A COMPANY (OR TWO) IS BORN

Yesterday, it became official.  Outthink LLC and Joi Bags LLC were established!!!

Please continue to pray for wisdom as we move forward.

ACCOUNTABILITY

I had a couple conversations about the Outthink initiatives with people from Grace this week.  I was a little surprised to hear that people "don't know what's going on" or "wonder if some rich guys just took all the ideas for themselves" or a couple other similar sentiments.

I took (at least) two things from these conversations...

First, I'm reminded how tough communication can be.  There are hundreds of people interested to know everything that's going on, and I (nor our team) simply can't spend personal time with each one for play-by-play information.  I hope each of you, that desires to have info, understands this physical limitation.  Yet I feel a responsibility to do a better job with communication.  So here is what you can expect:

 - Quarterly (4 times per year) bulletin inserts

 - Weekly e-mail updates

 - Occasional blog posts

 - Twitter updates as things happen (we'll see how it goes).  Follow us here.

Second, there is a general skepticism about businesses, their leaders, and mostly their owners (or as I've heard - fat cats).  I understand that many people have had bad experiences that shaped this viewpoint, and that's really unfortunate.  Bad things have happened to good, hard-working people.  Acknowledging this, I would ask you to form your opinion about these ventures based on what actually happens, not past experiences.

I titled this post "Accountability" because I want everyone to know we don't have any secrets. We're happy to talk to you any time about any thing we do.  Everyone on the team (Dan, Lonnie, Chris, Jason and myself) donates time and resources.  We don't get paid in any way. Each of us views our participation as a ministry opportunity, and we love it!

Please continue to pray for our three active opportunities:

 - Hand bags from excess RV materials: Joi Bags

 - Wheelchair

 - eBay for charity

CHANGE

This shouldn't come as a big surprise to anyone, but things change ...

Regarding the handbag business, we are no longer going to partner with the local sewing company I wrote about previously.  They decided to not be in a retail business, just sell a few bags locally, and not mass-market their bags.  They wished us well in our venture.  So we're on our own and pursuing a slightly different path.  We've created a brand called Joi Bags.  The name comes from the Italian translation of the word joy and pronounced "joy."  You can check out our website here.  We're getting things going this week with sample bags.  We hope to begin making bags next week because sales are ready and waiting!  It's exciting!!

Regarding the wheelchair prototype, we had to postpone our initial review until this Friday.  More info to come ...

Thanks for your continued prayers as we try to launch these businesses!

UNBELIEVABLE

It's been too long since my last post.  Sorry about that ...  There is so much to say.  This post will give you the highlights, and I'll fill in the gaps in the (hopefully) near future!

It looks like Outthink is going into the handbag business.  We're going to partner with a company in Goshen that sells to the RV, Mfg. Housing, and medical industries.  They have excess fabric, and they are making handbags out of it.

They have received a lot of publicity in the news, and there's more to come!

We are going to start a company to brand, market, sell, and distribute the handbags.  We're finalizing our partnership right now (which is one reason to keep the details to a minimum). We're building a website to be the front end for both wholesale buyers and (soon) consumers.  We have all kinds of open doors, and we're going to need help.  The demand is growing very quickly!!

CALL TO ACTION:

If you are good on the phone and know your way around a computer, you might be just the person we need.  As the orders roll in, we need people to answer phone calls, enter orders on the website, compile orders from the website, deliver product, etc.  Could that be you?  We really need some help in the next couple weeks.  Are you great on the phone and really know how to sell interesting products?  If so, we could use you to help us get the products in additional stores in the Michiana region.  We're going to need help with that as well!

Please don't hesitate; send your contact information here!  Do it today.

We need help as early as next week.  So we're going to have a planning meeting Saturday afternoon.  I'd love to have a bunch of people join us.  Please get in touch, even if you cannot join us Saturday.

MOST IMPORTANTLY:

Please pray for these efforts.  People are already going back to work as a result of this project, which is just great.  We want more people back to work.  Hopefully, the selling described earlier can turn into paying jobs.  But we really want prayer for the people we encounter along the way.  We want to be Jesus to them.  Some may not want to see Him, but we have so many opportunities to be a light and witness.  We want to do a great job at that!  So please pray for hearts to find Jesus as a result!

VOLUNTEERS

I received a lot of feedback from the various e-mail and blog "calls to action."  I just want to say thanks and keep them coming!  We can't reply to all of them, but we have them and will be in touch...

EBAY?

We've got an idea to use eBay to help people in Elkhart County.  The quick explanation is that we would launch an eBay store to sell stuff that people don't want or no longer need.

We could have two sides of the business.  One side is driven by donations.  People simply bring their items to a storage location (or we pay someone to go pick them up).  We sell the stuff on eBay and provide tax receipts to the donors.  We could then use the revenues to cover the transactions costs and pay a staff to work with the inventory, list the items, ship them, etc.  The proceeds could support great ministries like Community Hope, Feed My Starving Children, Asia's Hope, etc.

The other side of the business is driven by consignment.  Instead of donations, we list people's items and charge a commission for the service.  No tax receipts here.  The consignors get some money, and we use our share for the same things: pay people to work and donate to great charities!

Think of what this accomplishes.  It takes stuff people don't need or want and turns it into cash for the people that own it (consignors) and/or the people that need it (charities).

So here's a call to action:

 - We know there are some eBay gurus out there.  If you have a heart for the outthink mission to really help people in Elkhart County and have a desire to get involved in this, please contact us.  Send an e-mail here.

HAND BAGS

Another idea to help workers in Elkhart County has been brewing over the last couple weeks, and it came to us today.  We met with Pat and Dawn to discuss an idea for ladies hand bags made from excess and obsolete fabric in the RV industry.

A local business is really hurting, and Dawn has a very tender heart for the workers.  They happen to use a lot of fabric for the RV parts they make, and Dawn had an idea to make hand bags out of them.  So she did!  She's worked with people at the factory to turn out the bags and has interest from several specialty shops around the county.  She's already sold more than 100 of them!  They even developed a tag (that goes on the bag) that explains the story behind the bags.

Get this: they even called back 6 laid-off workers to help make the bags.  These bags are making their way around too.  They're getting into the hands of county and state government officials, perhaps even to a former Presidential candidate.  As Dawn is quick to point out - it's quite a God-thing!

So here's a call to action:

 - We need contacts in the sales rep channels for women's accessories and apparel.  These would be professional sales representatives that communicate with regional specialty shops that might be interested in this product.

 - We could also use some contacts that know something about the fashion business (from experience or study) and have marketing and branding savvy.

Remember, it would be great to have like-minded people that understand our mission to really help people in Elkhart County.  Please send the contact info here.