I was out for dinner on Friday night when I ran into Sarah, a woman I know from synagogue. Her son was in my class when I taught middle school and we always chat a little when we see one another. This time we started talking about work. I told her that while I loved teaching social studies, I also love what I do now.
“What do you do now?” she asked and I faltered a little. What I do now has become sort of complicated. There was a time a few years ago when I would have easily said, “I’m a sewing pattern designer.” But now that description doesn’t really sum up what my work day really looks like, nor does it describe my where all of my passions lie. Yes, I design sewing patterns, but I also write about the home sewing industry and creative entrepreneurship. My business-to-business (B2B) products include ebooks, articles for trade publications and magazines, my podcast, my newsletter, and increasingly this blog. Also, if you’re planning to start a business that is easy to operate, I suggest you look into vending machines for sale australia. You may also need to invest in payment solutions like the ones offered by https://www.paystand.com/solutions/b2b-payments especially if you will be doing a lot of B2B transactions.
I’ve chosen, or really just sort of slid into, keeping all of these things under a single umbrella. All of it lives here at whileshenaps.com. Was this a good decision? Was it the right decision? I’m not sure it was even a conscious decision on my part and I don’t know if it’s serving me well, or undermining both areas of focus.
I know that I’m not alone in expanding my offerings to include both handmade goods and B2B products. Crafting has led many of us to find a nascent interest in business. I wanted to talk with some successful makers who, like me, offer both kinds of products to find out how they thought about this issue. I especially wanted to find people who have made different choices than I have or who are still debating what’s best. I even considered hiring a business insolvency advisor to prevent financial issues.
Four years ago Janet LeBlanc began selling her jewelry on Etsy under the name Lazy Owl Boutique. Those who wish to sell rare gold items like gold coins may consider selling these to a rare coin buyer. With an undergraduate and masters degree in accounting and several years working as a CPA, Janet was naturally inclined to love making spreadsheets that helped her craft business run more smoothly, while for the billing is better to use time billing software just for this. She created formulas for managing inventory, pricing, and accounting for her Etsy shop and quickly realized that other makers might benefit from them so she began offering them for sale and working with the best CPA in Charlotte NC that offer accounting services as well. If you would also love to have perfect jewelry collection, you can choose the best ones from these cuban gold chains from statementcollective here!
The Etsy Seller Spreadsheet is one of Janet LeBlanc’s B2B offerings.
When Janet’s creative interests shifted from jewelry to paper goods she closed Lazy Owl Boutique and opened a new Etsy shop, Paper and Spark and put the spreadsheets for sale there as well. “I sort of know that the ‘smartest’ choice would be to separate my two audiences into two business, but I really can’t do it,” she told me. “I know that if I did it I’d basically end up killing off one of the businesses and I really want to keep going with both…Time and energy-wise, I cannot handle running more than one business at a time!”
I asked Janet if she feels that her customers are confused or annoyed by the mix of products. “I don’t really think other creative business owners mind seeing posts about my mugs or mama journals,” she said, “But I feel like my mama ladies who like pretty things get turned off seeing lots of posts about spreadsheets. Nobody wants to hear about spreadsheets unless you need them in your life, you know?”
Megan Auman wearing some of her signature jewelry.
Metalsmith Megan Auman launched her jewelry business in 2006, right out of graduate school. She started a blog to promote her jewelry. “Every so often on that blog, I would write a more business focused piece that appealed more to my fellow makers,” Megan recalls. “This wasn’t strategic, just a natural outgrowth of things happening in my business. But those posts always got a big response and a lot of attention.” A few years later Megan was considering getting an MBA when a friend remarked, “You could teach this stuff!”
“When I thought about how I could ‘teach that stuff’ I decided that the best thing to do was create a website and Crafting an MBA (now Designing an MBA) was born. I made the decision to have two separated sites because the two audiences are very different. The customer for my jewelry is not the customer for my online business programs, save for the very rare crossover. I wanted to have a separate space where I could talk directly to each audience.”
What felt a bit fractured at first, later became more unified once Megan identified a single mission statement that guides both arms of her business. “The world needs more strong, confident women,” she says, “and that’s my focus, whether it’s helping someone find a great piece of jewelry or helping them grow their business.”
Megan is an expert at social media and she’s chosen to divide up how she uses the different channels, rather than try to represent both businesses everywhere. “I did make the decision to focus some social media platforms more on one area or another. I hate switching back and forth, so I didn’t want to manage multiple accounts, with the exception of Facebook, where I have a separate page for each. My Pinterest account is very focused on building the audience for my jewelry business, while I focus my Twitter on promoting my B2B teaching and services. Instagram is sort of the melting pot where they come together.”
Mei Pak in her polymer clay jewelry studio.
Mei Pak makes scented food jewelry which she sells through her highly successful business, Tiny Hands. When she wanted to begin offering consulting services to other creative businesses, she initially tried to do it through the Tiny Hands website. “I wanted to see if I had any interest from my Tiny Hands audience. I put up a ‘Pick My Brain’ consult for a low, introductory price on my jewelry website. It was positioned prominently and I brought traffic to it, but no one bought it,” she says. “I would also occasionally post business tips and advice on my Tiny Hands social media profiles, but it got very little traction and had low engagement compared to my other posts about jewelry.”
“After going through that, it became clear that if I wanted my consulting business to grow to its potential, it couldn’t sit under the Tiny Hands Jewelry brand name.” She decided to launch a new site: CreativeHive.
Megan and Mei both have separate websites and email lists for their two types of businesses, and Mei also has two sets of social media profiles as well. It’s important to note that we’ve all opted to keep our B2B offerings under the same corporate structure as our creative offerings, although Mei is considering officially separating the two into separate LLCs.
Are customers of handmade products turned off when their favorite crafters introduce B2B products into the mix? Mei feels they are. “My jewelry customers are not other small business owners. They are only interested in the jewelry.” Not only that, she also feels it could it could actually alienate them. “I wasn’t comfortable in knowing that my jewelry customers would be exposed to business information like income reports and marketing tactics,” she says.
Janet LeBlanc offers a different perspective. “I do like having everything in one place because it lends credibility to anything you’re trying to sell to other business owners – they can see that you are a successful brand with sales, know-how and experience under your belt.”
Thanks for this article Abby. I’m really struggling with this at the moment and am trying to find some clarity. I run a craft kit design company but I also make sculptures that I sell under my own name and I’ve recently started creating illustrations and drawings that I want to turn into products. Working out what name or brand to run each aspect under is a really difficult decision. The discussion about the different audiences feels key to me, and I think that by focussing on what my different customers will be happy seeing will really help.
Hey Stephanie,
If there’s some common form or function that all your different products share, I do believe it’s possible to brand them all in the same umbrella. Much like how Stacey of FreshStitches.com does.
However, if there is very little intercept, it would be wiser to segregate them. Then it becomes a question of managing all your different lines and marketing them to different customers.
As primarily a consumer, but also a wannabe crafter who dreams of someday having a blog and shop of her own, I like all of your posts. I like tutorial posts, posts about craft items, and posts about craft-related business processes, blogging, etc. I also like how you have the separate menu items at the top for sewing, blogging, and business, so that if I want to look for a specific post or specific kind of post, that makes it a little easier. 🙂
Totally agree. I’m a consumer, but might open a business someday, so I like getting w bit of everything from Abbys blog.
Great post! I’ve also got split audiences/offerings that I run from a single place. They both share a common theme and I think they both lend credibility to each other. I make custom couture wedding dresses (customers: brides) and I teach custom sewing (customers: those who want to learn to sew without using commercial patterns). I’ve only been teaching about a year now (after taking a class from Megan, along with Mei), so until I see that I have a need to separate the two, it’s so much easier for me to keep them together. I hope to make it work since my mission/passion is the same for both: Empowering women to break free of ready-to-wear styles and sizes.
Brooks Ann, it makes complete sense to keep your two branches under the same business! If I were teaching polymer clay sculpting, I would keep it under the same umbrella as well.
What I’m doing now happens to be totally different audiences for me, which does prove to be a challenge managing at times!
Abby, this is yet another post that speaks directly to me and my various interests. Thank you for exploring it and letting us know that there are others out there who have multiple artistic passions and feel torn some of the time while trying to juggle all the plates! My husband keeps telling me that the “shark tank” business people he watches on TV repeat one thing over and over: “pick one thing and focus everything on it.” Meanwhile, I continue to enjoy my passions (I like to call them profit centers…although not all make a profit). I, too, have multiple Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and Mailchimp newsletters. My “profit centers” include one Etsy shop, for my watercolor tutorials, 3 web addresses all pointed to one page, and one Instagram account. After much thought I decided to sell my pottery from my own site and my shop was just launched there this month with multiple sales already. I use social media exclusively to market everything including my “in person” watercolor classes at UAA’s Continuing Education Department. I sell my prints on Fine Art America which is connected to Twitter and Facebook. My Pinterest account covers all my interests with Boards, and I recently decided to post photos of my pottery on Fine Art America and from there, to Facebook and Pinterest. I include my e-shop address. My art licensing area needs little marketing; thankfully, reps do the selling there for the manufacturers and I am paid quarterly with little effort after the initial designing phase. Does all this sound crazy? Maybe before your post about us “multiples” but now, I can see my people out there! Thanks again.
Teresa, this does sound pretty crazy! But if you’re making it work and you’ve established distribution channels for selling your work, there’s no rule that says you have to follow the rules of online marketing and be focused on just one thing.
It sure makes it a lot easier for you and the focus helps you maximize results (sales?) in your business. But if the thought of leaving out your other creative passions makes your soul die a little inside, then it may not be worth it.
As long as what you’re doing is working for you, you’re in a good place!
I like the idea of splitting them out into individual businesses financially for a couple reasons (I don’t know anything about the legal or tax implications of this): getting investors, or selling a piece of the business would be much clearer. Someone could invest in a B2B product line expanding without worrying that their money would be spent on jewelry making supplies, or support manufacturing expansion without conference speaking expenses. Even as an individual, with separate bookkeeping you can make a decision to “invest” money from one side of the business in the other for a period of time or long-term.
Meagan, this brings up a great point:
Selling your business when a large part of your business is your personality, makes it that much harder to sell.
I agree with you. From a financial standpoint it’s better to keep the two separate.
I’m speechless . . . and that’s rare. Once again you have hit on an issue that is swirling in my head. One of my favorite quotes from Milton, “I have some naked thoughts that rove about and loudly knock to have their passage out” sums it up. I’ll watch the comments and weigh the decisions others have made regarding multiple streams of income and creative endeavors. Thank you.
Abby has a way of doing that, doesn’t she? 🙂
Very interesting discussion – I read your blog and listen to your podcast for the business stuff, not the softie stuff. However, I like seeing how you run the softie side from a business perspective! So I vote to keep the two together. My gut is that most crafty business owners who enter the B2B arena end up making more income from that part of the business, but the audience, (other crafter/maker business types) want to see you being successful in the crafting arena. You could always rebrand the whole site to be abbyglassenberg.com and then within that site have your While She Naps blog and softy products, along with the more focused crafty business podcast and new creative industry venture you are doing with Kristin. Just a thought!
I have often wondered how this works, myself! We have a few clients who offer B2B services (teaching classes, etc.), and I wonder how much they’re alienating each of their two audiences.
Occasionally, I see retail businesses making what looks like a misstep and posting business insider information on their blog, which I think could make shoppers feel like they’re in the wrong place (for instance, if a jewelry designer shares product photography tips on a blog that’s usually about lifestyle content). I hear from many creative businesses that they feel like they spend most of their time on social media speaking to their peers, which doesn’t help them with their retail business. That must make it easy to keep talking to your peers on your blog, and then you have to decide whether it’s a part of your business, or a distraction to avoid.
I can envision your B2B services and content rapidly becoming “stronger” than your sewing/pattern business (if they aren’t already!). I think it would make good sense to mostly be AbbyGlassenberg.com with the retail business being fun and interesting proof of your experience. At the same time, it must seem simpler to only have one blog to maintain and one business to promote. Making up your mind to change your business name or trajectory is often harder than actually making the change. 🙂
I have re-committed myself to something I had been starting to lose over the last year or two: focus. The book, The ONE Thing, has been a huge mindset-changer for me. I would be interested to hear what you think about it! I recently posted about this book and the importance of focus for creative businesses on my blog: http://aeolidia.com/the-one-thing-creative-business/
Although my B2B products do well, the vast majority of my income comes from sewing patterns. I’ve got three books, five licensed pattern envelopes with Simplicity, an online class coming out in two weeks, plus 43 patterns which means that’s where the money comes from. When it comes to B2B I have three ebooks plus an upcoming CreativeLive class. The ebooks do really well and I do hope to add to that library as I become expert at more areas of business, but what I really like to do more than anything (right now at least) is to report on the home sewing industry and the online culture of craft. Although I can get some freelance gigs doing that for various paid publications, it doesn’t pay much and most of it lands here on my blog.
I don’t aspire to grow my B2B business through services like consulting for creative businesses. I like to create products, not services. The way things work right now financially is the sewing patterns allow me to earn the income I need to pursue being an unpaid journalist. Weird how this all developed!
Thanks for this post! I’m talking with someone I’ve hired to do logo design and web design for me, and I’m really struggling with how I’m going to have one logo reflect two missions and audiences. I’m in a position where Janet LeBlanc’s statement really hit home. I’m using my blog to lend credibility to myself as a future speaker on a related, but slightly different, topic. I don’t have the time to invest in building a separate brand and following. I may end up with two logos, one that presents itself on a sub-page about me as a speaker and on my business cards, and one that represents the blog which is an example of my work. Whatever I end up doing, this post got me thinking and was very useful – thanks Abby!
Kelly,
Your speaking and your blog both share an obvious common thread: you. Would you consider branding your logo around you and your personality? Instead of on the offerings/products/services you’re providing, which may change over time.
I adore your site and as equally fascinated by your development of a business as I am of the development of your patterns as well as you engaging articles and interviews about the industry. Your site makes me dream of possibilities. Thank you for it
I feel that the crossover works well for your particular case because your customers are makers and even designers, not consumers of a finished soft toy, for example. As makers, we are more likely to also be pursuing creative businesses of our own. For my part, I came for the patterns, and stay for the business content (although I still love the patterns too).
That’s a great point, Tanith. Thank you. I think there are many ways to run a business, and many different mixes of products a person can offer. As you point out, all of mine are tools and that’s a thread that ties them together. Most likely someone wouldn’t plan to have a business like mine, but this is what works for me. It got this way organically and sometimes I do like to think hard about whether it all makes sense. For now, my answer is yes.
As usual, you have articulated something that so many of us struggle with every day. We are not just ONE thing. (Although I would like to second Arianne’s suggestion to read The ONE Thing by Gary Keller. It’s amazing.)
Making major changes to a business will keeping the same name is another huge challenge. I had a product-based business for 10 years, but have decided to focus on teaching and making my own art. Yet all my “people” look for me under my business name. I’ll make it work, but it’s challenging, to say the least.
I’m another one of your business readers who loves the fact that you are in the sewing/crafting space. I think you do a great job of housing the two sides of “you” on a single site. I particularly like the way you have organized your blog content into three different tracks. I love being able to search through your business topics without sifting through the posts on softies. Well done, Abby.
Shelly,
I’ve been operating under my product based business name for 9 years. When I started my consulting business, it was very much like starting from scratch because in people’s minds, I was the jewelry designer, not the marketing or business consultant.
Repositioning or reestablishing yourself definitely takes time. It was a massive challenge for me, and was frustrating that I couldn’t just transfer my credibility in one business to the other.
But if you take the right steps, it can be done!
This is a great post Abby! And something I bet a lot of creatives come up against at some point of their journey–it’s hard not to want to share what you learn along the way (why should everyone reinvent the wheel?) but if the business part of the craft doesn’t seem to gel with the overall nature of what you offer, it can feel like such a disconnect to the audience. I’ve been brainstorming on what I can create from what I’ve learned to a)be helpful and b)create another income stream. I’ll keep these things in mind as the ideas evolve. Thanks!
My dilemma is similar with my vintage Japanese textile business Okan Arts (retail) and using my own name to sell services such as speaking and teaching (B to C services for quilt guilds and quilters). There are lots of crossovers as they’re in the quilting/textile universe but it’s a scrappy approach (sort of like making a quilt). I see them both as income streams and together there’s strength in the total story—but it’s not a focused brand. Thanks for starting this conversation. I look forward to hearing the pros and cons of different approaches.
Patricia, from what you’re describing, your textile business and speaking and teaching sound like the perfect matches.
It looks pretty clear that you should keep them under the same umbrella.
Just checked out your website. Love what you’re doing!
In thinking about this more, your second business is really YOU. You have the expertise, experience, and organization that others want who run creative businesses—as well as your products such as e-books, professional writing services and your communication platforms. You may want to think about promoting Abby (or Abigail) Glassenberg as the overarching brand. Under that would fit your pattern company—While She Naps— or maybe Abby G Patterns. You are the author of your books and articles, the moderator of your podcasts, the designer of your patterns—so your name is attached to everything you do. Instead of adding a second company, maybe it’s time to reposition Abby Glassenberg. Best, P.
I’m not considering adding a second company, but it’s interesting to see what other people have done.
I find that in this industry you have to have more than just one business if you want to make a good income. A lot of work in the craft industry is poorly paying, so combining several different income streams allows you to get one proper income.
However it is sometimes easy to get distracted from your main income earning business with the other sidelines, I found I was steadily increasing my ‘other’ jobs, freelancing writing, business coaching, teaching etc and losing some of the focus on my main business. So I’ve cut back on all of those and even though my income has dropped it allows me devote all my attention to my main passion.
I used to run everything through the same business and website, but as the ‘craft business’ side grew and I had a book published on the subject I decided it was time to split it out and make it it’s own entity so I now separate the 2, although I do refer traffic from one site to the other (both ways) and separate out the accounts.
Hello I am wondering if anyone can help. I have two jewellery businesses. But one is on hold due to personal life changing circumstances and the other is new. I also am a Wellness Coach. I LOVE them all yet not much progress last 5 years due to abovementioned circumstance.
Both jewellery businesses are different. I already have one logo for one but not the other.
Do I have them separate as they are totally different or put them together and have them as one. I feel the first part.
Also the Wellness Lifestyle Coaching is really ME. I want to put myself out there more. So does anyone feel blogging is a good way besides other advertising that I already have done, like Facebook and other online places.
Abby, yours is the only newsletter that I don’t delete after reading, you deliver tons of value every week and I truly thank you for that.
My main biz is in the birthing and breastfeeding world, with a handmade product (doll) that caters a very small niche (hard to find), but I also do Social Media, Online Moderation, and I co-own a handmade biz in the Pet industry. I am interested in both, the crafts and biz parts of your newsletter and blog, but I must say that I usually click on the biz topics only, specially those about marketing and social media.
I have been consuming biz stuff for over 10 years now, (I also took a few of Megan Auman courses – among many others) and I am now considering starting something in the biz area, however, not under the same umbrella as my current audience is not all interested in business.
I think that keeping things under one umbrella depends on what type of audience you already have, and the type of person you are. If the way your express yourself attracts an audience that appreciates both aspects of your teachings -and that is still profitable, I would keep it together.
I also recommend “The One Thing” book that Arianne mentioned, it’s has been such great tool to keep me focused, it’s specially good for multi passion people like me. I found “The One Thing” podcast really useful as well.