Millions of people dream of starting their own craft business, making art or creations they love and selling them for a profit. But even if you’re amazing at what you do, there’s no guarantee you’re going to be profitable—or even popular.
If you want your crafting to become a business, you need to treat it like a business—and the following tips can help.
How to Start Your First Craft Business
Assuming you already have a field of specialty (or interest), and the means to begin creating, these tips can help you build a better craft business:
- Prepare for both in-person and online sales. First, make sure you’re ready for both online and in-person sales. This way, you’ll maximize your potential reach, and give yourself more options through which to advertise and/or present your brand. For starters, you’ll want to get a website and an online store presence in whatever platforms are relevant for your demographics. Once that’s established, you’ll want an iPhone card reader and other means of collecting payments from customers in person; you’ll also want signage, tables, and other elements necessary to market yourself at a live craft show.
- Differentiate yourself. There are millions of people competing with each other in the world of arts and crafts, and many of them will be making products similar (or identical) to what you’re making. If you want a chance of your brand surviving, you’ll need some way to strongly differentiate yourself. What is it that makes your craft different? What makes your brand more appealing to potential buyers?
- Create a formal business plan. Along similar lines, it’s a good idea to write up a full business plan. You may not feel this is necessary, especially if you have a lot of experience in your crafting niche, but the process will help you think through the key problems your business is going to face, and define things like your target demographics and top competitors. Do your research and come up with a formal model for your business.
- Attend local art/craft shows. This is probably on your radar anyway, but make sure you get exposure at local art and craft shows. Even if your sales aren’t impressive, you’ll have the opportunity to network with other crafters in your area. Ask them about their business and how they’ve been performing; they may have tips for newcomers that can help you thrive.
- Tightly control your expenses. One of the biggest pain points for new crafters are the profit margins of the business; crafts rarely sell for much more than the cost of raw materials. Accordingly, if you want to be profitable, you have to tightly control your expenses; buy your raw materials in bulk, or hunt for long-term discounts. While you’re at it, find ways to reduce the cost of shipping.
- Personalize and take commissions (when possible). Many new artists are keen to turn their craft into an assembly line, producing as many identical products as possible for the sake of efficiency (and stockpiling). This is a good approach from an efficiency standpoint, but it’s also important to personalize your products and/or take commissions whenever you can. You can justify charging more for custom work, and it’s a good way to differentiate your brand from those of your competitors.
- Have a plan for expansion. You may not be able to expand your solo crafting endeavor into an international empire, but you should have some kind of plan for expansion. If you start to get more orders than you can reasonably keep up with, how are you going to close the gap? Are you willing to hire someone to help you out in the short term? Additionally, do you have a plan to increase your profitability over time? Can you expand your brand with different products or services?
- Market yourself. Finally, put together a plan to market yourself and advertise your brand. If you’re planning on maintaining a relatively small operation, you won’t need anything spectacular; sometimes, a social media marketing strategy, with email marketing, can be more than enough to get a foothold for your brand. As you start making more money, you can invest in more cost-intensive strategies like paid advertising.
The Importance of Adaptability
The most important tip for new craft entrepreneurs is to remain adaptable. There will be variables you didn’t account for, new competitors to deal with, and changes in online and in-person dynamics that make it harder to run your business efficiently. But as long as you’re able to learn from your past mistakes, experiment with new approaches, and adjust your business along the way, you’ll be in a position to help the business survive.
