PURPLE BLAB

You may think Crisis Management PR is only relevant to publicists who represent celebrities like Lindsay Lohan, politicians like Elliot Spitzer and models like Kate Moss (our favorite who always comes out on top). Well, think again! Beauty publicists need to be schooled in Crisis Management PR too, right alongside Paris Hilton’s peeps.

Not sure who was hanging out on YouTube last Saturday night at 10pm, but I can tell you who was…me!

Purple Lab ran into a bit of a PR crisis two week ago after posting what we thought to be a successful Dayton, Ohio news segment featuring Huge Lips Skinny Hips.

This whole thing – starting a business, becoming a manufacturer, raising money, balancing it with a day job, overseeing back and front end of all operations… it’s war, I tell you. WAR!

At times, it was war with the accountant.

At times, it was war with the bank – or the fact that it was showing no love.

At times, I cannot lie, my husband.

At times, every vendor.

At times, the friends and family who gave the seed money to help kick it off.

And much of the time, it’s war with yourself. At least it is for me.

I am desperately trying to catch up on the Purple Lab story from where I am in the blog to where I am in real-time. To speed up the process, I thought I’d do it by video – VLOG!

Here is the part of my story about getting a B-plan and raising money (at least the start of it).

Wait – before you click – sorry that YouTube paused on this image… it looks like I’m about to throw up!

At this point, I was about 60k in the hole. Maybe more. I was losing count. And numbers were never my strongsuit.

Could I have spent less on press materials? Yes.

Could we have tried to negotiate better terms with our vendors – i.e. don’t pay half up front but maybe 1/4? Maybe. But I didn’t and I didn’t quite know how either. In hindsight, everything is 20/20.

In case you’re wondering, I was a good 60k in the hole. And believe me, every dime of it hurt – it was a life’s savings and it was dwindling with a list of expenses still ahead.

Could I have spent less on press materials? Yes.

Could we have tried to negotiate better terms with our vendors – i.e. don’t pay half up front but maybe 1/4? Maybe. But I didn’t and I didn’t quite know how to do so and as a new company, we have such little leverage.

In hindsight, everything is 20/20.