I’m not great with social media, but the idea seems primed for themed discounts and getting some influencers on board (if you’re in an area that has them). April Bonnet season - get a free upsizing when wearing a bonnet. Winter Tweed sale - come in wearing vintage tweed, have a photographer on the premises and snap pictures in sepia. Why not buy a coffee while you’re waiting? Dedicate a corner for pictures with lighting - people could come in for a low cost photoshoot (think engagement holiday cards, baby announcements, etc…), partner with a local print shop if there is one. One stop package, with a live background that could be arranged depending on the pictures.

You could hire Chinese legal representation and get a Chinese patent. Or, use literally any other country in the world for manufacturing so you have to worry less about it.

I pretty much agree with everyone who says she’s not a friend.

However, her and your ages would help, as well as how long you’ve known her. Also…is she a space cadet and completely oblivious to things? If she’s living in a bus, she may not necessarily be good with picking up cues and looking for any opportunity and beg for forgiveness later - sort of like how hermits can develop altered realities. If this is an old high school friend of 20 years and this is the only weird conflict you’re having with her, seeing if you can put pressure through town ordinances would be the best way of avoiding an outright conflict.

For the pictures, write down why people should buy what you’re producing. High quality? Patterns? Fit? Make sure your pictures align with those values. Eg: if it’s high quality, show the stitching.

Your business is your story. When you don’t have a firm grasp of your story, every decision is hard. When your story is solid, every decision will use your story as the way of figuring it out. Should you use this one or this one? Well, what story are you telling, and which shows it?

Things like a website, pictures, etc… are worth about 0.05% of your energy. Get it out today, make sure you can easily change them later and add more if need be, move on to the next decision. When you get through everything, then you do another sweep and make incremental improvements, especially after getting some data. Oh look, more people are clicking on the picture of the model turned sideways then to the front? Great, let’s get more pictures from the side, upload, done.

Also…and this is important. Have a budget and an eject point. Businesses fail, there’s no shame in that - only lessons learned to apply to the next one. But you don’t want to keep pouring money into something failing (unless money is limitless in your case). If you have a budget of…$15k, and it looks like you’ll blast through that without even launching, then stop and see if what you’re spending money on is actually mission critical or just distractions.

Is this real? Looooove this idea!

To be fair - time is money. For some, spending 6 hours on a course and then get to it is worth more than trying to piece together 50 hours of content.