AutonomousEngender

One of the joys of setting up your own business is getting befuddled by all the information that can be flung in your direction. Yesterday I went to my first startup business fair, at ExCel in the East End of London. Now I can cope with discussing concepts, seeking out suppliers and, most fun of all, deciding on prospective stock, but this was something else.

For those of you who are worried about global deforestation I think I’ve discovered the root cause – all the flyers and promotional materials handed out at business fairs. Within seconds of getting inside I was already weighed down by the first carrier bag of ‘stuff’, and a lot more was to follow.

All in all I suppose the day was a qualified success: I attended an interesting seminar on web traffic optimisation (see www.weboffin.co.uk); got hold of all the necessary bank and government agency bumpph; and had a good chat with a chap who sells a very funky soft phone setup. However to get all this wheat I had to sort through a lot of chaff.

Many of the exhibitors seemed to be just in the business of selling a website and a small online retail unit to fast buck merchants. It made me wonder how many people are still trying to setup a business that they believe in, something that will give them both an income and no small measure of job satisfaction for decades to come? At least the web boffin was in it for the right reasons. Anyone who skips at work must be alright.

It's nice to put a face to a name, isn't it?

This is the story of a business venture and of a life.

I class myself as transgendered, though I know this term can cause much confusion. To me it means that on a psychological, emotion and behavioural aspect I straddle the murky waters between what is accepted as male and female. I have a male body, but I spend a significant amount of my time dressed as a woman. I suppose this makes me a transvestite, if we're going to attach labels to things.

I know I'm not truly female, but I do regard myself as an emulation of a woman. Not a parody.

Up to a couple of months ago I worked in a shop catering to the TG community, but I wasn't satisfied with the levels of service we were able to offer. Scratching away on the breadline, scraping money in from sex toys and pornography. I wanted to be able to offer a wider range of quality products so that the clientele could make a real choice. Though a large part of the job involved offering advice and support I wished we could make more of a difference: taking a man with gender dysphoria and helping him as far along the path as she wanted to go.

One of our regular customers, Kelly, had become my friend and I found that we shared the same ambition. We knew that simply catering to the TG market would be difficult economically, and we started to look for other niche markets that would complement our goals.

And so Autonomy and Engendered@Autonomy were born.

We have the concept, we have some of the products, we have a half written business plan. We have a huge amount of work to do.

Over the next few months the story will unfold as we head for either shopkeeping success or destitution.