Regardless of the type of sewing business you are in, there are always a number of ways you can increase your profits by increasing the services that you offer. Here are a few suggestions:
** If you do alterations, how about making a few assorted craft items from scraps of fabric you may have on hand. At first you can go for a specific market, like babies/toddlers, or if you have teens and pre-teens in your house, check out the assorted patterns at Patterns2Go to see what you think would appeal to YOUR kids, then you’d know for sure that your customers’ children would also like them.
** For those in the garment sewing business, you have the best opportunity of all to increase your profits simply by adding “Sewing for Plus Size Children” to your business. There are two ways you can add to this extremely profitable side of your business — you could learn how to make patterns/clothing for specific children (check out PatternsThatFitYou.com to see the wide variety of classes available), OR if you prefer to work from ready made patterns only, check out the patterns available at PlusSizeChildren for patterns that are specifically made for plus size children. There are a number of patterns, including jumpers, many blouse/top patterns, skirts, shorts, jeans, boys tops, etc, and my feeling is that if you were to start sewing for all the plus size and overweight children in your area, your business would be off to a jumpstart this year.
** If you are in the “home decor” type of sewing, such as drapes, spreads, couch and chair coverings, etc., I would suggest you visit Patterns2Go for additional items you could make. There are a number of home decor items at that site you may not have thought about. In addition, what about making some craft items to go along with the home decor, like wall hangings or children’s doll blankets to match their room colors.
If you can come up with just one or two “extra” things to add to your home business, it just might be the items that end up bringing in the most money — or at least enough extra profit to make you feel good about adding the services to what you already have.
[…] I did a post encouraging people to step “outside the box”, as they say, in order to increase profits by increasing services. This week I have a perfect example of doing just […]