Archive for February, 2010

Amy continues the journey of exploration in the value and importance of her Nüggi product.  Over a period of 4 months, she and her family will distribute the remaining stock of their product to those they meet along the way.  For the next few weeks, they are in the Humbolt Park district of Chicago.

 Nothing says the foundation of our little start-up like the idea of mulitpurpose products.  With all these Nüggis in store, slowly being doled out by the handful to new friends and strangers, we came upon new uses.  This week Nüggi was reinvented into an Üggi for Mark and a Nügglette for baby PJ.  And together only two Nüggis were harmed, so I guess there were casualties.

 In our quest for personal and professional clarity, we see other new ways of using our surroundings. Limited space allows for creative invention and practicality.  We are all allotted a certain amount of space as a voyaging family and when one thing enters, another must leave. One sleeper outgrown, a new fleece pullover introduced.   We are settled into Chicago daily life which involves Ukraniane delis, Mariachi serenades, chiropractors, wet, diagonal snow storms and, the vrai culinary symbol of repurposing: soup.

Nüggi and Üggi at Work

Chicago soups are frequent and the stuff of warm tables and comfort.  Brothy, whole-potatoed soups from the Mexican neighborhood and medleys of homestyle favorites, pepper and smoked meat Goulash, split pea, and golden chicken noodle each for $1.29 a serving at local Polish-Ukraine grocers.  Or the historic Drake‘s Cape Cod Clam Chowder and more signature Bookbinder soup, formerly with Snapper Turtle, now just the fish of the same name and a drizzle of sherry served in small flasks on the side.  Even the Chicago sandwiches are dipped au jus for your pleasure.

This week we visit Fermilab, whose mission is “High-Energy Physics, the science of matter, space and time.”  We’ll be given a tour  by VIP Nüggi fan and physicist Teppei Katori whose knowledge of neutrinos and his innovation with our little Nüggi  product continues to make my head spin and heart blush.  Thanks for joining us on the journey. 

The girls at local Feed got their Nüggis too!

www.mynuggi.com; info@mynuggi.com

On our first leg of  our North by Northeast Nüggi Tour, we investigate, as a family, if the business we started is worth continuing.  In 4 months, we intend to give away Nuggis, the product, to people who cross our paths. 

one of the world's many Nuggi models

The Best Laid Plans: another possible tour name, or B.L.P, which means that ideally I would have had video of the inception process, but I don’t. That I would have made better choices, put in more effort, given it some time. Giving away a business is a similar process to how I’ve run things in the past: Loosely. We sent 10 boxes of Nüggis into the world to what we call Key Distribution points, points along our journey, measured in fistfuls of colors but favoring Camel and Light Blue. The goal: ‘get them out there.’ I believe when you hang on to stock in anything, be it beef, money, Nüggis, or love, you devalue it. And nothing devalues a business like fleece in the Caribbean. But we saw modest sales and great enthusiasm.

“Your Nüggi saved me.”  I believe in Nüggi and have a hard time not giving my sales pitch to people receiving free ones; I will remain Nüggi’s greatest fan. Not because I made it, but because I made it for me. But there is the moral obligation to the larger questions in life that makes the retention of 2000+ fleece hats unnecessary. And we were moving. And traveling for many months in the cold North. Come along with me as I go out of business! People ask me where they can buy another one and it pains me to tell them that there are simply no more, that they shouldn’t order them online as the Paypal function is still up but really no one is home. For a length of time the site only said “Hosting Has Expired,” which wouldn’t generate confidence in anyone looking online for it, but it wasn’t actually a lie either. [It is back online now at www.mynuggi.com.]

author & nuggi designer amy with daughter pj in montana

It’s not that I intended to go into or out of business so Laissez-faire, well, maybe I did. I wanted it to be ‘my ideal job’ in an extremely vague way that I once funneled into a Business Plan which remains on both a computer file and a back-up CD somewhere. It has a graph with an exponential sales curve. Peripherally, I learned a lot about business. That you need to dedicate time to it was the main thing I learned. That was what got me. I liked not dedicating time to it. I can list the other things I spent my time doing and having a great time of it except for a short pile of working-for-the-man-hours where the Dream of Nüggi really took off, but overall it was a really blessed time to be me.

 Having to deal with convincing others that my product was very cool was not very fun. It was like starting at a new school every day and trying to be cool when you feel lame. And the other tough part was dealing with the people who help get your product to market. The people who sew it, but inside out. The lost boxes, receipts, filing, unpaid invoices. There were a lot of headaches, a lot of dread over tasks. Now, giving them away I’ve put more smiles on people’s faces directly than I ever did via mail or through a store. Triplets of Montana hunters, families, coffee house workers, Swedish consulate interns, two men getting their car jump started, radio hosts, college students and food bank staff. The Nüggi is out there right now on these cold nights and getting used. I’m happy to see them go, until the end, until the end…