Well, it isn’t exactly spring..the spring time weather is try­ing to break through the windy, chilly and rainy days of winter’s end.

Walk­ing on the upper east side I love the con­trast of the stone and bril­liance of sud­den color.

Daf­fodils def­i­nitely mean spring…as well as tak­ing a stroll instead of catch­ing a cab.

I slightly altered this French insur­ance ad by Soci­ete Gen­erale …tee hee…I think it’s great!

I thought you might like to see a few behind the scene snap­shots of our 2011 prod­uct shoot.

It’s always a weight off my  mind when it starts and when it’s fin­ished. I have spent hours the last sev­eral years tak­ing my own shots and lots of money pay­ing pho­tog­ra­phers to take them for me..I can say that I am happy to part with some well earned dol­lars to have them done by a professional.

Thank you for your custom.

Have you ever heard this phrase?  I hear it often enough in a British Sit-Com I watch called Are You Being Served? It sounds quaint and proper. The phrase is said as we Amer­i­cans would say “Have a nice day.” Obvi­ously “thank you for your cus­tom” means thank you for your busi­ness.….but it got me think­ing enough one day to research it.

As a busi­ness owner I’ve hes­i­tated to use the word cus­tomer in ref­er­ence to a per­son who pur­chased La Dolce Diva bath and prod­ucts. Being an upscale line I wanted a word that reflected a higher level of con­sumer. Why? Because the word cus­tomers seemed com­mon. I could use the word client, but that’s usu­ally reserved for a ser­vice busi­ness such as your attor­ney or hair­dresser. When a per­son buys a prod­uct, they’re cus­tomers. There’s really no way around it.

So, I looked up the word customer:

The word derives from “cus­tom,” mean­ing “habit”; a cus­tomer is some­one who fre­quents a par­tic­u­lar shop, who makes it a habit to pur­chase goods of the sort the shop sells there rather than else­where, and with whom the shop­keeper tries to main­tain a rela­tion­ship to keep his or her “cus­tom,” mean­ing expected pur­chases in the future.~wikipedia

So obvi­ously, there is more to the word than is com­monly under­stood. After read­ing the def­i­n­i­tion I real­ized that the word Cus­tomer is actu­ally a term of respect and should be used as such.

I’d like to thank the academy…or at least Indie Busi­ness Media and Small Busi­ness Trends.

I was thrilled to receive an email last night from Donna Maria Coles John­son, CEO of Indie Busi­ness Media, that La Dolce Diva was going to be men­tioned in an arti­cle about small busi­nesses. It’s always excit­ing to get any press cov­er­age, but even more reward­ing when it comes from some­one inside the cir­cle or behind the veil.

Own­ing, oper­at­ing and nur­tur­ing a small busi­ness can really only be under­stood by those that have been in the trenches and signed every bill and check that keeps the com­pany run­ning. Enough about the drudgery– the icing is when one actu­ally gets acknowledged.

So, thank you Donna Maria this was a high point blip in the Google stats of my week.

La Dolce Diva, an Atlanta-based bath and body line by Jen­nifer Kirk­wood, offers a good exam­ple of serv­ing a spe­cific niche. Jennifer’s fash­ion design career took her around the globe. She’s a fun, hip diva girl who loves to travel but, as she says, her heart is always in Italy. From the Ital­ian land­scape to the deli­cious gelato and bis­cotti, Jen­nifer knows Italy and she shares her pas­sion through her upscale, high-end prod­ucts. Prod­ucts like Almond Bis­cotti Sugar Scrub, Limon­cello Hand Wash, and Gelato Shea Body But­ter are aimed squarely at a spe­cific buyer per­sona — peo­ple who see them­selves as well-traveled divas.

For the full arti­cle please visit this link Small Busi­ness Trends

You, my Sweet Diva, are smart, savvy, fun & fab­u­lous!
You have a pas­sion for life & liv­ing it with style.
Resilient & bold, you have the courage to chase your dreams & make them real­ity.
You can gig­gle like a girl or strut like a star.
You are true to your­self and your Diva sisters!

Each evening in Rome I usu­ally ended up on the Span­ish Steps at the Piazza di Spagna. It’s a com­mon meet­ing place for tourists and locals alike. I won’t make the catty obser­va­tions on how you can tell the locals from the tourists, the Euro­peans from the Amer­i­cans, etc. Let’s just say it’s a mass of human­ity at around 6:30 pm.

The first impulse when see­ing the steps after a long day trekking around Rome is to grab a dou­ble scoop cup of gelato and set­tle in for some peo­ple watch­ing. You’ll quickly learn that there’s no eat­ing on any pub­lic his­toric area in Italy. The polizia, cara­binieri or just a hired guard will quickly say No! No! while wav­ing his fin­ger back and forth. Bummer.