Crafter Interview - Sheila D.

This week's Crafter Interview is handbag maker Sheila D. As a web designer by trade, Sheila has a couple of great tips for free programs you  can use to manage your website. Additionally, check out her recommendations fror how to make your product stand out if you've got alot of competition, like handbags.

Info: Sheila Djiwatampu, Handbag Designer, www.sheilad.com

How long have you been in business? Almost 2 years

How did you get your start?
I always wanted to have a store selling knick knacks. When I confided this to my close friend Marlo, he said that he thought selling stuff in a bazaar would be good practice for me. Without any warning, he registered for a booth right away, and left me panicking and trying to decide what to sell within a week's time. I decided to make and sell tote bags. I owned a tote bag that had a cute pattern on the outside and a nice solid pale blue color inside. For my own creation, I thought that if I used a quality fabric with more heft to it for the inside, then people could use both sides. I immediately thought corduroy would be a good choice for that. One side solid color in corduroy, and the other side patterned in cotton. My friends loved them, each bought a few and left me with only several bags before the bazaar started. After this positive reinforcement, I naturally thought that selling them on the web would be a good idea. Etsy was in beta at that time, so I started putting bags on there. Selling totes on Etsy helped me realize that the larger world would be interested in my creations and also opened my eyes to the huge crafter community on the internet.

Do you have formal training?
I graduated from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, majoring in Graphic Design.

Do you think you've "made it?"
No, not yet.

What would it take for you to think you've "made it"?
When I have stable production and sales (income). In essence that means when I can fully support myself by selling these bags, and I can delegate part of my work by having people working for me. (Not only that I can afford to support myself, but also I can afford to pay others). Also when my brand is well known and people trust my brand, my product.

Is selling your handmade items supporting you financially?
Partially.

If not, what is your day job?
I also do freelance graphic design/web design (online portfolio).

What's the best part of having your own business?
You work within your own time frame. You design something (work) because you choose to, not because your boss tells you to do so. You are your own boss. And it is such a great reward when you succeed in it. It gives me pride in my own achievements.

What surprised you about having your own business?
It is not something that I planned to have. It just happened gradually, because of people's interest and demand. I started making bags for fun, a close circle of friends and family liked them and bought them, and then other people began to appreciate them. Then I made more bags because people were buying them, and eventually made a website to sell them. Soon enough people started to feature my bags in their blogs and magazines, then stores and wholesalers were interested. The next thing I know I have a business running! It's great!! I am still surprised that doing what you enjoy doing can turn into something big, into a business simply because others love what you are making. It is the best feeling.

What resources do you take advantage of?
Discovering beautiful, affordable, designer fabrics on a visit to my hometown in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Advice for someone trying to make it in your field:
There are so many people selling bags out there -- it might make you think there isn't room for another one. The most important thing is have your own original and unique style. Once you have a stable production, promote and update your products regularly to magazines, blogs, stores, and wholesalers. Give samples to press. Out of the many places you approach, one or two will be interested, and that's where it counts, so don't get discouraged if promising avenues end up going nowhere.

Advice for someone trying to build their own business (in any field):
Growing a business doesn't happen in an instant. It is a long process, and it takes time to get to a turning point, and you have to be patient. The key to doing your own business is you have to enjoy what you're doing, and that's what keeps me going.

How and where do you advertise your product?
I printed a bunch of cards and dropped them in cafes, and even handed them out to people I would talk to to in cafes, streets, and friends of course. One serendipitous event was when Rena Tom from Rare Device picked up one of my cards in Parco, a friendly coffee shop in Park Slope, Brooklyn. She was just starting the shop and asked if she could carry my bags, and this ended up becoming my first wholesale experience. It's nice when your first wholesale experience can be with someone as friendly and understanding as Rena. She included me on the designer list on her website, and to this day it's a consistent source of traffic to my website and has led to some important press attention that catapulted me to a higher level. I haven't tried any formal advertising yet, but I'm currently working on a blog, because it's obvious that making a blog about your business is a very effective way to promote your products. It engages people to have interest in your products as well as what you're doing. Your loyal customers will have fresh information on new items or any updates you want to share. Your insight makes it more personal, and helps create a special relationship (bond) with your customers.
My future goals for advertising are to try some discount promotions with various blogs and websites, but it's a little complicated, because my current shopping cart from PayPal is somewhat limited in functionality.

What are your future goals for your business?
Since my textiles are all limited, end-run fabrics, it's an ongoing process for me to come up with new color combinations.  I recently introduced pouches as a way to make use of fabric pieces that were too small to use for totes. I have so many ideas for future products, including new bag collections, and I hope to eventually move in the direction of home interior decoration products. Before I can do that, I need to make my website dynamic (database-based), so that I can more easily maintain it, and beyond that I want to move to a more flexible shopping cart. PayPal is cheap and easy to use, but that ease-of-use comes at a price.

Can you speak anymore on the following topics:

-approaching store owners
-crafts fairs
-trade shows
I don't have much to offer in this realm -- they're all things I plan to focus on in the coming year. Most of my wholesale contacts so far have been garnered from online press.

-starting and maintaining a website
An attractive website is very important (that's what keeps them browsing on your shop), simple navigation, clear engaging pictures, and downloading time is key! If your website is slow because you have graphics/images that are too big, people will leave instantly. Customers don't like to wait. That means you lose a customer. Right now my website is primarily static HTML, which takes forever to maintain. Luckily I am a web/graphic designer by trade, and a decent photographer, so I can create all of my own images. We're currently working on making the site database-based, which will free up a lot of time and make product introduction much more flexible. I use Google Analytics, a free service, which gives me a fine-grained view of web traffic and helps me decide how to change my content based on what people are searching for or how they're clicking on my site. Another free service from Google is Sitemaps, which you use to create an XML "map" of your website and upload to Google. This helps the Google search engine robot know what pages it should crawl and index on your website. Along those lines is search engine optimization, something I've learned a lot about over the past year, but it's probably a little too much to go into in this interview.

-your branding and packaging
Good branding and packaging suggests reliability. It's more believable. Notice yourself when you shop, most likely you will pick products that look engaging, look nicer (And that's when the branding and packaging talks. Packaging does matter!) I have a consistent look from my website to my Etsy shop to my stationery. I'm very detail-oriented, and I think that my customers like that.

Comments

[san]

Excellent. I will add this link to our Resource centre website - you've done a great job.

[sanwan]

nice blog.

[lanin]

containts of this blog is very good.