Hi everyone
Last week when I was building my own workbench it made me think about how much of my business is bought in versus how much I make.
That got me thinking “I wonder if my customers know how much I actually make myself?”
Which then posed the question do they care?
In business you're always told to be successful you need to stand out from the crowd, you need to give people a reason to choose your product over a competitors.
The handmade marketplace really blew up during lockdown. It had always been there in one form or another but I think during lockdown is when people started changing how they shopped.
Platforms like Etsy blew up as people were out of work or furloughed and they needed to find different ways to earn, and the other side of that was people had a lot more time on their hands.
The handmade revolution began lol
Now I came to the party late as I was very lucky to have continued working during lockdown but I still had decided I wanted a change.
Starting my business was done on a whim. There was no business plan, no premises, no budget. I just started practicing my craft in my spare bedroom.
Because I started my business without any startup money I had to make what I couldn’t afford. This meant I built my workspace as my business grew and I didn’t have the money to get premises or furniture so I had to get creative.
Looking back now at what I’ve achieved I am so proud of myself and I feel that the fact I have built or repurposed things to make my workspaces does set me apart from others.
This journey has changed my mindset and I now find myself looking at what I purchase and trying to figure out if I can make it myself.
For starters I designed my new bears, yes I had to use a company to help me with the 3d drawing. But now I’m looking at doing a course to learn how to the computer design elements myself.
I had to get a template made and this was so stressful. I found a company to make it but after the test piece came out perfect the 3 proper templates all had issues with them. So 3d printing is also on my list to learn so I can make my own templates.
I watched videos and read posts and with a bit of trial and error I started making my own moulds out of silicone and I’ve got quite good at mould making.
Last year my sales were booming I couldn’t keep up with demand and I had ran out of space to make more courage bears so I got creative and I repurposed my wardrobes into more workspace by putting in pull out shelves into them. This gave me the capability to mould 400 bears a day. Total game changer and definitely made fulfilling orders easier as I could keep up with demand now.
my house looked like a bomb site because I had everything to ship my orders all over my house. Sweet Scooby is frightened of boxes so as well as my house being a mess I had to carry her past all the boxes.
Again I didn’t have any budget to make a post room plus I’d ran out of space again so I took some money from my sales and I paid to have my loft boarded out and a pull-down ladder put in. I had debated doing it myself but all my time was spent on getting my orders out and replenishing stock so I farmed out that job.
Im so glad I did. Those guys did in a day what would probably have taken me a week to do on my own. So I now had 300 square foot of usable floor space in my loft. But I still needed to turn it into a usable space.
There were off cuts left over from boarding out the loft and I decided to see if I could repurpose them into workbenches. I was so happy that they fit between the loft joists at just the right height for me to stand and work at. So with some hard work I made myself lots of space. You’ll see on some of my videos that I’m usually up in my loft and it means Scooby doesn’t have to be carried around the house, I have reclaimed my house as a home and I also have the ability to deal with large volume of orders.
The sense of satisfaction knowing I’ve built almost all of my workspaces is huge.
So when you buy from me I can honestly say that as much as possible is handmade by me.
- The table I create on
- I design and develop every piece
- The mould I work with
- I measure and mix every drop of resin
- I take the sharp edges off every bear
- I turn every bear into a keyring
- I pick, pack and ship every order
- I come up with the content ideas for my social media
- I film every video
- I take all my own product pictures
- I edit every picture and video
- I built and manage my own website
- I manage 3 business social media pages
- I answer every message
- I resolve every issue
- I write my own blog
so when you buy from me you are buying from a handmade business
Thank you for taking the time to read this and I welcome any comments or feedback.
Have a great day