Hello there.
Gosh I’m sure I sat down to write this post sometime at the beginning of the month but somehow or other 26 days have whizzed past and I’m looking at the beginning of February on my calendar. Which must mean I am busy.
I started Summerland in March 2010 after various false starts over the years. For the first four or five months I followed the “make it up as you go along” business model and finally around about July I arrived at the notion of the Tutu Costume Kits.
This set me off on the path of kits and so came the Georgie Bird Kits, following different requests I came up with the Hanging Hearts and Hanging Birds Kits and finally the Patchwork Cushion Kit. All along the way I was also sewing my own ideas for sale, but at Christmas I took the decision that in 2011 I will focus almost exclusively on the kits.
Which means my business as you see it today has only really evolved in the last four or five months; something I have to remind myself of when sales aren’t kerchinging up through my laptop.
What the waffling about has meant is that I feel I have evolved a strong brand identity and a clear line of products. I will be adding one new product to each line this year and focusing much more on getting the Summerland name out into the world and of course developing my customer base.
I will also be looking to develop new wholesale relationships to see Summerland reaching out beyond the web.
I’ve found that craft fairs and events are a mixed blessing for me. They are a great way to meet people and get direct feedback, but given that childcare costs tend to double my stall fees almost immediately I’ll be restricting the fairs that I attend.
With all those plans in mind one great thing about running your own business is that you can be responsive to requests and ideas that pop up out of the blue. Which is a clever way of admitting that three weeks into the new year and I’ve already been distracted away from my original plans with a new set of products ~ more of which in another post.
All of this adds up to me feeling good about 2011 and what it means for Summerland.
More sewing, more kits, more ideas!
It’s great that things are going well, and fab too that you’ve given the business a chance to evolve. I started up my business in May, and the things I’m doing now aren’t the ones I thought I’d be doing. I’ve learnt a huge amount in a very short space of time and lots of my new ideas have come from the clients I’ve met along the way. It sounds like you’re doing a great job of doing all that learning and building a clear identity for Summerland too. It will be great to see what the rest of 2011 brings … Good luck!
Thank you Siobhan. It is the great thing about being so small that we can try new things and let them go if they don’t work and take up new opportunities when they present themselves.
I’m really pleased that you too are feeling so positive about 2011.
Ruth