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Entry 4:
It is amazing how much I learned (and continue learning) from starting my own Arts and Crafts business. It’s a steep learning curve where things evolve so quickly, and that is why I have to always keep an open mind and be eager to learn.
My business is made of 2 components: online and offline. The offline bit is the art workshops that I run in collaboration with other artists, the private art tuition, the party planning, teaching in south East London, mural painting, private commissions and craft fairs. The online bit consists of my online shop (still being developed, yet this seems to be taking forever), my website and my blogs.
I hope this post can give anyone starting their own craft business a good few tips.
1) Be passionate and believe in yourself. Starts-ups are an emotional roller coaster!
Working long hours and going the extra mile is something that comes from being passionate about what I do. It is not like having a job, it never stops! If I am not working, I am thinking about work. Ideas come to me in my sleep, when I am driving, when I am dropping my daughter off to school, when I am with friends, at the dinner table. It is all consuming and seems to have taken over my life, but it never feels like work. Far from it, it enhances my life and makes me feel that this is the most rewarding journey I have embarked on.
The other point is believing in myself, which is the only thing that keeps me going when I get “shut down”, when things go wrong, when business is slow, when I can’t seem to make things go as planned, when I feel financially stuck. It takes a great deal of self-belief and courage to drive the business forward when all else seems to be dragging it backwards. Start-ups are an emotional roller-coaster, the ups and downs are an intrinsic part of it. The trick is to keep going and never give up.
2) It is fun, so be eager to learn
Working for yourself is fun. the high points are intoxicating and the freedom and versatility are amazing. This comes from doing something I love. To keep enjoying it, I have to continuously be prepared to learn and discover better ways to grow my business.
Take the online aspect for example, being in the online craft business, the web aspect is extremely important. I never realised how important web design and blogging are. For a start, it’s hard to keep pace and stay on top of the latest technologies. I have to self-teach myself and this kind of learning is ongoing, extremely time consuming and a very important part of my job. I guess because I am passionate about what I do, this endless quest of self-learning feels fun and addictive…
Like blogging for example (and please note that blogging is a very sore point for me because I am learning it as I go along and find customizing my blogs extremely frustrating), Sometimes I spend a whole day glued to my computer and trawling endless wordpress forums to try and work out something very simple -like adding an image in the sidebar of my blog, which I still am unable to do. I understand now that blogging often and having useful content that engages readers is extremely important to online craft bloggers. Because of this, I spend endless hours every evening reading about widgets, CSS language, my website’s CMS and all the rest of it. I feel like a student again but I am enjoying all the trials and tribulations that come from learning something new.
3) Experiment and try plenty of little things
I found this point to be so important for me. Instead of focusing on one idea, I try lots of little ones to see which one works best. Unfortunately, there is no magic formula or one great idea which will make my business thrive. It is all about trial and error, about trying so many different strategies and “products” or “services” and finding out from customer responses which one works best. Take my art workshops for example, in the last year I have tried many ways to promote them - from online advertising to traditional print and offline media - and it took me 12 months to work out which medium works best for me and reaches my customers more effectively.
4) Don’t worry about competitors, Particularly in the Arts & Crafts business!
From what I have experienced, there is a strong sense of crafting and artists community online. Tricks and tips of the trade are kindly shared by many craft lovers who have made their hobby into a living. Many popular crafters and mixed media artists develop strong following via their blogs and link into each others pages and websites (although many of them make and sell the same items). And because handmade products, though similar in concept, are individual to the artists, there is always room for more.
At first, I was fixated on competition (ingrained in me by years working at Yahoo! ), but as Cool Mummy started to take root, I learned a valuable lesson: Whilst finding out “who creates what” in the space you are operating in is an important step in developing your niche, don’t abandon your dream just because there is too much competition. Many artists and companies may sell a similar product but the execution is different and the business’s goals and objectives are not the same as yours.
Being self-employed and doing the things I love best has always been my dream. I know there are so many talented people stuck in a 9 to 5 job and that have a similar dream. The time is never “right” to take the plunge and start your own business, you just have to knuckle down and go for it. The road is bumpy and long but the journey is so rewarding. Just do your research and read plenty of articles posted by self-employed people who have done just that…like me 
Entry 3:
There is a universal appeal in starting and running your own business. It may be to seek fortune, escape the dissatisfaction of employment, find an alternative lifestyle or seek independence. Whatever the reason, starting your own business is a challenging venture which requires a huge amount of research, preparation and most of all commitment. There are many things to consider and overlooking some of them might lead to failure, goal setting for example is one of them.
One of the initial steps I took before embarking on starting Cool Mummy and making my dream come true was goal setting. Here is how I did it:
Identifying personal goals. My mission statement!
It is easy to get sucked into the excitement of a business start up and forget to ask the most important question: “Why am I doing this?”
Before I answered this question, I needed to have a clear understanding of what success means to me!
To me, success is the ability to channel my creative energy while allowing me to earn the salary required to live happily and comfortably. This means being able to paint and create things, earning a minimum of £amount pa, allowing me to pursue my various recreational activities, and having the time to be fully involved in the education and upbringing of my 8 year old daughter. So if my personal goal (or idea of success) was fast accumulation of wealth, then Cool Mummy would be the wrong business startup to help me achieve my goals.
Clearly stating my personal goals helped me work out if my business idea is the right one for me.
Writing down the answers to the question “Why am I doing this?” will help you identify your personal goals. You can then move on to asking the question “Where do I go from here?”, the answers to this second question will help you identify short term and long term business goals.
Identifying long term business goals
These are written goals that give my Cool Mummy plan power! This is a strategic plan to make my dream come true and make sure it doesn’t stay a dream. My long term goals describe where my business should be in five years time and longer than that, therefore giving me a target to aim towards and allowing me to focus all my efforts on attaining these objectives.
Writing my long term objectives gives me focus and direction. Here are a few examples:
- To have an online presence via a website that allows me to both showcase my work and sell my products and services.
- To produce a geo-targeted mailing campaign aimed at young parents.
- To earn £ amount pa within the third year of starting my business.
- To ensure that my website is always well optimised
- Etc
Identifying short term business goals
Now that I have identified my long term business goals, what I needed is a business road map which consists of a set of small, realistic and attainable goals to guide me on my way to getting Cool Mummy up and running. These goals will help me measure progress in my business. I found that writing these goals down gives me direction and makes my venture more manageable.
Because Cool Mummy is an Art and Creative business, it is easy to get sidetracked and deviate from my “road map”. To this end, I have written down a set of short term goals. Here are some examples:
- Create my logo
- Brainstorm the website’s general concept
- Design and create various layouts for the website
- Design the artwork for the website, the stationary, and the direct mail material.
- Source labels, hangtags, stickers, business cards, etc
- Continue to create Cool Mummy items such as bags, soft furnishing projects, murals, puppet theatres, paintings, etc
- Create the postcards and leaflets that will help me implement my geo-targeted mailing campaign
- etc
Tracking progress and startup cost
Tracking the progress of my individual goals and monitoring costs associated with implementing these goals is essential to keep on top of my finances.
To help me track my progress, I have created a spreadsheet which contains a list of all my short term goals and for each of these goals, I have recorded the following:
- List of activities that I need to do in order to achieve each goal.
- The time frame I have set myself to achieve each activity.
- The money I have spent on each activity (this includes purchased items, transport, equipment, etc…).
- General remarks and notes.
I will talk more about startup cost in my next blog entry. Stay tuned!
Entry 2
The last month has been a whirlwind of trips to the web design agency and continuous online research, and to this end, this entry is about the initial steps I have taken to build my website.
Step 1 - Preparation:
I am not technically proficient and I need a web designer to help me bring my ideas to life and build a website that will showcase my work and sell my products. Knowing what my website will look like is simply not enough, I have learned that it is essential to be well prepared for the first meeting with the designer because deciding on who to assign the project to is almost as important as the project itself. In preparation, I mean having mastered my elevator pitch to near perfection as well as having very clear answers to the following questions (in no particular order).
- Am I looking for web design agency who can offer design, web development, data management system, and search engine optimisation?
- am I building an e-commerce site or will I sell my products via another platform (such as Etsy)
- What goals is my website intent to serve (it is important at this stage to have a clear idea of who my customers are and what my competitors are doing online)?
- Select a domain name for my website and register it. I have chosen www.coolmummy.co.uk which is the name of my business and have purchased it from Go Daddy.
- Do I have examples of websites I like and others that I don’t? showing my agency plenty of examples has helped them gain a better understanding of the general look & feel I am trying to achieve with my own website.
- What page layout, color scheme, common themes, etc, will control the look of my website?
- If my website is highly graphical (which it is), then will I be illustrating the artwork for the whole website myself or will I leave it to the design agency to do so (budget is a very important consideration at this stage)
- What navigation system do I want my site to have? how easily can users surf through my content and move between pages? how many sections and subsections will the website contain? I have devised a rough site map which outlines the architecture and organisation of my website prior to my meeting with the web designer (this map has been tweaks since our initial meeting)
- what will the text on the website say and how will it be written? I had a preliminary text written for each section of the website based on my target market
- What value for money am I getting and how fast is their delivery?
- Can I spend onsite time with the designer while the project is underway? I found that a few days spent at the agency working with designer has saved so much time and eliminated the need for continuous email approvals.
- Future plans: Will I be adding new sections to the site as my business expands? this will determine the final home page layout.
- How intuitive is their Content Management System (CMS) ? I have requested a demo of the web agency’s CMS on the first meeting to determine how easily I can use it and how fast I can change content and upload images (the system they use is called Aqua CMS and I found it to be excellent)
- I have not chosen my web host yet and have asked my web design agency to recommend a few. It is important that your website is hosted on servers in the same country as your business. I have chosen to host with www.thestreamingmonkey.com
Step 2 - Choosing the website developer:
- It is a good idea to meet with a few web developers before deciding on who to hire. I met with two and after receiving their detailed proposals, I have chosen LTS Media , a small agency based in Camden (North London) and working with Ray who is a very talented designer / developer. Ray understood my business, liked it and felt enthusiastic about bringing my ideas to life. He is also very communicative, patient and has attention to details. To me, finding a designer I both like and respect is a primary consideration and LTS medial fit the bill.
- It is important to mention here that the cost of your website is highly dependent on various variables and you can reduce the cost of building it by taking on some of the tasks (without compromising the integrity of the website. For example: I have created all the artwork for my website and used Ray’s photoshop skills to refine the final images, I have designed my logo, I have written the content and emailed it to the developer to make it easy for him to convert it into HTML, I will be responsible for month-to-month maintenance of the site, I have also agreed to spend one full day a week at the agency working with Ray. A word of advise: make sure you are not charged on an hourly rate as you have no way of telling how fast the developer will work, or even on a per-page rate. your best bet is to agree a per-project-price with everything written down in details.
Step 3 - Constructing the website:
Once the pricing, legal and contract issues are agreed upon, the work starts. My developer, Ray, has taken all my illustrations and retouched them using Photoshop and illustrator. He then used my sketch to put the elements of the pages together (the template). In short, he is implementing the plans (highlighted above) by programming and scripting the pages of my website. This is a time consuming and lengthy process that requires collaborative work between me and Ray to make sure all design aspects of the website remain integral to my overall business.
Becoming a self-employed artist and promoting my business online: A creative mother living her dream!
Entry 1:
Have you ever dreamt of being self-employed and pursuing a career doing the thing you love the most? Have you ever felt that leaving your 9 to 5 job is too risky, the stakes are too high, and you simply could not contemplate it? Have you ever looked at other artist’s websites and thought, I wish I could do that? Well, if you did, then you are going through exactly what I went through some years ago…. and the answer is yes! Of course you can do it!
I decided to document my journey of creating “Cool Mummy” from start to finish in the hope that somewhere along the line, I might pass on some useful advise for people who are looking to set up their business online and live their dream!
I will write about all the things I am learning from choosing the right web designer, learning web optimization and printing flyers and promotional material. I will post links to online resources that have helped me promote my site and learn about promoting my business online. I hope that my trial and errors will be useful to anyone reading my blog.
But first of all, let me give you a summary of how I ended up right here, right now: Cool Mummy is a concept that came to life as a result of a wonderful, but also confusing, journey. A year after Sacha was born (my cheeky little 8 year old), I went back to work and stayed in the online corporate world for many years. I was tormented by not being able to spend more time with my little darling and spent years wishing I could quit and work from home. I wanted to paint and do creative things; I have always wanted to do just that (it is why I moved to London 12 years ago but my struggle as a penniless artist saw me take on a sensible job in the online corporate world!)…So I never had the guts to relinquish the security of a well paid job…until one day, just after one of my quarterly review, I decided to quit my job and throw myself into doing what I love best: being creative.
The first month was exhilarating! I was free to be with Sacha every day at the school drop off and pick up while spending my free mornings painting and sewing all those projects that have been accumulating on my to-do list. A few months later, I joined the London College of Fashion and enrolled on a series of short courses studying textiles and draping. These were wonderful times I loved being back at college and savored the thrill of learning new things. I carried on painting, while studying, and produced lovely artwork; I was also commissioned to do some murals and other bespoke projects. I was painting and sewing, two of my life long passions. The ball was rolling and I started advertising myself as a muralist in the local press.
Around that time, I met Gavin who ran his own shirt-making company and supplied wonderful men’s tailored shirts to top retailers of Jermyn Street in London…After much talk and endless meetings, we decided to start a little joint venture in the ladies prêt-a-porter market. Gavin wanted to expand into women’s wear and I had a passion for fashion and textiles. It seemed like the perfect business idea, which ticked many of my boxes. I had to put my murals on hold but I was brimming with enthusiasm and wanted to grab the opportunity to design my own clothes. I had these wonderful ideas and many sketches already, and so I threw myself for months at conceptualizing the first collection.
A combination of various textile trade shows around Europe and my college courses gave me the grounding to finalize the line and spend the rest of the year sourcing pattern cutters in order to produce the tailored samples. With Gavin’s wealth of experience as my guiding star, I traveled to many places and met with factories and textile printers. It was all slotting into place and the world was full of promise…However, and to make a long story short, my fashion venture with Gavin came to an end due to unforeseen circumstances with his own shirt making business. After much thought, I made the decision not to produce the first collection.
This decision crushed me. I was so close to my goal and I felt the full bite of failure after 12 months of hard work and much money spent setting up the business. I felt lost and confused and started to feel that leaving my job was probably a bad call. I suffered a mental block for months and could not pick up a brush or sew anything at all. I was panic-stricken. I needed inspiration, I needed to remind myself why I left my job in the first place, and I needed to get back on track of living the dream!
I went away for a few weeks and when I returned I felt energized and knew that I need to file my Fashion venture as a learning curve and get back on track with my art and sewing projects…That’s how Cool Mummy came into play: I did a few projects here and there for the local community; puppet theatres, some vintage bags, curtains, a few murals and the perfect party. Then one day when Sacha and I were doing some arts and crafts in my studio, she turned around to me and said “what you do mummy is so cool”… A few weeks later, Cool Mummy was born and my journey commences!
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