final payment after product lands in our warehouse so that we can inspect it (in 2006 we will have over $100,000 worth of defective product for which we have already paid); and potentially transitioning the manufacturers to direct relationships with Knock Knock in exchange for a fee or commission for the manufacturing broker. Every request is met with a brick wall and lots of negative indignant hyperbole. The manufacturing broker, he who professed to love me and Knock Knock dearly, threaten to cut off all our manufacturing as we go into Q4, the all-important fourth quarter, holiday, so I am forced to play semi-nice in order that Knock Knock have revenue, i.e., things to sell, until we can get ourselves away (this will take over a year to complete). I am the recipient of high-drama emails about how insulted he is, how he has never in his entire career blah blah, how he has bled for me, and worst, how this has never been a profitable business for him, when later forensic analysis will show that the average markup over 3.5 years is 34 percent, starting off lower and rising to 50 percent in the last year, on annual expenditures of some $1.5 million, actually excellent profits for a multi-client two-man operation with a small part-time back office in Hong Kong. One such example of the manufacturing broker’s high dudgeon:
  

  In 2008 (i.e., next week) I'll tell you a funny story about these Family Travel luggage tags.

Yet you keep questioning me? Please, stop wasting your time. All your challenges from day one on this subject continue to be insulting as you are not respecting my rights as an individual at all, from my perspective you are demanding information that not only questions my integrity but further, really has little bearing on any outcome.

I have successfully competed for years and have experienced all sides.  Sometimes I win and sometimes I lose; occasionally choosing whether I want to be in the winning or losing position . . . Do the math any way you want, overlap it with the time necessary to administrate, and you will clearly, in fact very clearly, see a figure where nobody is getting rich quick or further, taking advantage of anything. To insinuate otherwise is where we keep being insulted.

It is your right to do whatever you want, I respect this. Please pay me the same respect in return. If you have all of a sudden come to a conclusion that we are crooks, then take your business elsewhere, we do not have enough time, both you and I, to deal with this. It is your right and I do not want to be continually standing in front of your sharp sword. Again let me remind you, I have never, ever been treated this way by a client.

If you choose to toss years of effort in the name of a saving a few cents here or there, I respect it. Jen, we have always been your partner; working together to achieve success. Where you think this changed I have no idea. Where you believe my loyalty to you and then your business has been any less than 100 percent is far beyond my comprehension. Knock Knock has taken more of my time than any other client with one exception and in this case, the revenue stream is not comparable. I have dedicated a lot to you with a strong desire to continue but please make no mistake about it, I will not stand under your scrutiny, and I am only interested in standing shoulder to shoulder.

Let’s make no mistake about it, Jen—speaking for myself and my partner too, we love you and care too much to have this continuing conflict. Our relationship as peers, not as your vendor, is what is valued most. We are very appreciative of your business and do not want to lose one penny of it either but completely understand that a percentage should go, for your good. Note, I would never fall on this sword for anyone I didn’t care so much for. The pain of where we are at today is too much for all of us to deal with. We need to figure out a way, with full respect of each other’s position, integrity and feelings, to move on.

His tacks vacillate between venom and conciliation, love and insult. Finally, he pulls out a tactic that I only six years later realize he has been employing all along: he attempts to undermine his competition for my ear and trust, and he does it in this case in such a transparently manipulative way that I wonder I did not see it before. In the middle of this six-week breakdown (that destroys a relationship of 3.5 years), the manufacturing broker writes me, “Regarding [the consultant]—please, please, please—I cannot break the confidence of my partner. [My partner] does not trust [the consultant]. I urge you to keep this between us please.” He has also attempted to undermine the VP of sales, and before that the director of operations (unfortunately, they were both right about each other—she knew he was crooked and he knew she was an incompetent pill). It is a classic construction: he knows that my trust in him has waned, but also knows I still trust his partner, so he appeals to me to keep a secret that is not actually true. His approach should be taught in the University of Lying and Manipulation, it is so structurally sound.

October 2006:

• The consultant and I spend hours meeting with attorneys over the possibility of suing the manufacturing broker. Besides maintaining our sole source of product manufacturing, we have also refrained from confronting the manufacturing broker about certain issues because we are waiting to see what kind of legal case we can assemble. We meet with a group of very high-level partners in our white-glove law firm. The upshot is that to mount a case would cost at least $250,000; require hundreds of hours of my work (not to mention emotional upset and distraction); disrupt the company via employee depositions, etc.; and would have a low likelihood of success because our arrangements were not in writing and the broker’s company is (on purpose) incorporated overseas, in Hong Kong, an almost impossible lawsuit. My uncle advises me that one should only take on such legal battles if the company’s existence depends on it because they are so costly in time, energy, and money. “You are better off looking forward and taking the company to higher levels of success,” he says, “than looking backward in anger and stalling your forward momentum with the disruption of your company for a minimal chance of success. And if you did win, he probably wouldn’t be able to pay you.”
  

  Apparently there are a lot of products from Family Travel in this post. On another note, did you know that I love to camp?

• I stop talking to the manufacturing broker and his partner, instead deputizing the art director to be Knock Knock’s go-between. This alleviates some of the pressure and allows for the good cop–bad cop construction that the manufacturing broker has long been mendaciously applying in his depiction of manufacturer and partner backs and forths. I focus on identifying and initiating direct manufacturing relationships.
• The consultant CFO turns out to be a very good consultant but not such a good internal team member, which I have since learned is often the case. “There is a reason why they are consultants,” I have  heard it said. We disengage that engagement.

November 2006:

• One of our biggest key accounts (according to our company’s internal classifications, mass retailers have more than 200 rooftops/doors, key accounts 20 to 200, and gift and specialty under 20) oddly and summarily drops our business, canceling all POs, because of a billing error that, when the retailer calls to rectify it, finds our accounting manager eating lunch when she answers the phone. The from-another-culture retailer is so insulted at the billing error and the fact that the accounting manager was chewing and swallowing that she determines she will never do business with Knock Knock again. It will take two years before that edict is reversed.
• Knock Knock hosts an AIGA tour of our studio. During the question-and-answer period, the art director asks, “Would you do it again?” The answer is, actually, no, which the audience does not want to hear. I will be asked this again 6 years later in a radio interview. Given where I am now, I would not choose to have not created Knock Knock, because I like where I am now, but if I had known ahead of time what it would take to get here, I would have chosen not to go forward because the sacrifices and toll were too great. The radio interviewer will not like this answer either and, when prompted with a “Oh, come on,” I tell her what she wants to hear. “Yes, of course I would have.” This is still not true.
• We make the difficult decision to cancel any new releases going forward on our No. 2 line. Although we love it, it has encountered various problems. First, the pricing is too high because No. 2 came along when the manufacturing broker was at the height of his fraud, taking 50 percent on top of all manufacturing billing. Second, we have attempted to package No. 2 in a unique way, in clear clamshell packaging, to give it an industrial and differentiated look. This not only adds quite a bit of cost to the product, it prevents consumers from feeling the paper and assessing its high quality, something stationery and office supplies mavens love to do. The clamshells are also correctly perceived to be environmentally unfriendly. Additionally, new “anti-dumping” legislation brought on by office-products lobbies in the United States are levying impossibly high charges on all lined notebooks imported from China, and we cannot cost-effectively manufacture anywhere else—in part because we are just getting our sea legs in direct manufacturing, independent of the broker. We also realize that in our attempts to release a complete program in different colorways, we presented too many SKUs to start and would have been better off starting more slowly. No. 2 represents hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of obsolete inventory and additional costs in time and overhead. Worse, we love it dearly, are terribly proud of it, and its demise represents the end of a particular product dream for us, and a failed venture to which we had applied our very best efforts.
• On the former consultant’s recommendation, we engage with an attorney to begin the process to obtain the manufacturing broker’s customs records through a mechanism called Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Importer Trade Activity (ITRAC) Requests. This will reveal the original product costs listed by the manufacturing broker for import. When we finally get the data, it is exceedingly difficult to analyze, not keyed to the way we’ve organized our invoices. It takes hours of our operations manager’s time to get apple lined up to apples. The average markup over 3.5 years, starting low and ending high? 34 percent.
• I learn that the manufacturing broker has put one company out of business with his late, defective, fraudulently overpriced product (in part arising from his continually promising he can do things that he cannot in fact do) and has almost killed another, both brought to legal and personal brinks. I also learn that he has completely shafted someone who’d come to him at my glowing recommendation. She has contracted on behalf of a client for the manufacture of many catalogs. Lack of communication and accountability have characterized the whole experience. She had flown to China to go on press in part to remedy these, but now she cannot get the catalogs to ship to the United States. She flies last-minute to China to get to the bottom of it and learns that the catalogs are finished, printed and bound, on the factory floor, but they are not being released because the broker has not yet paid the printer despite the fact that her client long ago paid the broker. He is, not unsurprisingly, robbing Peter to pay Paul. I also learn that the manufacturing broker, who previously owned a decent-size business with his wife and another partner, did not, as he’d told me, successfully sell his company; rather, the business was almost bankrupt and someone else took it over in such a way that the manufacturing broker and his wife preserved only their salaries.

December 2006:

• Fortunately for both of us, dear reader, this is close to the last you will hear about the evil manufacturing broker, and one of the last pieces of major business to close off with him. We are still negotiating about $133,401 worth of defective product for which Knock Knock has paid. We end up settling for a $70,994 credit that can only redeemed against orders placed with the manufacturing broker at a rate of $10,000 per month, meaning we will be placing orders with him for at least another 7 months just to recoup some of our losses (though now we will at least be able to wield competitive bidding).
  

  I forgot to mention that we created a mass-market brand, Ding Dong (get it? Knock Knock and Ding Dong?), for which we had high long-term hopes. Unfortunately, retailers hated the name but wouldn't tell us so for a couple years.

• We have decided to publish books, created internally and with freelancers, for Knock Knock’s Fall 2007 release, a return to my publishing and writing past. I do not have any editorial staff and am still writing and editing everything. I confirm a list of some seventeen titles we will complete during a three-month period. The way this will get done, I determine, is that I will parcel the work out in chunks to freelancers—what could go wrong? I place an ad in Craigslist for $15-per-hour freelancers and interview by telephone 75 people between Christmas and New Year’s. Over time, only two of those people will prove valuable to Knock Knock, and one is still a wonderful part of our team. While anything to get that person would have been worthwhile, 1 to 2 out of 75 is not a good ratio. In addition to our regular product release, we will end up completing 8 books and making great headway on a ninth. But that is a story for 2008.

High Points of 2006:

• Learning that Dolph Lundgren is a Knock Knock fan.
• Hiring the new VP of sales, who will be a mainstay of senior management for the company to present day.
• Obtaining our first Target order.
• Developing and releasing the No. 2 brand.
• Spending a week at Harvard Business School with a bunch of amazing designers and making new friends.
• Successfully requesting Freedom of Information Act data about the manufacturing fraud—oddly satisfying.
• Figuring out that our manufacturing costs will go down significantly and our profit margins will go up in the post-fraudulent-manufacturing-broker era.
• Being grateful that the manufacturing broker’s fraud did not kill Knock Knock as it killed one other company.
• Receiving this note from my mentor uncle, who advised me through the horror: “Just wanted to say that I am preparing a Diploma in the School of Hard Knocks (or Knock Knocks) for you. Tuition is definitely high, but you’ll be able to dine out on this story for a long time to come. But there really is a silver lining. Your margins and your profitability now look like they will be much better than previous work has shown. The company is creating much more value than we thought . . . and that means, of course, Knock Knock will be more valuable in the future. Anyway, congratulations on your stamina—we all have known about the creativity.  I am super proud of you!” It makes me cry even now.

Low Points of 2006:

• Receiving a major come-to-Jesus talk from Knock Knock’s informal board about our lack of profitability and realizing that Knock Knock could fold.
• Being ragged on by two narcissistic, weight-bigoted actresses. I think that might be redundant.
• Horrific manufacturing issues with defective and late product.
• Realizing that the No. 2. product line that we love so dearly will not be viable moving forward.
• Coming to understand the extent of the manufacturing broker’s theft, manipulation, lies, and betrayal; feeling like a complete chump; and realizing I was not the good judge of character I’d always thought I was.

Strangest Point of 2006: Definitely the Dolph Lundgren moment, described in February 2006. Dolph! Did you know he has multiple degrees in chemical engineering and chemistry? Also he serves as an excellent security system. Per Wikipedia, “In early May 2009, Lundgren’s Marbella home was reportedly broken into by three masked burglars who tied up and threatened [his wife], but fled when they spotted a family photo and realized that the house was owned by Lundgren.”

Epiphany(s) of 2006: Oh boy. The most of any Knock Knock year.

Here’s a list, notes taken from a conversation with my uncle, all the following words his:

• “Trust, but verify” (I think he was quoting Ronald Reagan).
• Be skeptical, but be very nice, in everything. It’s always a mistake to suggest to someone that they are dishonest, especially if they’re dishonest. An insulting conversation is strategically a poor choice. Negative responses make it impossible to do business well; you have to come at it with methods that keep people from setting up their defenses. It’s vital to de-emotionalize one’s point of view on bad situations and instead gather as much information as possible and see what can be found out; this will improve the ability to manage such such situations. Making judgments too quickly, or in anger, gets you in trouble. Email is a mistake whenever personal emotion is involved.
• Transparency is key; if somebody won’t provide something you should have had anyway, that’s very negative, and if they will, then it’s easy. Nobody should operate without full supporting documentation. Transparency just means the ability to see the things that are relevant to your interest. It’s an unacceptable situation not to have transparency, even if people are behaving perfectly; without transparency, you can’t discuss the business, and generally when people have unfettered access, they take advantage of it.
• Diversified, competitive sourcing is key.
• You should always expect people to promote their own self-interests over mine; that people act in their self-interest and their own vision is a principle tenet of economics. The only way you can have some measure of assurance that people will act right is if your interests (e.g., economic or business interests) are aligned.

And a few more, from me:

• More products does not necessarily mean more revenue and/or profits. In fact, it can mean precisely the opposite. While inventory is booked on the balance sheet as an asset, if it’s unsalable, it’s a liability (hence the designation of “obsolete inventory”).
• Nobody is truly a good judge of character without evidence.
• Contracts are for worst-case scenarios, not best. Negotiating them is like a courtship—the opportunity to get to know each other before the wedding takes place. It’s vital that you look at each signal and inflection during contract negotiation because it’ll tell you just about all you need to know about your future working relationship. Don’t wave off situations that “could never happen” when creating contracts. And if you deny yourself basic business instruments such as contracts, or competitive bidding, etc., you’re much more likely to be screwed.

Whole Point of 2006:  I am finally capable of running my own business.

2006: THE PRODUCTS

New Bestseller of 2006: Cubicle Notes sticky notes, and sticky notes in general for Knock Knock as a newly introduced juggernaut category.

We created these and we don't even work in cubicles. That's just how talented we are.

New Flop of 2006: Reality Rhymes greeting cards. And that new brand I mentioned, the one with the actresses and the t-shirts and the cards.

Interesting New Product Note of 2006: We got to commission a sculpture of a slightly gender-neutral man—our own Oscar—for our Life Awards Trophies. Also, I had to vet the “Sexual Release Form” in the Dating Kit through our attorney to make sure that we wouldn’t be liable should somebody actually catch a disease or something.

Quantity of New Products Released in 2006: 142. That’s right, 142. Compare that to previous years—yikes!

Quantity of New Cards Released in 2006: 140. That’s right. 140. Compare that to previous years—yikes!

Quantity of Products and Cards Retired in 2006: 76

Total Live Products and Cards at Year-End 2004: 462. That’s right. 462. Here’s a little context for you:

2006: THE MONEY

2006 Revenue: $3,294,681

Year-Over-Year Growth from 2004: 21 percent

2006 Loss: 25 percent less than 2005’s loss

2006: THE PEOPLE

Number of full-time employees: 10, though I believe we had an additional two or three freelancers.

2006: THE BONUS

I think you’ve had enough.

When I first started to look around tradeshows and see Knock Knock’s influence, sometimes a little too transparently, I was able pretty quickly to calm myself with the knowledge that imitation was one indication we were successful. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel hotheaded and indignant that other creators couldn’t find their own voices, and if so, they shouldn’t be playing the game, but instead the recognition that I was witnessing the inevitable and in the larger picture this meant we were doing things right.

Sometimes aspiring entrepreneurs or product designers come to me and say “I have a great idea for a product.” After asking me to sign an NDA and squinting with cagy suspicion, they allow that it’s an idea for a card. Or a pad. Or a sticky note. My response? God help you if you only have one idea. In the world of creative product, your longevity and success are based on your ability to come out with good ideas over and over and over again, and the produced good ideas are the winners among many, not a sole strike of momentary genius. When I see our, or another company’s, influence running too rampant, I know that we’ve played out that theme and it’s time to move on.

All of us more experienced and perhaps not insane gift-and-specialty companies (the industry term for us) know that we’re playing in the same sandbox. There are only so many things you can do with paper and ephemera and cloth and plastic. When I’m at a tradeshow and I see that file folders are coming up, and we have a great idea for file folders, I’m aware that it’s not appropriate to do it if only one company is doing it, but if I see a few doing it, and Knock Knock can bring something to the form that isn’t about competition but about what we want to create, then we make file folders. Great minds are constantly thinking alike, and honestly, there are a number of things we’ve thought of that we haven’t produced because someone else did it before us and we don’t want to be perceived as followers or copycats. Creativity is our stock in trade.

From Robynne Raye, founder and principle of Modern Dog: “On September 12th, 2011, I received an email from a designer working at another design firm who said he saw our dogs on a product being sold through a major retailer. At first, I was skeptical: I had to see the actual item to make sure for myself. A few days later, as I waited for a flight to take me to an AIGA event in Nebraska, I was sent the image that contained what the person thought was our dogs on my iPhone. Even though the image was tiny, I immediately recognized my best friend's Dalmatian Rudy, my business partner's whippet Rosie, my client's poodle Albert, and my own cairn terrier pup Conan. I also thought I recognized other dogs so I ordered the shirt online. When I returned from my Nebraska trip, the shirt was waiting for me at my office. The hangtag on the shirt was also part of an advertising campaign for a movie. We believe that all 27 t-shirt dog images came from our poster art book (Modern Dog: 20 Years of Poster Art).”

But then there are the actual copycats. The ones who, due either to lack of conscience (not too long about I read this book on psychopaths, AKA sociopaths, who, according to the book and this This American Life episode, are especially prevalent among CEOs; also, here’s a TED Talk about it) or complete and utter denial, can’t help themselves from stealing intellectual property. I find out about these copycats primarily from customers and other supporters (thank you!) who email us to say, “Is this yours?” One was a company I saw while walking around one of the gift shows, and it was so bald-faced that I was shocked they’d had the gall to obtain a booth. They had barely changed our wording. I plotted with a sympathetic retailer to check it out: she went into the booth, looked around, and said, “Is this Knock Knock?” The woman in the booth replied with a smug smile, “Oh, no. Our stuff is much more sophisticated than theirs.”

In the last couple years, the copycats have gone international. A small company in Argentina whose mission statement celebrates their creativity basically put our pads and sticky notes on a color xerox machine and then got very mainstream press on them! A not-so-small publisher in Germany asked to license our product when we nabbed them for their color xerox infraction. Are you kidding me? I’m going to do business with you? This is your reward for ripping us off? The current challenge in Australia is with a known knocker-offer, a very large company that has already lost similar lawsuits, which makes me think their CEO certainly must be a sociopath, because he clearly knows exactly what he and his company are doing and doesn’t care. I’m sure you won’t be surprised that one of my least favorite activities is pursuing these infringements with our attorneys and that my very least favorite check to sign is the one for these legal fees. We’re talking tens of thousands of dollars a year, and that’s even with assiduously avoiding litigation.

People often ask us who our competitors are. You may think this is disingenuous, but I don’t feel we have competitors. Instead, I believe we have peers. Since we don’t create generic commodity items, our products don’t have exact equivalents. Retailers and buyer want our sensibility. Other companies that have similar sensibilities may be competing with us for open-to-buy dollars (the term for the budget a buyer or retailer has for a certain product category and season) or space on a particular display table, but it’s our job to put out such good stuff that we’re happy with their choices to fly Knock Knock.

Big chain retailers have over time been building their in-house product development and design teams. We create customized product programs for many of these retailers, and one of the things they tell us is it’s difficult to knock off Knock Knock because of our conceptual underpinning and emphasis on language. They just can’t get it right. Of course they don’t state it exactly like that, but it’s the gist.

One of the many products on which Modern Dog’s imagery was reproduced.

Not too long ago, I heard a sad story about the design company that does a lot of work for one of our favorite peer companies, Blue Q. How can you not respect and love Blue Q’s work? How can you not frequently kick yourself because they came up with something great that you didn’t? This design company, Modern Dog, does fantabulous work, much of which you’ve seen without knowing it was them. I recently became aware of a challenge that Modern Dog is having. A creation of theirs that is especially near and dear to their hearts was knocked off very broadly and very profitably by more than one multinational corporation. These corporations know that small companies don’t have the resources to fight back (because to do so is much more than the many tens of thousands of dollars Knock Knock has been spending) so they stall until their opponents go broke.

Modern Dog believes, as I do, that “Copyright law should protect everyone, not just those who can afford to litigate” and “Copyright only works if you are willing and able to protect it.” Would you believe also that as a trademark owner, you are legally obligated to fight to protect your trademark, and that if you do not fight each and every instance of known infringement, you have a much weaker case down the road, making it sometimes dangerous to back down whether or not you can afford to go on? Modern Dog, “like a lot of small businesses” doesn’t “operate with a reserve account for emergencies. And it’s not possible to apply for a lawsuit loan.” So they’re fundraising, something they were reluctant to do until friends pushed them to do so. Knock Knock has donated, and I think all folks who believe that this kind of creative theft and bullying is wrong should do so as well.

Modern Dog has chosen to sell the house in which they’ve had their offices for almost twenty years in order to fund the lawsuit and bring down overhead. Knock Knock so identifies with its home and surroundings, and I’m such a nester myself, to me that is one of the ultimate sacrifices. I think it’s critical that we make it less easy for anyone to steal others’ creative work, but especially the Goliaths who pick on the Davids—and Davids without slingshots at that, because slingshots are cheap but lawyers are costly. So I urge you—donate to Modern Dog, and keep your eyes and ears open for companies and people who are willing to steal creativity in order to compensate for their own laziness or inadequacies, and report them to the entities that put the hard work in to unleash something new and brilliant upon the world. Because we have a right to defend ourselves.