Turning Art into Products
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Thanks @Thrace! The stamps are made by a specialist manufacturer called Photocentric, the papers by a local printer...
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@Dulcie The papers are just gorgeous!!! How does the stamp work?
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The stamps are clear polymer ones (they are generally more popular than the traditional wooden sort now), so you need a clear acrylic block to go with them. All crafters who like stamping will have one of those already (I'm selling to a fairly niche/specialist group of people, really) ...you place the stamp onto the block, and it sticks in place by itself so you can turn it upside down without falling off....then you ink up the stamp, and push it down onto card to transfer the image. Hope that makes sense...
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I have never heard of stamps like the one you describe! Is there a resource or Internet site where I can look up how they work? Congratulations on these products, they look gorgeous! How do you market them?
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@smceccarelli Thanks! We have an info page on our website about them: http://www.wildrosestudio.co.uk/pages/how-to (never thought I'd link to that here!)
We sell them through specialist craft shops, often via distributors. We started out at a trade show and gradually built up a customer base...but it is very specialist, and I do wish that I were selling the same art in more places. Each paper pack is made up of 12 patterns, each of which takes ages to make...and at the moment we don't use the art anywhere else except that one paper pack...having watched Lee White 's business class I can see clearer than ever that I could/should do more with them.
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@Dulcie Wow, it's a crafter's paradise! It's a complete new world I was not aware of, and full of beautiful things! Thank you for sharing!
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Beautiful work @Dulcie !
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Dulcie, Your work is beautiful (and cute
) I had never heard of stamps like that. You are really going forward with your art. Thank you for sharing! -
Those are amazing! Congrats on your milestone! I absolutely love that little dragon stamp.
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Very cool congrats.
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@smceccarelli Glad you like it! It’s definitely a bit of a parallel universe…
@Marsha-Kay-Ottum-Owen That’s very kind of you, glad you like it!
@Leslie-Walker @evilrobot Thank you!
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Love your designs - very warm and friendly
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Those stamps are great! At first when i saw the picture I though they were those clear plastic water color pieces, you know the kind kids get with paint that when they paint them and hang them in their windows its sort of like stained glass.
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So cool! Congratulations! I'm really impressed!
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Really nice Stamps and papers Dolcie. I have been in this part of the industry for about 8 years and have had some great products out over the years. there are so many possibilities out there.
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So beautiful! You have a knack with color, and I love the cuteness you're infusing into your characters!
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Really great! Thanks for sharing!
If you don't mind, I have some questions that people may be wondering about (myself included):
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How many papers are you printing at a time? What are their sizes? How much are you typically spending on printing? How much do they retail for?
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How are you getting them into shops?
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How well are they selling?
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How did you get the packaging for the stamps made? How much was that? Who made the packages?
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Is there any other advice you might have for others wanting to try this market?
Hope that's not too much! Thanks again for the post. Very inspiring!
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Awesome stuff Dolcie. I've never used stamps but they seem like a great way to make beautiful cards and focus on practicing coloring.
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@Camomilla Thanks!
@Chip-Valecek Thank you! Yes they do look a bit like stained glass…
@jacs Thank you!@Lee-Holland Thank you! Yes I remember your work from the licensing shows I’ve been to like the Spring Fair. It’s nice to see someone here who I ‘know’ outside SVS. Glad that things are going well for you too!
@Timbdsf Thank you! That’s very kind of you to say.
@Lee-White Wow what a lot of questions (didn’t expect this much interest in that side of things!) Sure I can provide more info - I’ll put that in a separate post.
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@Lee-White To answer your questions:
We do a print run of 1000 paper packs at a time. Our packs are 6x6in in size but typically craft papers are also sold in 8x8 and 12x12 sizes. Our packs retail for £4.99 each.
With regards to manufacturing costs, this is probably the easiest way to explain it: if you are selling to shops you need to make sure you have enough margin for the shops to make a profit - they expect to buy the product for 50% of the retail price. But if (as we do) you are selling to a distributor, who then sells to shops, you need to give that distributor at least 20% discount on top of that. So your manufacturing price has to be low enough to take that into account (which ours does).
We get them into shops by selling to both distributors and independent craft shops. We did this by attending a trade show and slowly building up a customer base from there.
They’re selling well enough to provide sole income for a 4-person family…not enough for posh holidays (unfortunately) but enough to pay the bills. My husband is the other half of the business (he does the organising, I do the art) so we work together and this is our main thing. The down side of this is that I do feel under pressure, always, to come up with the goods - if I don’t create something that people will buy then..well I don’t like to think about that! (except I do)
We get the packaging for the stamps printed separately, again by a local printer, I actually don’t know off-hand how much that is, but it’s not a high percentage of the product cost. But you do have to take into account both the printing costs and the polybag when doing the calculations. The packages are assembled by our warehouse.
Hope that covers most of it! I’ll put any advice in a separate post…
