During a recent Cambodian Threads meeting, we decided that in addition to Jake’s travel oriented writing, it would be fun to try to post about things that are happening over here as well.  So, here goes nothing.    

We’ve been keeping pretty busy stateside, preparing for the fall, and the start of scarf season. The leaves begin to change, the air starts to get a bit nippy around the extremities, and you think “man, I wonder where that scarf I was wearing last winter went?”  That’s when Cambodian Threads steps in to do its’ part. 

It’s been a great pleasure of ours to welcome Barrie Golden back to the states.  A MA based graduate of McGill University, she was instrumental in helping to co-coordinate the past few round of scarf purchases and donations in Phnom Penh this spring.  Back in the US now, she’s been helping us get our marketing ducks in a row for the fall. 

Drew Crane, an old friend of Jake and I’s, has been helping out quite a bit recently as well.  He comes from a finance and accounting background and has been very enthusiastic about the project.  He has a great thirst for travel like the rest of us, and is an all around bulldog and a very handsome man.  We’ve been bouncing ideas back and forth for the coming season, and things are starting to get exciting!

We’ve spent the summer months mostly getting organized for the fall push.  Thanks to my wonderful Aunt Jenny, we’ll soon have a batch of beautiful pamphlets for store displays, to ship with purchases, and just to inform the general public about what we are doing with Cambodian Threads. 

This project never could have gotten off the ground without a bunch of insanely generous people working for free, or close to it.  So, thanks are in order to Jenny (http://www.stretchstudio.com/ for her and Uncle Dave’s photography wizardry), and my bro Mike for doing the website, and everyone else that’s helped out from the beginning. 

Another big focus of mine during the sweaty Boston summer has been trying to get more stores on board carrying our beautiful silk scarves.  While on tour with my rock and roll band in July, with Jake and Barrie’s help, I was able to connect with a couple stores in the Southeast US.  We’ve also been experimenting with our first bit of paid advertising through Facebook and Google this summer, which has led to a couple more exciting store leads, from national chains to eco boutiques scattered around the East Coast, the response has been enthusiastic. We are trying to work out attending the Fair Trade Federation conference in Boston this Sep, which I’m told is one of the prime buying events for fair trade fashion this year…we’re all excited to explore that opportunity more and see if we can work out the logistics.