Turning Art into Products
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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…
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@Dulcie Thanks again for the great info!
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@Lee-White To answer your question 5: Is there any advice I have for others wanting to try this market?
First of all, biggest piece of advice is to research your market thoroughly before diving in. I knew the market beforehand, because my first long-term job after university was working on a specialist magazine which was all about card making. It was my job, amongst other things, to know exactly what crafters were interested in, to know every new product on the market and to write features about them. So by the time I went freelance and started this I had lots of contacts and could see where the gaps in the market were. I think whichever market you’re aiming for, you need to do the equivalent thing - check out the competition and see where you could do better than them. Then you can start putting together an alternative product that might have the edge over the existing ones.
Second of all, you need to be prepared for the long haul. It really doesn’t happen overnight unless you’re super lucky or a genius or both. We started putting a business plan together back in 2008, launched later that year and really it took a while to grow. I was freelancing at the same time to make ends meet while the business grew…so if it didn’t work out we had alternatives to go back to.
Thirdly, you may need to tweak your product and/or be prepared to change as the market changes. Our first ever stamp set didn’t sell very well, and I had to work out why. We talked to people, got feedback and found out that they would prefer a smaller sized, more affordable set. We changed it and the next set sold better.
Fourthly - you need to create products for your customer and not yourself (within limits) Of course you want to do creatively fulfilling work, but your customer will only buy something if it chimes with their own taste and if it is useful to them. Hopefully you can find that wonderful place where your taste and their taste overlaps - that is the perfect job! - but to do that you need to know what they need and what they respond to.
