Miche Bag Home Show Representative Raejean White

The Miche Bag was introduced as a new type of purse a few years ago, and many women have found it to be a lifesaver.

Think of the Miche Bag as a Super Hero – it is mild mannered Bruce Wayne underneath with its bland interior, but voila! Put on the costume chelle of your choice, just as Batman puts on his cape and covers up his true identity, and there you have a completely new purse!

You can change the Miche Bag in as many different ways as you wish by buying more chelles or straps. Go wild or conservative. The big draw is that you don’t have to keep taking everything out of your purse to do it.

Raejean White first saw the Miche Bag when her sister-in-law brought back one and a few chelles after returning from a trip. The first thing Raejean asked, “Do they do home shows?”

The answer is a resounding “yes”. However, you need a real go-getter, exciting sort of gal like Raejean White to make it work.

I interviewed Raejean via telephone while she was making a delivery of some of her Miche Bags. She explained, with her infectious laugh, that she doesn’t normally deliver her products, but more people came to the hostess’ home after the party had ended and had became enamored with the Bags – they had placed an order for ten more without her even having to be there for the sale!

This puzzled me a bit since I knew from past experience with my wife that with most home show sales parties the women didn’t come home with the product. Instead, they placed the order and the product was delivered later, up to three weeks later depending on the company, after it was shipped to the sales representative, then sent to the Hostess. How as the Miche Bag different? What kind of purse was this?

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Raejean admitted this was normally true for the Miche Bag as well. “In the beginning all I had was my Miche Bag and my sister-in-law’s plus a few chelles to show — then I placed my first big order – now I’ve probably got five thousand dollars in inventory. You see, you never know what people will want! There are so many Miche Bag chelles to choose from! There aren’t many home shows where people go home with their products, and I like to give people that. Women live in a hurry up and wait world, not very many times can they get what they want NOW! I like to be able to do that for them!

I asked her if she was then basically doing a store without the overhead, and she laughed again. Her laughter rang through the telephone lines. Clearly this woman would be fun to have at a home show.

“I don’t know if you’d call it a store since I don’t have people come to my home to buy. I do shows. But I keep an inventory and a home office which means I have to pay state sales taxes and am able to take advantage of appropriate small business tax right offs.

This wasn’t always easy.

Raejean became serious for a moment when talking about taxes. Whenever a person does a small business they have to keep their tax information straight. I learned the hard way on that one. You have sales tax on top of income tax. It can be a nightmare if you don’t get it right from the beginning.”

She became excited, however, when talking about the different chelles. The company comes out with a new chelle designs every month!” One of her favorites is the chelle for breast cancer research. Instead of just making the chelle pink or only putting the pink ribbon on, the company designed a chelle with quotes from breast cancer survivors themselves. It is called “The Hope Chelle.”

The way the company went about designing the bag meant a lot to Raejean. They actually talked to the breast cancer survivors – this means something to me because my mom is a breast cancer survivor and my brother’s girl friend is a breast cancer survivor. They actually listened to what the women had to say and used it for the bag’s design!”

I asked Raejean how being a Home Show Representative for Miche Bags had changed her life. Her reply surprised me. Yes, she is making some money and everyone could use more of that, especially in today’s economy. But her focus was more on the people she was meeting through this experience.

“I used to drive by towns and wonder …how many people are in that town? I’d wonder about the people and their stories, and I’d wonder about how their stories impact each other’s lives. Now I can do these parties and actually find out the answers to those questions.”

“The women are the most fun when it is a relaxed environment. I’m not into a hard sales approach. I make that clear. No one has fun that way. I’m all about the fun!” She laughed again.

Since the majority of her parties are booked through referrals, being all about the fun is probably a profitable thing to be, I observed.

But Raejean was sincere. “If I can’t have fun doing this, then I don’t want to do it at all. I donate a lot of bags to different organizations when they do fundraising. These come out of my pocket, not the company’s. Sure, it’s great advertising for me, so I suppose that it is good business. But I also get to hang out with the group when their doing their fundraisers. And it is the right thing to do, to give back. That’s why I do it – to have fun and to help out.

Raejean doesn’t currently have a blog but plans to have one soon. For now she can be reached through her Facebook page. She meets strangers for the first time with her husband or police officer son present.

“I love people but I’m not stupid,” she deadpanned.

She lists the chelles she has in stock on her Facebook page. “I have more chelles on my page than the company has because my Distributor tells me when the company is going to discontinue a chelle and I stock up.”

This year her Distributors are offering a free cruise to any Home Show Representative who purchases 25K worth of products. So if you’re sitting on your cruise ship next year and the woman next to you has an infectious laugh and an interesting purse, don’t be surprised if it is Raejean White.