We earned our keep; our Irish friends can rest assured we spent their tax dollars (Euros) wisely.  We’ve sent the summary of about 15-20 finds back to the home team to start investigating.  (Tough work if you can get it.)

Joanne commented, “We have to be careful or Daily Grommet is going to look like Daily IRISH Grommet if we don’t space these cool finds out.”

Here’s  a random photo gallery of our trip.

I bought a couple products at this terrific Dublin shop, Designist,  featuring affordable European home product innovations.

I had no idea that some of the items I bought at Designist were designed and manufactured by this pair of entrepreneurs from Shanghai, now living on the northside of Dublin.  It was only when attending a trade event, Showcase Ireland, that I made the connection.  How refreshing!  The Chinese people I knew when I lived in Dublin were largely students.  Some of them are obviously settling right in, a few years later.  This is a huge sea change for Ireland.  It was so homogenous when I first lived there that when I saw a black, Asian or overweight person I automatically assumed they were a visiting American.

One of the things I struggled with regarding Irish craft during my residency in Dublin (2001-5) was the aesthetic.  The materials and techniques were gorgeous.  But the vibe was kind of 1970′s tourist for some of the bigger producers.  It was hard to understand, given the very contemporary sensibilities of Irish people.  Thus I was really happy to see this man applying wonderful Irish wools and knitting techniques to some great modern menswear.  (This scarf is better in person…not leopard printy!)

Similarly, this woman was putting a modern spin on Irish linen, but using very fine age-old manufacturing techniques.

This black box is not a mistake.  It was supposed to be a picture of us with the President of Ireland.  He was scheduled to speak at noon on Sunday at the show.  At 11:40 we started looking for the assigned room.  We were told…”Oh he’s just after finishing.  He did it early. You can probably find him walking around the show.”  That was true.  We never did find President Higgins, but we found an official photographer who showed us shots of him mixing and mingling.  No Secret Service.  Just the Pres rambling about, having a chat here and there.  Alas, Joanne’s visions of a very stunning and impressive Facebook post were dashed.  All we have is this black box.

My very favorite Irish brand is Avoca, founded in 1723.  It is one of the oldest continuously operating manufacturers in the world.  It’s known for its woven blankets, and wonderful fashion, but it’s also a dynamic retailer, and a superb restaurant operator. In my estimation, contemporary companies like Anthropologie–as great as they are–are only copying Avoca.  It’s the original. Thus, I was very thrilled to meet one of the company’s family members, Ivan Pratt from Avoca.

I wanted to buy this blanket for my sister.  He joked, “That blanket.  It’s a classic.  We call it No. 7.  It put me through college.  I think my parents could have used that money more wisely, but I will always be grateful for this auld blanket.”

Avoca is so inspirational to me.  Their cafes are full of delicious, freshly prepared food.  Joanne and I had to visit TWICE to have this berry compote served with greek yogurt and an amazing homemade granola loaded with bits of citrus and big fat nuts.  Alas, Avoca does not sell it outside of the cafes.  If they ever do, it is a Grommet for sure. I owe it to my countrymen.

Organic “Crackers” eggs (probably harboring a fair quantity of rich Irish grass-fed cow butter) were a revelation.  They really are life-changing.

And I solved a personal decorating dilemma at the Avoca cafe–how to cover some huge windows in a family room that have been annoyingly bare since they were added in 1998.  (I can be crazy patient about doing “without”—until I see what I want.  Then I go on a tear.) This simple use of fairy lights is going right into my home, possibly covered with some thin filmy voile to create a bit of mystery.

No reason for the photo of this Avoca baked goods counter.  I just thought the café worker was adorable.

No visit to Ireland is complete without a misty mountain walk.  This was taken at Glendalough.

Finally, at Dublin airport, Joanne commented:  “This is the only country in the world where they would be sampling whiskey right out in the corridor, free for the taking.”  (The woman was a Duty Free shop worker who was quite nice but we had to prod her to smile. This was the best crooked grimace she could manage.  Not the usual Irish response.)

I am NOT sharing the photos of our late nights with friends new and old.  But they were plenty!  That is the true treasure of Ireland.  Its social life and its sociable population are my favorite “products” of the land.

Delivering numbers (which boils down to customers) matters a lot.  Every company hits the same wall when it comes to taking their better mousetrap to a larger stage:  it is really, really hard to find the thousands of customers these products need to survive.  The number one reason new products fail is not the product at all–it is failure to reach a big enough market before the cash runs out.

After working with over 800 enterprises we can help so many of our partners avoid pitfalls and attain success much faster than they would by working in isolation.  In the process, we can help them avoid a terrible “splat” they may not see coming (capital crunches, beating back knock-offs, negotiating with the big guns of retail, creating profitable margin structures, avoiding supply chain issues).

Daily Grommet stands out because we really do it with heart.  This recent note from one of our partners pretty much says it all:

Check out Monica Burke’s awesome lamps here.  (I gave five as Christmas gifts last month.) Monica’s enthusiasm about Grommet is partly a reaction to our advising her very concretely on how to structure her company for meaningful scale and profitability.

But back to the numbers, here they are, as told by our study of our Grommet partners:

Here is some other new data about our email list, that contributes directly to the success above.

Grommet team party, January 6, 2012

The Boston-based Grommet team happily kicked off the New Year at Joanne’s house.

By the way, this is not the first time the front of this solid brick house has been broadcast online…alas, it was on the cover of a dozen online papers when the freak Halloween snowstorm felled a massive ancient tree in Joanne’s front yard.

The only accident at this party occurred whe Joanne’s favorite child (her dog Sydney) helped himself to our cake.  His ghoulish blue mouth clued her in before the team arrived.  (We just ate around the gashes.  Making do–in true startup fashion)

Even at a party, we tend to be testing Grommets.  In this case, we had set up a tequila toast because JULIA GOT ENGAGED the very night before our party, to her sweetheart Damian.  The man has great timing.  Gadzooks….our first Grommet wedding!

Julia and Damian had their celebratory tequila shots in a very cool upcoming Grommet:  Himalayan Salt Cups made by Spice Labs.  You freeze them ahead of time for the best tequila shot ever.

We have a new software engineer who, in his first three days,  has experienced a tearful good bye party for our first employee Jen, a full-team birthday celebration, and a Tequila Shots/CakeWrecks party.  Hmmm, what will we spring on him next week?

As a mother, I have only one annual over the top activity.  It’s in the form of an exuberant advent calendar.  Shameless bribery?  Perhaps.  Guilt-reducing?  Check.  As much for me as for my sons?  Definitely.

But its appearance can be deceiving.  The 24 little gifts I package up and hang from our kitchen light fixture are not exactly iTunes cards, electronics, or valuable baubles.  They shade a little more towards Morticia Adams.  Things like little skulls and antique pathology slides.  I’ve described my sons’ (decidedly mixed) reactions to these things before, in this older post.

A couple times, I’ve tried to give the whole thing up, but the natives revolted.  This sealed my freedom to go “weird.”

OK, they already know “weird” because they grew up with me.  But in the face of all the holiday sparkles, I like to share my belief that treasures are not always new, pretty, or valuable.  They only have to capture your eyes, heart, or sense of humor.  Below is a sampling of the ones they’ll be getting this year.  (And since the kids don’t read my blog, no surprises are spoiled.)

Glass slides of WW2 aircraft.

Strange little vaguely Egyptian or Cambodian beads.  I hope no one thinks they are edible.

Big tall glass pipettes.  Yes, these will kick around my house forever.  They will start on the kitchen table, until I move them to the boys’s rooms.  Then they will get stuffed in various corners.  Then one will roll off a desk and break.  One will get lost.  And the third one will somehow mean something to one of the boys and it will end up on display or in a piece of art.  I’m in it for that one.

Seaweed.  One of my boys asks for this. The other two will twist up their faces in disgust and give their packages to the happy one.Antique dental molds.  This, my friends, is the main event.  It will inspire the “Nightmare on Dane Road” discussions with a future therapist.

This is not so bad.  Honey cones from the Netherlands.  When I was having my annual stress out November moment over finding 24 gifts, I happened to have a little fit in front of a friend who was travelling to Amsterdam.  He brought these back to help me cover one of the 24. Sweet!

I would not even want to sample this drink, but I bet one of my three guys will love it.  Probably the seaweed guy.  The one who gets H-Mart gift certificates for his birthday.

Just what is “Brown Mixture” anyway?  Of course shaking it makes all the difference.These are kind of sweet.  The little bird “perches” (or impaling implements, depending on your sensibility)  are paper scrolls you can pull out from under the tiny Tweety birds.  I did, and wrote nice “mom” messages on them.  But then I decided to get fancy and color the birds with felt pens and I pretty much destroyed them.  Not on purpose.  I wasn’t going for weird at all–but I got it–by Golly!

There are always some kitchy foods.  This is not antique.  Antique kitchy foods would just be disgusting.  And I suppose the “rainforest chicle” ingredient would be a good clue that these are VERY 2011.  Yes Mr. Glee, I will now buy your gum because I am also being a virtuous environmentalist saving tropical eco-systems when I blow these bubbles.

I do include some tasty treats too.  Locally produced or treasures from my travels, when I am enough on the ball to remember to collect them throughout the year.  Which is pretty much never.  The reality is I might have a maximum of five Advent items collected before November, and then I go on a crazy kamikaze quest for a couple weeks.  (See Dutch honey cones above.  Having fits in front of kind friends helps.)

This is just plain sweet.  I always seem to have some kind of nest or egg theme for one of the days.  My source for many of the non-food items is called “Nesting”…so there is no shortage of aviary-type items.

There is always at least one gift that features the boys’ initials.  These are some kind of metallic letter decals.  Very Archie and Veronica.

These teeny tiny books are so old and brittle that the Rudyard Kipling (Original Mr. Weird) one I opened to make the photo almost broke in half.

OK so the Advent is up earlier than ever.  (Pat on back for OTT Mom)  And what am I hearing,?  Ooohs and ahhs and little sprinkling of excited clapping?  Uh… no.  It is:  “Mommmmmm.  Why did you go all earthy and Prius-driving on us?”  Browns?  Greens?  This looks like mud.  Where is the red?  Where are our old cool packages?  This is not Christmassy at all.  It is depressing.”

See below, at what I did for too many years in a row, carefully saving and reusing the packages.  I was sick of it.  But I guess I am still failing massively on the “teach weird” front.  They want red and sparkles.  Grrrrr.

Some post Christmas additions:

• I hadn’t noticed this when I selected it, but the main ingredient in Brown Mixture is…opium!  Always a popular gift from a mother to son.
• When the boys opened the pipettes one commented “Why did you give us pipettes?”  The other boy wryly commented, “Aren’t we beyond asking why?”
• The seaweed went down exactly as predicted.

I saw a 3-D printer project I loved a couple days ago.  I’m not the only one coveting this printer.  This project was funded in a crazy-fast 45 minutes!  And it’s not backed by chump change.  We are talking $157K in five days, against an initial goal of $25K.  The higher level backers get a fully-assembled and calibrated 3-D printer out of the project.

Having a 3-D printer in every home is now getting one step closer to reality, thanks to the people who invested in this project.

I’d love to have this in our office.  Hint. Hint.    We’d learn a lot about the tools available to our Grommet partners, and maybe even be able to help them out with fabricating a prototype or two.

In that vein, I was recently swapping “great backer” stories with another entrepreneur.  He’d been delighted when one of his investors flew him in a private plane to the Nantucket Conference.  Anything that can reduce road warrior wear and tear is better than chocolates or champagne.  (I’d had a similar investor “gift” of a jet taxi ride, and also loved it.)

One of our investors actually topped my private plane ride experience two days ago when he personally gave me a few more productive hours at my desk.  How? I was whining to him about my long to-do list for the short Thanksgiving week.  He pushed me to think about what I could “outsource.”   And then he became investor-of-the-year by actually offering to make the five pie crusts I had to get done!  He did it.  The pies came out great.  And I got a lot more work done that day.

So, from plane rides to pie crusts, there is no end to what a committed investor can contribute to a start-up.

I’d love to hear what other great investors have done for their portfolio companies.

Heather Ainsworth photo, for the New York Times

The New York Times reports today that  “A Town in New York Creates Its Own Department Store.”  In Saranac Lake, a picturesque Adirondacks town, the 5,000 residents  were watching their downtown steadily decline after the Ames department store went out of business.  It got so bad that they had to drive 50 miles for a pair of underwear.

A proposed WalMart created a debate about the direction of the community.  Some just wanted to get a pair of socks conveniently, and some were worried about the WalMart’s threat to the remaining local retail.  So rather than just block WalMart or do nothing (like most towns do), these people collectively invested $500,000 to build their own department store!

The article states:  “Think of it as the retail equivalent of the Green Bay Packers — a department store owned by its customers that will not pick up and leave when a better opportunity comes along or a corporate parent takes on too much debt.”

“Community-owned stores are fairly common in Britain, and not unfamiliar in the American West, where remote towns with dwindling populations find it hard to attract or keep businesses. But such stores are almost unknown on the densely populated East Coast. The Saranac Lake Community Store is the first in New York State, its organizers say, and communities in states from Maine to Vermont are watching it closely.”

Opening day for The Community Store. Photo by Heather Ainsworth for the New York Times

Here’s my favorite quote:

“It drives me crazy when people criticize how our system works, but they don’t actually go out and try anything,” says Ed Pitts, a lawyer from Syracuse who along with his wife, Meredith Leonard, is a frequent visitor to the area and has invested in the store. “This is more authentic capitalism.”

Local retail matters.  I wrote a post about this a year ago: Why you are not a sap for buying high priced milk.  Yet, I hadn’t imagined a town taking the bull by the horns quite so directly. It’s inspiring.

1300 girls converged from all corners.  They also organized their own Leadership Institute which was broadly assembled around the theme of Innovation and Leadership.

It’s always hard to tell if a presentation or talk is “landing” with high school kids.  They are yawning and chronically sleep-deprived.  They are distracted by their phones.  They don’t nod and smile like adults often do in a talk. But the sharp questions from these girls afterwards revealed that they hadn’t missed much from our panel.

The girls swarmed afterwards for photos with the speakers.

Zubaida Bai of AYZH, Kim Karlsrud of Commonstudio and GreenAid, a Girl Scout, me

They kept pressing little trinkets into my hand.  I didn’t understand the gifts until they explained their heart-warming tradition of giving each other things to collect and display.   They are called SWAPS:  Special Whatchamacallits Affectionately Pinned Somewhere.

The giant George. R. Brown Convention center was packed with events and inspiring photos of Girl Scouts and their history.

The hundreds of adults on hand were equally engaged, and many dressed in coordinated outfits that helped their regional groups stand out.  This Florida woman explained the little hats her group sported.  They were meant to be a specific reference to the fashions of the times 100 years ago, with symbolic details of daisies (the founder’s nickname), her pearls, and also the navy color to represent the new Girl Scout uniform being released for the next 100 years.

I participate in a lot of tech conferences and competitions.  I typically only see one woman startup founder for every ten men who choose to compete or speak.  I told the girls that they need to change that.  Girls and women have to stop waiting to feel “ready” to create companies.  I can tell you that these girls are ready.  They are perfect.

You can use up to six of these at a time, they don’t expire, and they seem to self-reproduce in my mailbox every other day.  I asked the cashier how many people make a purchase without getting a discount and he said “Hardly anyone.”  He pulled out a 5 inch stack of used coupons and said, “I’ve only been here three hours…look at this.”

It’s easy to see how the store got backed into this corner.  A bright marketing manager tried this coupon once.  It was distinctive in the competitive landscape.  It had amazing conversion.  The sales looked great.  The average basket price went up.  Customers liked it.  So the store tried it again.  Customers were even more enthusiastic.  The numbers were through the roof, so they did it again and again until the program became a drug and customers would no longer purchase anything without a discount.  Margins started to get creamed.  The core business was threatened.   The only thing to do was either cheapen the merchandise with cost-reduced and stripped-down product exclusives from large manufacturers or quietly elevate sticker prices.  So Bed Bath & Beyond did that.  So did the competition. So would anyone.

When I got home from that little retail foray I read an article, Bargain Hunters, Hold That Click,  in the New York Times about the fake discounts presented at many flash sale and discount sites.  The article said,

Those who keep an eye on sales say there are more businesses proffering discount clothing than ever before, which means that no one channel is always tops for bargains. “It’s really hard to get good closeouts nowadays because so many places are fighting for them,” said Hayley Corwick, who writes the designer sales tracking blog Madison Avenue Spy. “Now the Web sites are fighting the discounters, who are fighting the flash sale sites.“

At Grommet we see the flash sale sites often picking up on products we discovered and promoting them at a “discount price” which is really exactly the same price we sell the product for every day.  Here is an example from today from Fab.com  These fantastic Rickshaw bags have been offered at this price for over a year at Daily Grommet, but Fab.com presents an inflated MSRP to calculate a discount:

From a purely rational standpoint, I’d expect the thin cover on all these “discounts”  to have already been blown.  Yet there is some odd psychology about people wanting a discount so badly they will throw out common sense and think they are getting something for less than is really possible.  Everyone is time-starved.  A discount can be a substitute for real price research.  And especially on an impulse purchase, a discount is just plain reassuring.  For evidence, look no further than the top tourist attraction in the US:  outlet malls!  (And the pathetic aspect of that is a post for another day.)  These retailers have promoted fake discounts for years.   But tourists are not demanding.  We are just looking for a fun activity on a rainy day.

But as everyday consumers, we are a bit more discerning.  Discounting is so rampant it is getting really hard to trust any pricing, full or discounted.  Filene’s Basement announced its closing yesterday.  Its legendary (and originally quite real) discount positioning has been grabbed by every store on the block.   The discount environment is becoming a blood bath where only the huge, like TJX, will survive.

However, the online environment, with its ease of comparison shopping research and competitive transparency, will do a better job for consumers than the outlet malls and other bricks and mortar discounters and let people really see the truth.   Or at least I hope so.  But you can never overrate simple psychology.  And discounts are as simple as it gets.

Here is the work in progress.

Here is the end result of the purge, headed out the door to Goodwill.  What, you might ask, is in these giant bags?

Plenty of Working Girl-style shoulder pads.

A giant furry scarf.  Perhaps I can use it as a warm rug?

As for the shiny patent leather pumps…I have absolutely no idea what to do with those.

I am finally accepting that I will never, ever fit into these jeans.  I never did. They still have tags on them.  Don’t ask.

How could I possibly ever need FOUR pairs of red tights?  I just kept buying them like some mad obsession.  I did once have a really great red dress and red suede pumps that needed red tights to complete the look.  But a person cannot wear four pair of red tights simultaneously.  What was I thinking?

This mod velour “lounge” ensemble and the Goldie Hawn LaughIn dress were clearly intended for someone with a different. more fabulous, life.

This is the only item that made its way back out of the trash bags and into the closet. I have a thing for polka dots.  They get me every time.

Oh and this little number dodged donation.  It brings back too many good memories.

These ordinary lookin hangers are a fond reminder of Dublin.  When we moved there and had no hangers, and lots of boxes of clothes,our landlady gave me a great tip.  Every night the Jigsaw boutique on Grafton street used to discard huge bags of these nice hangers.  I skulked over there and grabbed a couple sacks.  I really can’t imagine Jigsaw Corporation still fills landfills this way.  I am hanging onto them.

I thought I was pretty good at purging stuff, but today’s haul says otherwise.  Some of this stuff has been hanging around forever.  Here is the dress I wore in my HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL, ladies and gentlemen.  For the record it was Guys and Dolls.  I was in the chorus where I mostly did lip-syncing.  There were people with real genuine  talent in that show–I didn’t want to wreck it.

I kept this vintage number too, by the way. It will survive at least until we have another October snow storm.

November 17 Post Script:  I ended up posting a lot of my better stuff up on Style.ly.  It’s kind of like a fashion-focussed eBay that is easy to use.  Full disclosure:  Someone near and dear to me works there.