Launching a New Line - The Process

I have been sewing bags since about 2007 (you can read the whole back story here) and it has always been a system of, "I have an idea for a bag, these are the materials I have sitting around, so lets make it and see what happens." It was 100% a hobby.
I then saw that if I sold them online I could not only get them out of my kitchen, I could make a little extra money! I then became obsessed with the whole engineering side of making a bag and how to get which piece to serve what function and how to do it with a sewing machine and not with magic, that was the hard part.
That lead to a little Etsy shop where I would experiment and sell here and there things. It wasn't until my friend had a baby and needed a diaper bag that the whole "business" thing came to mind. I made the bag for her, took pictures, then decided to list it online and see if anyone else would like one.
This was the first bag that sold multiple times, and I thought "hey, maybe I got something here!".

The diaper bag that ultimately became the Margot.
The stitching was just awful on this and the design wasn't quite there,
but hey, you gotta start somewhere!

So then the challenge became designing a few bags that all had a similar style, a "line" if you will, that I could make over and over again. After alot of playing around I landed on four basic designs. Here is the first round:

This was thrilling for me. I sent the bags off for professional photographing with models so that we could launch Nikolettebags.com, and that we did. However, there was still the problem of sourcing materials and tweaking the designs because they still weren't quite right. I was also spending ALOT of time photographing each bag, editing the photos, then getting them listed on both Etsy and nikolettebags.com. I needed materials that I could buy over and over again, so that I could list a bag once and be done with it. No more photo days!
Then we were saved by several companies, most of them local to Portland, that we searched hard for day and night. I wish I could write a song about my suppliers as a thank you and make a music video, that's how excited I am.
The perfecting of the bag designs occurs mostly when I'm laying in bed at night and it is quiet except for the sound of the turtle tank in the living room. For some reason my brain goes into engineer mode and I can suddenly piece a bag start to finish in my mind's eye. It took several weeks of nights like this and trial and error, but I think we got it.
Now the challenge is getting everything made so we can list the new line complete in the coming weeks. Then add to it as new ideas come along.
Today my To Do List looks like this:

I have a giant chart on the wall in the studio of everything that needs to be made and gradually things are getting checked off. The patterns for the Lucy, Kimball and Margot are finally pieced and ready for production. That just leaves the Randall... that big beast. I have made a few prototypes and am very close. The old Randall was too small for a big laptop like the one I use, so my goal is to make the new one a bit bigger for people who wanted to use it as such. I am also working in front cell phone size pockets (you can see what I'm talking about here on this first prototype I made.) and an interior pocket for the power supply.
I am also working on a few side project bags for friends which helps serve as a distraction from the pressures of a deadline.
So that's the status report as of today. My goal is to have most everything done some time in October, hopefully not October 31st, but we'll see how fast I can work. We'll keep you posted, until then enjoy all the sale items at nikolettebags.com!