Sewing Business Blog

Ideas To Make 2019 The Best Year Ever!

by Leave a Comment

The New Year is upon us, and sometimes we start to visualize, or dream, about how great this new year will be.  The facts are that we have to do more than just dream and wish – we must take ACTION!  Action requires us to think about things, write some things down and begin to work on the list we’ve written.

Here are a few ideas to help you get started on your list for the year and help to move your business at a pace that will definitely make it the “best year ever”!

** Update your planner for the entire year.  Put in all birthdays, anniversaries, craft show dates, conferences you want to attend, etc.  If you don’t have major items on your calendar, you’ll get so busy you’ll forget important items, or worse than that, you may be trying to schedule two craft shows for the same weekend, if you don’t already have something on your calendar.

** Set up 2-3 major goals that you’d like your business to accomplish this year, such as getting started in that new area of sewing for big and tall men, locating two additional craft shows that you can attend or setting up your customer area so you’ll be able to show off and sell some of the crafts that you make from those downloadable patterns. Write these goals into a book so you can cross them off when you’ve accomplished them.

** Plan your time off.  If there’s a reunion coming up over Memorial Day or you think you’d like to head into the mountains or to the beach over the 4th of July, mark it down in your planner, and add that to your list.  By doing this you know well in advance of the upcoming days that you won’t be in the office / workroom, so you can get your work done accordingly.

** Educate yourself.  In every business, there are new things coming along constantly, and you need to keep abreast of any changes.  You could even decide to educate yourself a little and learn how to do your own sewing machine repair, instead of having to take your machine to the shop for maintenance and repairs.  Figure out how many times you had your machines at the repair shop last year – add up the total spent, and this will probably be the savings you’ll have THIS year, once you learn how to take care of your own machines.

** Organize your office. The biggest problem in any office, at least in mine, are the mounds of paper!  Things I want to look at in a few days, magazines I want to browse through again, ideas for projects that get out of control – you name it and it’s all in my office.  I’ve decided that I WASTE entirely too much time shuffling these things around to make room for more papers.  Today, January 1st, I have made the decision to clear out the “junk”, get the office organized, get a filing system set up and categorized (project ideas in one file folder, future article ideas in another folder, patterns organized in my new clear view pattern holders,) and go through the huge stack of magazines to tear out and file what I want to keep and recycle the rest of the magazine.  I’ve made a big headway already today and feel so much better about the office – I know I won’t be wasting as much time this year as in past years shuffling and re-shuffling.  And guess what – time WASTED means less productive time, therefore dollars wasted!

** Last but not least, after making your list of goals and “to do’s”, plan how and when you will get them accomplished.  You don’t have to do everything in January!  Spread out the items according to what you’d really like to accomplish first, second and so on;  this way you can get a time-table set up that you can easily follow.  If you see that you’re nearly finished with your entire list by the middle of the year you can easily set up another set of goals for the last half of the year.

I’m planning on making 2019 the BEST YEAR EVER for my sewing and craft business.  How about you?  HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Are Low Sales Affecting Your Self Esteem?

by Leave a Comment

Are your Holiday sales as high as you’d like them to be?  Are you making sales at all, or are you getting only a few customers per week?

The advantage of working out of our homes is that we don’t have rent to pay on a store building, or spend our days at the store pacing the floor wishing someone would walk through the door.

Some days it’s very hard to keep an optimistic point of view when it appears that we don’t know when the next dollar will come in.

Even though  the economy is taking a hit on all of us, we begin think we are all alone, and start wondering if our work is good enough or perhaps customers no longer like what we make, etc.

A good case in point is something that just happened in our town.  Last weekend our town held  an annual 3 day event and one of the biggest festivals in the entire area.  This festival has been going on for years and gets bigger each year.   According to the paper there were over 200 vendors (artists) coming from all across the country to attend the festival and over 150,000 people expected to attend.   I’m sure the artists all thought they were gonna go home afterwards with wads of dollars from sales!

After the festival ended, the newspaper interviewed several of the vendors/artists to get some feedback on how it went.  First of all, they didn’t get anywhere NEAR the crowd that they were expecting, and those who did attend were “lookers” and not “buyers”.  One artist who had come from another state said she sold ONE painting on Friday, NONE on Saturday and TWO on Sunday.  She had paintings that ranged from $200 to $2,000 — and the three that were bought were all in the $200 range.   Were her paintings poor quality?  Were the paintings something that nobody would want?  Absolutely not!!!  They were beautiful!  One would-be customer came up and wanted the $2,000 painting so badly, but said she just didn’t have the money right now, but would “take a business card” and get hold of her (the artist) later.  The artist said “later never comes”!

Now I would have to say that this particular artist, as well as probably the majority of the rest of them, COULD begin to go into a “low self esteem” slump just wondering why their stuff didn’t sell like it did last year or the year before.  Perhaps even start to think they need to get out of this business.

Now is the time for an ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT!  Yes, the economy stinks, and people are hanging on to every dollar they can.  However, there IS something that you can do, especially if your self esteem is ready to hit rock bottom.

Consider this:  we all have the same 24 hours each day.  We all wake up with the same day ahead of us.  What we decide to do with those hours is up to us individually, not up to the weather, not up to the stock market reports or up to how many sales we made yesterday.   Today is a NEW day, and we need to determine within our own heart that we WILL do something that will make a difference.

If customers are not coming to you, perhaps you could go to them.  I’m sure there are many shut-ins that would appreciate someone coming to them to get their measurements, or to pick up their alterations that need to be done.  If you are making craft items, perhaps you could consign them to a local fabric store where people traffic would be greater than to your home.  Consider what it is that you’re doing and spend a little time thinking about what you could do to add more customers, or get the word out a little more about what you have.  Perhaps you could make a little gift basket of items that you deal with and talk to some local stores about doing a Holiday Raffle — you can get raffle tickets easily, cover an empty peanut butter jar or something similar and make a nice decorative “holiday raffle — $1.00 per ticket” sign.

If you have other ideas, please let us know so we can pass them along to our readers.

Advertising Opportunities and Strategies on the Internet

by Leave a Comment

Today’s consumers are much more informed about new products than ever before.  Whenever a new product “hits the marketplace”, there seems to be a buzz about it throughout the internet.  Whether the product is being talked about in the social networks (Twitter, FaceBook,  etc), or written about in the various blogs, you can be assured that it IS being talked about, whether in a positive or negative manner.

If you are considering introducing a new product, we would highly recommend that you start by searching the internet for blogs or forums related to the type of product that you want to sell.  You can be reading the blogs and forums to see what people are saying about related products.  You might even want to do some posts about what you have that you’re wanting to introduce.  The readers of the blogs and forums will be quick to give you some of their opinions on your topic —- some may want to jump on whatever it is that you’re going to offer, while others may be a little more leary about it.  Get some feedback, answer any questions that they may ask, etc.

By “testing the waters”, so to speak, you might get some great ideas on how to advertise your item so that the advertising itself will answer the questions that have been asked.

When you are ready to do the official launch of your product, be sure to present solid facts about it, give a very positive image of your product, and try to implement some of the opinions that were expressed in your internet research.

If you don’t already have a blog, we would recommend that you do set up your company blog — invite reader comments and make regular posts to it.   Let others in the social networks know about your blog and invite them to check it out.

By using blogs, forums, and the social network systems, you’re basically introducing your product to a large audience with minimal effort and at no charge to you for the advertising.

How to Get Local Publicity for Your Small Business

by 1 Comment

Getting local publicity is a fundamental step when it comes to marketing your small business. In fact, for many small business owners, local marketing is the only type of marketing they know of and need.

Here are some great ways to get local publicity:

1)  Get involved in community events.

Although donating money to charities is also a great way to give back to the community—tangible and visible involvement is ten times better. Community involvement is a very effective means of small business advertising and good publicity. Take part in charitable events, volunteer at community service projects or sponsor a local sports team. You’ll be known as the business that cares about others.

2)  Start a community blog or newsletter.

Another way to build up your brand is by starting a community blog or newsletter on local happenings and activities. You can take advantage of this community resource to network and ask other local residents and other businesses to contribute to your project.

3)  Start a tradition or event.

Start an annual tradition or event that the rest of the community can get involved in and look forward to. Plan something worthy of being featured in the evening news or the daily paper. Hold a crafts fair, a bake sale or even a community picnic on the first day of summer!

4)  Take advantage of local media and various opportunities.

Make the most out of local media and offer to write op-eds in your community newsletter or local newspaper. Get some airtime on well-known local radio talk shows. Opportunities such as these can quickly generate local awareness!

5)  Join at least one professional or business organization.

Just being a member of a reputable organization can be business advertising and publicity in itself. You can also take advantage of the organization’s perks, such as free promotion on their website or newsletter.

The only way to get local publicity for your small business is to direct your marketing efforts to a neighborhood or community level.