Handmakers: You will not be discovered!

No matter how good you are. No matter how good your product. Sit back and wait - or keep beavering away in your studio - and you will not be discovered. You have as much chance of winning the lottery.

You have to do stuff to improve your odds. But, guess what? Being the most qualified craftsperson in the world will not help. Time and again people contact me stating their handmaking credentials; I have studied here, done this and worked under so and so. They have obviously invested hugely in this side of themselves and their business. Unfortunately, if you want to be a successful handmaker then this is only the half of it.

I'll let you into another secret: the best artists, designers, architects, musicians, singers and songwriters in the world, are probably not anyone we know. Anyone famous or critically acclaimed. Odds are they are the opposite; an unknown, unheard of, unrecognised, annoymous and, sadly also, unsuccessful someone.

You see the cream does not float to the top. Something that resembles it often does. Other times, complete rubbish does by virtue of some random set of circumstances. There's no natural justice in the world, only business. And, if you're not prepared to get to grips with business, then you'll never be a successful handmaker. At least, I wouldn't bet your house on it.

You may love the creative process and dextrous art of realising your designs. You may even have embarked upon a handmaking career to avoid this grubby business called 'business'! If so, think again - the success of your handmaking career is going to be as much down to your business acumen as your design and making abilities.

If you're not dedicating at least 50% of your time to promoting yourself and your work and selling your wares, you're counting on a lottery win. And, that time needs to be used well. Trudging off to a few craft fairs is unlikely to make a difference. You need to be skilled and adept.

My advice to all handmakers would be to invest in their business skills. Most likely, these are holding you back more than anything else. My dealings with handmakers working with my employer gift retailer pressies4princesses (or wanting to work with us) convince me of this. Running the Handmaking Heroes Handmade Gift Competition has only confirmed my suspicions; most entries fail at the most basic level, retail vs. trade pricing.

The successes prove my point too. Take Jimmy Choo - the world-famous upmarket footwear to fashion brand. This guy was plodding along quite nicely, getting good coverage in Vogue, etc for 10 years. There's no disputing, he'd been comparatively effective at promoting himself. Princess Diana was wearing his shoes. But, what really teleported him into the glitterati of international iconic fashion brands, was setting up a new company with Tamara Mellon, former Vogue Accessories Editor. She bought just the business skills needed to turn Jimmy Choo into a household name and a highly successful business.

You can't afford to wait for a Tamara. If you want more success, you need to start thinking not about design, but about business; about the business of niching. And, consequently, it's a subject I will be returning to regularly over the coming year.

Handmaking is not all DIY

Are you trying to do everything? And, if so, is it holding you back? This thought occurred to me when talking to one of our handmade jewellery suppliers at pressies4princesses.co.uk.

I'd always thought of her main job as designing and making the jewellery. Added to that, a handmaker needs to manage his/her brand and develop sales. It's here where it seems there's enormous room for interpretation. Her notion of what she needed to do was very different from mine.

For me, managing a handmaking brand would mean developing an image and sourcing packaging and support materials. So we're talking boxes and leaflets. These are surely the essentials. But, what about PR and websites, I hear you cry? Aren't these essential too? Well, in my opinion no.

Developing sales has an even larger potential scope - there are many options. You can throw a full advertising and PR campaign at your brand. You can cold call retailers or go door to door. You can develop your own online store. Some handmakers even open their own shops - one of ours at pressies' has. The possibilities are endless and can be hugely beneficial and/or hugely expensive and/or hugely detrimental to your success. Yes, detrimental!

Running a handmaking business often means doing everything yourself. And, special as we all are, there's only so much we can get done and only so many things we can be good at. If your talent is for designing and making, why not stick to that? OK, so you'll have to sort a few other essentials, like boxes and leaflets. But, there's plenty more you can avoid, with the right strategy.

What you don't want to do is get sucked into trying to be a great retailer, or e-commerce expert, or PR guru, as well as a great designer. It just won't work. So, set your strategy to sell through established retailers from the start. OK, you're thinking, how do I snare them? Simple - use the tradeshows. All the retailers visit them. And, with more time to design, you'll be able to knock them dead with your biggest asset - your product range!

Think I am wrong? OK, here are my arguments against the most popular distractions:

1. I need a website. Nope, at most you need a blog. A professional website will cost you loads and, most likely, will be out of date before it's launched. A professional-looking template for a blog will cost less than £100 and with minimal training you can update your blog daily. Your blog should be about you and the brand for the benefit of retailers and past purchasers of your stuff.

2. I need to sell online. No you don't - you can't afford to. Established retailers have visitors (and in today's massive Internet, they are hard to grab), enormous expertise in selling online, a bigger range, professional shipping/ fulfilment capabilities, full-time customer service and more. Plus they constantly invest in their websites (at pressies4princess we spend more than £100,000 every year on improving our website and that excludes content). They instill confidence to buy. Having your products on their website creates confidence in your product.

3. I should be on ebay. Not unless you genuinely think that's going to give your product credibility? There are so many handmaking 'amateurs' giving their stuff away on ebay, you're sure to get dragged into this mire. Getting your products into established retailers affords instant credibility; selling on ebay can destroy that in a click or two.

4. I need to advertise. Why? Instead of trying to draw in would be customers, why not go where they already hang out. That's trade shows for retailers and existing retailers for end-customers.

5. PR is essential to my success. Is it though? Is it more important than signing-up retailers? Better to concentrate on getting your message across at those trade shows.

6. I need to get 'out there' and sell. No, save your petrol. Let the buyers come to you. Put your effort into making a noise at that show.

If you still think I am wrong, tell me - drop a comment.

I can already envisage lots of comments about the 'cost' of selling through the trade. The lost margin. I'll answer those with a question: what do you think you'll save not doing 1 through 6? A retailer's margin pays for all that, so you don't have to. Better still, they get to leverage it over hundred or thousands of products and sales. In all likelihood, you won't. So, it will end up costing you more.

Need proof? Ok, take this example. Say Jane spends £1500 on a new website that she can sell at. That's quite cheap. Hosting costs another £50 and there's a standing minimum charge for taking payments of £20/ month. So, she's in for £1670, before she has lured in any visitors. She sells her items for £50 each retail, trade would be £25. She needs to sell 67 before the extra profit (from retailing) pays for the website.

Hang on though - with no investment in advertising or PR, she won't get any visitors. Not the buying kind. Say she can buy Adwords (clickthroughs) from Google at 25p a visitor and 5% of these visitors go on to buy (that's a very high conversion rate for a low-cost website). So, on average, each sale is costing her £5 in advertising/ clicks. Now, her extra profit is down to £20 a sale. She now needs 84 sales before she's better off.

Whoops, but she hasn't shipped anything yet. Just the box and the postage costs are £3.00, without figuring in her time. That included, her extra margin has slipped to £17 and she needs to sell 98 pieces to be better off.

Less than 100, she can do that, I know you're thinking. Yes, perhaps she could. But we've still not included returns, losses on fraudulent orders, her time in packing and sending and managing customer services (not to mention running the advertising campaign). In our example, who would be doing the designing? Jane would be far too busy!

And that's the point. It brings us full circle. Doing it all yourself - the selling as well as the making - just doesn't work. You won't have the time to do it all properly. Spreading your time between the two makes both inadequate. You are not spending enough time designing and making to produce a great range. And, your marketing/ retailing efforts aren't achieving much, because you don't have the time or money to make a difference (or even be noticed) in today's tough markets. Drop the latter - or pare it down to the minimum as suggested - and you'll not only be liberating your time but your success too!

New year, new career!

Did going back to work fill you with dread (again) this year? Then why keep doing it? Why go back year after year, when in your heart you know you know it's not what you want? You know you can do something more fulfilling, but commitments and your lack of confidence hold you back. Don't let them.

It's a sad old cliche but life really isn't a rehersal; you are here (in this wonderful world of opportunity) but once. Don't fritter it away on unsatisfactory experiences and regret. And, don't believe that you can't, because of this, that or the other. Nothing can't be undone and there's always a way to make it happen.

I followed my dream of running my own business 7 years ago. I failed abysmally at first and it cost me my savings. I went from being a high-flyer with an expensed car, big salary and all the perks to a labourer on a building site. Doesn't sound very motivational, does it. But, the point is, I came back. My second business, Retailer of gifts for women Pressies4princess, has proven phenomenally successful. It's more than made up for the interim failure. So don't fear failure; it's a temporary state.

Bored is a more permanent state, especially if you don't do anything to change it. It's in your hands. My English teacher used to say "Things are not boring, people are". It's you that makes it exciting or boring. Work - the process of earning the money to get by - can be boring, if you let it. But, if you dare to take some risks and throw yourself into it, work can be the most exciting, fulfilling part of your life! Ask yourself this question: Do you want your obituary to basically read, "He/she was boring. She/he never did anything remotely interesting because she/he was too sacred. He/she died regretting not having the courage to pursue her/his dreams?"! Of course not, but the power to rewrite it is in your hands, head and heart alone.

As a gentle nudge in the right direction and a little assistance in getting started, we've set up the Hunt for Handmaking Heroes Handmade Gift Competition over at the family's women's gift retailer pressies4princesses. I urge you to take part and use it as a springboard for achieving your dream in 2008.