Subscribe now and choose from over 30 free gifts worth up to £49 - Plus get £25 to spend in our shop
Just wanted to hear your experiences and market strategy, if you care to share.
Troutie?
I'm thinking of craft based stuff.
Made from driftwood?
I know bunnyhop does some very nice craft based stuff and sells online. Can't remember the URL though.
legal or illegal home made stuff ?
Jam and elderflower vinaigrette... Obviously not in the same jar/bottle.
MrsBouy has been doing this for the last 10 or so years, we've loadsa fruit around the Farm and have been utilising this to good effect, all stuff left over from distribution around the family gets sold, not for much mind but sold none the less.
Much easier making buckets of the stuff rather than small amounts...
No, it's Mrs Grips churning out scarves and similar on her loom.
Scarves are a funny old thing because you can get one for £5 or you can pay £100 for a handwoven luxury job. I'm encouraging her to price them high (not that high mind) but everyone we know is saying 'I'd only pay $15-$20 for a scarf'.. but then again we don't know rich people.
So it's a question of marketing and cost I suppose.
I think you mean "Artisan Neckwarmers".....
get a vietnamese kid in, he'll make them much quicker
Yep. Hand woven in the rustic mountains of Wales, land of fairytales and castles. Well, near them anyway.
will she no get bored of churning out scarves on a loom ?
not just marketing, distribution network is essential if you want to aim high.
im only gonna pay you £2 for the scarf from a car boot sale and only then cos its got cold and im improperly dressed.
you want to sell them to Tamara as a "checkout purchase" that gets thrown in with that piece "hand crafted one time organic blown refugee toenail art" £20k
Get on etsy.com made for homemade stuff.
I heard woven washing machine covers are the next in thing
will she no get bored of churning out scarves on a loom ?
Apparently not. It's only a sideline, not a breadwinning thing, so she'll make what she makes and when they're gone they're gone.
Etsy page is in progress apparently. Might also try craft fairs but they seem a bit of a lion's den. No idea how likely it would be to sell much via Etsy.
My neighbour makes wooden wands from Oak, Willow and Ash
He sells them direct to shops for £20 a spell.
Enough money in wands for a takaway delivery every night 😉
+1 for etsy
Bought a beautiful print from Handmade Cyclist on there not so long back.
http://www.home-dzine.co.za/green/green-pallet-ideas.htm
Craft fairs are dire, soul destroying events, so I'd suggest avoid unless you have a particularly good one nearby. Local markets are better from a sanity point of view, but you have to be a regular to build up trade so there are cost implications. For your first outing in public, Christmas event things at good, local schools can be productive.
[quote=ski said]My neighbour makes wooden wands from Oak, Willow and Ash
He sells them direct to shops for £20 a spell.
Boom tish!
Etsy is the obvious marketplace; Folksy.com is the UK equivalent but is maybe a bit quieter. Both are saturated with resulting downward pressure on prices ... You could see if any local shops rent out shelf space to designers (as does one near me - design-a-space). My suggestion, go big on topicality with the designs, find an angle. Tough market for something as basic as a scarf otherwise.
Find niche. Exploit niche.
[img] 
[/img]
The advice seems to be make sure you have really good photos. Damn, looks like I'll need some photography gear then 🙂
Well Cardiff has these craft stalls at Christmas, which would be great but you'd have to be going all year long to make enough stock I think. Maybe next year, I dunno. And I bet they cost too.
Corroded - noted, ta.
I used to sell CD-Rs of motorbike manuals. Which, weirdly, you could download for free, but sell for a fiver. But it could be a fair amount of hassle so I gave up on it after a while
Molgrips, don't forget the
[img] 
[/img]
Get them in your local vegetarian/organic/fusion restaurant/tearooms/farmshop/b&b, by bribery or blackmail if necessary.
If they aren't seen they don't sell, and large webshops like etsys are a lottery if you can't capitalise on word of mouth.
Isn't there an apocryphal story about a bored wife who starts a business, and thinks it's a runaway success. Art gallery maybe, but her husband is anonymously buying just about everything she shows, to keep her in a good frame of mind. 😉
Cycling scarves. I like this idea a lot!
We'll roll out the fibre du jour which is still merino I think.
Has to have a bicycle repair kit and spare inner built into it to.
YES!
Great, keep them coming 🙂
Has to have a bicycle repair kit and spare inner built into it to.
and a bottle opener. Very "niche" is an alcohol habit. (See fatbikes and hipflasks for further info!)
😉
I think you mean "Artisan Neckwarmers".....
*head pops clean off shoulders*
I think you mean "Artisan Neckwarmers".....
I think you mean 'organic neckpipes'.
I can see it now, single speed scarves, fat bike scarves, gnarr scarves. Then the inevitable scarf in the wheel accident, court case and bankrupcy. An epic tale.
Singlespeed scarves. Made from pure hessian.
Fatbike scarves - presumably inflatable?
I can see it now, single speed scarves, fat bike scarves, gnarr scarves. Then the inevitable scarf in the wheel accident, court case and bankrupcy. An epic tale.
[url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isadora_Duncan ]Isadora Duncan[/url], a warning from history.
Molgrips,
problem being that if you want to sell, you have to both have the stock to start with, and then get out there and actually sell it - the internet really is a bit lame and quite often pointless. Etsy / Folksy are tough joints to crack; if you don't have good sales within a few months, forget it. Getting the stock is easy, it's the selling that is hard, especially at craft fares where you may well find a few people doing exactly the same - cup cakes anyone?
Stall fees vary hugely - some councils charge nothing, whilst some places can be £200 per day. Average seems to be £20 to £30. Don't forget public liability insurance either; £5m needed at most places. I'd avoid the big bill places as I've heard only one person pockets money at those gigs. I met another t-shirt seller who'd dumped £30k on his t-shirts, spent £700 for a three day event, came away having sold 12 t's.
As for the need for a lot of stock - just get a smaller table and pad it out. If you're brave, have a table outside your house one morning and see how you get on. Neighbours can be brilliant customers.
Most profitable things I've seen; guy who blows balloons up and makes things out of them at £3 a pop 😛 and the woman making pakora products from cauliflower - £5 for four. For fried cauli.
Worst I ever saw was a woman who made greetings cards. In 8 hours she made £2. That was a sale to her mother.
Good luck with it, but don't expect world domination.
My wife makes stuff and sells it through Not On The Highstreet (www.noths.com)
I wouldn't recommend it as a place to sell, mainly because it's way too crowded with products but also their entry fees are extremely high.
Our advantage is that we are not expecting to make a ton of money quit the day job. We have a metric shitload of string in our house, a woman who likes weaving, and about 15 scarves already. We are both already well sorted for scarves as our most of our family 🙂
Can I have one please mol?
And one for the dog, as winter's coming.
A bike specific scarf or a normal one?
We have stock you may wish to peruse, I'll PM you 🙂
Dog scarves - great idea.
+1 for what muddyground said
stalls are variable experiences and not helped by either people who'll nick your ideas wholesale or just undercut you because they've outsourced their 'crafts' to indonesia. i keep trying to persuade mrs swiss to do this last but she gets all hung up about exploitation/handmade ethic etc! but if you can sell at local stalls then, if she can make the stuff, some of the bigger fairs are a possibility. but then you have to be able to 'discount' and make a ton of stuff. that of course leads you to shops and their ever so generous 'we'll take a minimum of 50% of your asking price' (and that's before those cheeky wags who want you to be paying their vat as well.
not that i do any of this stuff - i've just been sucked into mrs swiss's textile empire...
i'll pm you her email addy - tell your other half to feel free to email her any questions
My dad is a potter and while lots of his stuff is sold in high end city galleries( he's quite famous for his glazes in ceramic world) he hand makes functional stuff for festivals and good markets. He loves meeting people and getting out of the workshop. Bath Christmas market alone would see him shift 30k of stock!! He's semi retired now so doesn't do so much. He's made a good living from it, been his own boss, taken time off when he wants and when the kilns are fully on works naked! Radio 4/planet rock all day, sly knaps or fishing when he feels like it, Van out the back. Turned his back on establishment career in 1967. No regrets and a happy man.
Thanks Swiss.
no worries. pm on its way. a metric shitload of string you say? with me it's wool. i share your pain....
My dad is a potter and while lots of his stuff is sold in high end city galleries( he's quite famous for his glazes in ceramic world) he hand makes functional stuff for festivals and good markets. He loves meeting people and getting out of the workshop. Bath Christmas market alone would see him shift 30k of stock!! He's semi retired now so doesn't do so much. He's made a good living from it, been his own boss, taken time off when he wants and when the kilns are fully on works naked! Radio 4/planet rock all day, sly knaps or fishing when he feels like it, Van out the back. Turned his back on establishment career in 1967. No regrets and a happy man.
Great story, sounds like an ideal life your Dad has made for himself.
Great story, sounds like an ideal life your Dad has made for himself.
+1 Fair dues!!
Does he want a trainee for when he wants to retire properly? 🙂
I started calling it string to annoy the Mrs, in reality it's yarn, made from a variety of different fibres. I like the silk/merino mix best 🙂
He is good at what he does and luckily for him he developed a technique that no one else can do. It's labor intensive but yields incredible results. In fact he's done it twice. The first one he got bored of and eventually published in ceramic review, everyone thought he was mad as he couldn't sell enough of it. Creativly he was unchallenged and needed to be inspired by what his hands made. He says that's the key to craft/art and making a living; make it really your own and get good at it. Plus avoid craft fairs!
is an understatement if there ever was. I did one where a big ice storm came in, and for five hours all I did was stand alone in a freezing car park holding my gazebo down. Others you sell nothing, and spend hours "chatting" to some tedious bore who relishes a captive audience. Generally, though, you sell nothing 🙁 unless, like the pottery guy, you are bloody good at what you do or have an idea that nobody can pinch easily. Nothing like spending a whole day standing next to stock that you will sell at a substantial loss if you even try and match the price of the guy who bought wholesale from Portugal or Indonesia. It's also galling to watch a granny shift 300 knitted, and frankly crappy teddy bears, at £4 each.stalls are variable experiences
You have to work hard [fail here straight away]; be different to everybody else [cup cakes again!] or very, very good at what you do; you have to listen to people; you either have to be good at closing a deal or have a convincing story to tell; but above all you have to be very, very lucky. And don't knock the husband buying the stuff either - most start up businesses have some kind of 'sponsor' that sparks the whole thing off and makes it financially viable.
The ultimate artisan scarf has to be a long beard matted and wrapped around the neck when require.
Just one moment, these scarves from Welsh Wales, can your wife weave something as complex as an image? Something sheepy? You know what I mean...
[img] 
[/img]
I see a big market, fools and their money come to mind 💡
muddyground, you've missed out the thieving ****ers...
have you considered home [b]grown[/b]?
A few seeds, the right kind of light source and a discreet sales operation - sorted
I'm just in the process of shutting down a website for a client who made handmade knitted things for kids, her main problem was that she hadn't done the maths - profit/time taken to make. She was selling a jumper at £39 that took her ten hours to make so even before costs she it was earning less than £4 an hour, she'd be better off stacking shelves at Tesco. The problem is most of they clothes we buy are made on countries where they can pay ****-all an hour so pricing them with british labour costs makes them look really expensive.
What,about beer?
Apart from the obvious 18+ rule
can your wife weave something as complex as an image?
Hehe.. yes, in theory she can.. she apparently needs more shafts to do this well though.
We have done maths though. She can weave a scarf in an hour if it's chunky.
bunnyhop's actually a curtain maker, and a very good one at that (I have some of her curtains in my house and will be ordering more)
She was selling a jumper at £39 that took her ten hours to make so even before costs she it was earning less than £4 an hour, she'd be better off stacking shelves at Tesco.
if entrepreneurs applied that kind of simple maths to cottage-enterprise they wouldn't ever start a business.
if entrepreneurs applied that kind of simple maths to cottage-enterprise they wouldn't ever start a business.
True, but surely to be a 'business' by definition it has to make money and the maths has to add up, or else its just a hobby that pays for itself (not necessarily a bad thing if its only a side line/start-up).
Interesting, father-in-law has a house full of water colours from years of painting. He has just started doing a couple of craft fairs with little success.
Will take a look at the sites about to see if they could help him shift them - they are too nice to throw away but he needs to clear some space!
True, but surely to be a 'business' by definition it has to make money and the maths has to add up, or else its just a hobby that pays for itself (not necessarily a bad thing if its only a side line/start-up).
A non profit making business isn't necessarily a hobby that pays for itself. My wife runs a business that generates little or no profit but pays the wages of her and my daughter. It's certainly not a hobby.
A non profit making business isn't necessarily a hobby that pays for itself. My wife runs a business that generates little or no profit but pays the wages of her and my daughter. It's certainly not a hobby.
Semantics - profit/wages
Until 2 years ago I used to sell jams (rhubarb and ginger, bilberry, apple and blackberry, gooseberry, etc) / preserves (seasonal and various) / curd (lemon, lime, orange and mandarin) / honey / eggs. All home grown (or picked) and hand made by me, including honey as I had a few hives back then.
It was going well until the summer before last when trade just fell off a cliff. Still got a few hens and sell to friends what I don't eat myself. I asked people who stopped buying why and although they loved what I made, it was basically cheaper to buy in the supermarket.
I charged what I could but in the end I couldn't compete - £2.50 for 480g of good jam couldn't compete against £1.20 for 480g of OK jam in Tesco. Eggs too, £1 for 6 brill eggs against £1.50 for 12 watery ones.
Shame as I really thought it would work out, but thats how it goes.
Can you sew in reflective thread of some sort? Much cooler that a Sam brown belt
20 quid is too cheap to be worth the hassle. Get it up to 30ish or so.
Oh.. hand woven Sam Browne belt.. like it
Not quite 'home made' but a mates son (still at school) and his two school mates started a yoof clothing brand about 18 months ago. They buy in the garments and do their own printing/embroidery.
They only sell off their web site and do all their marketing through Facebook and Twitter - its very impressive.
They turned over £32k in August alone... Seriously!
jesus!