Digital patterns have become an established part of the sewing scene over the past few years. Without the upfront cost of printing patterns and the distribution costs of getting those pattern into stores, the barrier to entry to becoming a designer is lower than it’s ever been and hundreds of new designers have flooded the…
How to Set Up a Subscription Club for Your Craft Business
A few weeks ago my daughter, Josephine, turned four. We planned a birthday party for her at the local community center and she couldn’t wait. We bought paper plates and a dinosaur balloon, but the most exciting part of the preparations was putting together the goodie bags. Choosing each item and assembling them was so…
Should You Work for Free Product?: A Case Study of the Glue Dots Design Team
image credit I’ve worked for free fabric. Last year I designed a tutorial for Timeless Treasures to post on their blog. It took me about four hours to design it, sew it, photograph each step, take the beauty shots, and write the instructions. I was paid in fat quarter bundles and several yards of flannel….
An Inside Look at Designing Premier Quilting Cottons for JoAnns
While doing research for my post about how much fabric designers earn I spoke with a fabric designer who has licensed fabric collections to both a fabric company and to the largest chain of brick-and-mortar fabric stores in the United States, JoAnn Fabrics. The financial arrangement that resulted from working with JoAnns was so different…
Naming Your Competition
In the spring I hired a designer to create my new WordPress site. Once I’d signed the contract and paid the deposit, she sent me an in-depth survey to help us both drill down to how I really wanted my new website to function. Some parts of the survey were fun, like telling the story…
You Need an Email Newsletter, But What Should You Put in It?
I feel like there’s a lot already written about why every online business should have a newsletter. It’s a subject that’s been beaten to death and all of the advice is essentially the same. Building a blog readership and gaining followers on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook are all nice, but building your list is the…
Getting Your Handmade Goods into the Hands of Celebrities
Allison Hoffman’s tagline sums it up well: “I make weird stuff out of yarn. Anything pop culture goes.” In fact, it would be fair to say that Allison Hoffman’s career as a crochet designer is fueled by pop culture. She recreates celebrities as yarn dolls and fairly often those celebrities find their doll likenesses to…
Market Research Takes the Fear Out of Getting Started
In 2011 I was at a crossroads. I had just turned in the manuscript for Stuffed Animals and I wasn’t sure what to do next. For a year I’d been writing a book which meant I was in the rhythm of creating a new pattern every three weeks. I’d learned a lot in the process…
How to Run a Flash Sale on Facebook: Soldsie
Facebook is the largest and most popular online social network and almost all businesses have a Facebook page now. If you’ve really spent time building a large and engaged audience on Facebook you’ve probably tried to sell your products to your Facebook fans at one time or another. Posting a photo of your newest and…
Aurifil’s Alex Veronelli’s Online Behavior Seems Questionable to Me
I was on Twitter this morning and read this tweet from Alex Veronelli, the Product Manager and Public Relations specialist for the Italian thread company, Aurifil. I tweeted back, suggesting that this felt to me like an unprofessional thing to say on social media, given his role in the company. Veronelli replied, “On socials I…