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Inspired by the modern, peaceful beauty of over-sized cement fire pits, Angela Sands set out to design a miniature version to bring her love for the outdoors inside the four walls of her home. With porcelain as the vessel and scented soy wax for fuel, a large wooden wick creates the soothing crackle we’ve all grown to love. The result, Luminology,  is a unique and natural candle that engages multiple senses and inspires celebration in the everyday.  You can befriend her on Facebook and Twitter.

What is your more prized creation - the coolest thing you've ever made, with your own nimble hands?

What comes to mind are two art installations I did kind of last minute - by the seat of my pants. I framed a large square piece of sod and hung it in an indie art gallery. Super simple yet it had a lot of impact. I thought it looked great in contrast to all the paintings.

I did another installation around that same time with fine gauge string. I wrapped the string, starting at one floor-to-ceiling column to another that spanned maybe 20 feet, spacing the string about 2" vertically all the way up. It created a wall you couldn't see right away but once you noticed it, it stopped you in your tracks.

What is the worst piece of business advice you've ever been given?

I don't feel I've received bad business advice thus far. I've received a lot of great business advice! The advice I need seems to shows up for me when I need it to. Maybe I have received bad advice and I just haven't realized it yet!

What was the biggest entrepreneurial epiphany of your career?

The most important thing I've learned thus far is that, in any given situation, no matter how utterly hopeless or complicated things may seem, the simple act of making a decision will always move you forward. Decision making has been the hardest thing for me to feel confident about. I finally did something radical and decided that there is no such thing as a bad decision. Even deciding to do nothing is valid. From this point of view, I am free to make decisions without fear. Things move along quite nicely.

Give us your top 3 indie artisans/designers to watch.

CasaMidi

Lisa Jones

Ann Hartley

If you could offer one sage snippet of wisdom to aspiring designers, crafters & artisans, what would it be?

I have three:

1. Give what was freely given to you (advice, inspiration, time, etc.). In other words, share!

2. Realize that people buy the story behind the product before they buy the product itself. It's usually not about the money.

3. Make everything as simple as possible. But not simpler. ~ Einstein

Thanks for sharing, Angela!

Sarah Von is a Vianza contributing columnist and interview wrangler.  If you follow her on Twitter, you’ll be privy to all sort of tweets about small business, good ideas and, um, cheese.

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This week I wrote about  the very first steps of marketing your indie business crafting your message. Today I’d like to share the best advice from around the web on making a clear, concise marketing message that can guide everything else you do.

CopyBlogger’s Marketing Basics include describing features, not benefits and making your marketing indespensible.

Improve your message by starting with why.

Megan Auman has a great tip:

“Use customer feedback to refine your marketing message”

And if you’re thinking about changing up your message, remember that Seth Godin warns:

“Most of the time, creative entrepreneurs lose interest long before their marketing message loses its power.”

Write it, refine it and find new ways to share it.

And while you’re at it, share your message (or your favorite link of the week), in the comments.

Tara Swiger is our Community Wrangler, a crafter of independence, and a Starship Captain. She’s right in the middle of a writing a book on Marketing for IndieBiz’s for Cooperative Press and she’d love to distract herself by hanging out with you on Twitter.

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Lately, we’ve been talking a lot about Indie Business in all its incarnations.  We shared what indie means to us and then we asked some of our favorite designers and artists what ‘indie’ means to them.

Indie means you’re the boss! It also means you’re the boss? Set your own schedule!  Wait, who scheduled you on Saturday night?  Oh yeah YOU.  Miss out on girl’s night out!?  Probably.  But you might just have a free afternoon for one of your friends or family when they really need you.  It means shopping the clearance rack today, so one day you’ll be able forget about money woes. Indie means following your heart and working harder/smarter/faster than you ever have in your whole life to make things your never thought possible happen - every day.

 - Shelly Saber, GS Lillian Jewelry

Indie to me means freedom, individuality, originality, entrepreneurialism and independence. It means celebrating the beauty of imperfection and appreciating the time spent making something. It means starting up a new and exhilarating way of making money. Every single thing you earn is from someone who wants to buy something YOU have made. Isn't that amazing? What a joyful feeling, to hear someone say 'I love your work'. Your creation, from your brain, hands and heart.

 - Helen Smith, Nell Clothing

To me indie means creating and running a business without a big corporate shadow, and comes with the freedom and ability to switch and change with the tides. Indie means putting names to faces, and having that personal relationship with customers that corporations just can't match.

 - Kim Lawler, Finest Imaginary

‘Indie’ is about connections. When you shop indie you know the creators of the work you're buying. They’re often the ones handing you their product or emailing you a tracking number. You know an indie biz owner's name, face, and contact details, they don’t hide behind corporate speak and layers of management. An indie biz always has the fingerprints of the owner on it.

 - Kim Laurenson, Cupcakes and Mace

Sarah Von is a Vianza contributing columnist and interview wrangler.  If you follow her on Twitter, you’ll be privy to all sort of tweets about small business, good ideas and, um, cheese.

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This is the fourth installment of our ongoing  Indie Business 101 series.So far we’ve had Getting Started, Tools of the Trade, Scaling Production

Marketing is, simply, communicating your message to the people who want what you’re selling. Marketing is every bit of communication you do, it’s the crafting of the message, and it’s the deciding (and reaching out to), your Right People. Once you know the message and the people, the rest is choosing the right marketing tools and employing them (like yourwebsite, Facebook, events, SEO, the press, even customer service)

Everything you do is marketing. From naming your business, to scaling production, to taking photos, to choosing retailers to carry your lines. Any printed (or digital) thing your company produces is marketing material. Even your tags. Especially your price. The heart of marketing is to make it fit seamlessly with everything you’re already doing and let it help you make all new decisions.

Each bit of marketing (whether you mean it to or not) communicates something to your people. Higher prices, being in fancier boutiques and using luxurious materials creates one kind of message. Discounting, impersonal invoices, and slow customer service communicate another message.

The first step is to determine what you want the message to be. What do you want to communicate to buyers (both retailers and the end customer)? What is your company about? What’s it’s values, priorities, and points of pride? What universe does it exist in?

If you’re not sure where to start, start with this:

I provide {the experience your product provides} to {type of person who loves it} with {what you sell}.

For example, for my yarn company, I might say:

I provide happiness via color + texture to curious knitters with eco-friendly, handmade yarn.

Now, you can see how that message comes through in the product itself:

and in everything else I do: the website, the goofy contests, even the pictures and words on a salespage.

There’s your message!

The next part of marketing is to make sure you’re sharing your message with the Right People, and we’ll talk more about that next Wednesday.

What’s your message? Share it in the comments!

Tara Swiger is our Community Wrangler, a crafter of independence, and a Starship Captain. She’s right in the middle of a writing a book on Marketing for IndieBiz’s for Cooperative Press and she’d love to distract herself by hanging out with you on Twitter.

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Nell Smith is an award winning surface designer, creating fresh, modern prints by hand using traditional silkscreen techniques. Simplicity is key to her design aesthetic: inspired by Japanese cartoons and Scandinavian textiles. Her bright and friendly designs adorn a variety of products from bespoke organic cotton children’s clothing to contemporary homewares.

What is your more prized creation - the coolest thing you've ever made, with your own nimble hands?

I hand cut all the stencils I print with and always feel most proud of the most complex ones, like the record player or typewriter. This isn't always reflected by the popularity of a print though - my bestselling design has to be the giraffe!

What is the worst piece of business advice you've ever been given?

This is a tricky one! I've been really lucky to get some great advice for free through a mentor and a business advisor. Ceramicist and lighting designer C.J O'Neill helped me when I first set up my business with advice on costing and pricing, which was a real eye-opener!

Paul Shambrook from Business Link NorthWest also advised me assisted in rewriting my business plan. I've been fortunate. I think the worst business advice has probably come from myself - I made all the usual mistakes in terms of pricing my work too low and having crappy photographs. My business is relatively new however and I'm learning all the time!

What was the biggest entrepreneurial epiphany of your career?

Getting a studio at Manchester Craft and Design Centre was a huge breakthrough! After years of uncertainty, doubt and struggle, everything seemed to fall into place. I finally finished my Masters in Textiles after having to take some time out and immediately the studio came up. Total serendipity.

Having to write a business plan and preparing for the interview really focused my mind and I was (and still am!) very proud to get the studio and to be surrounded by established designer makers.  Having a support network around me is so important. I spend half the week working from home and after that I'm desperate to get back into the studio!

Give us your top 3 indie artisans/designers to watch.

I'm going to have to big up my studio mates! They're a talented bunch.

Jane Blease, stunning handmade lampshades
Lily Greenwood (aka Liz Evans), gorgeous butterfly collages and paintings

Kathryn Edwards, narrative canvases

If you could offer one sage snippet of wisdom to aspiring designers, crafters & artisans, what would it be?

Keep looking for a way in. I tried freelancing and went to many interviews for jobs I wasn't right for before realising that I would be much happier working for myself. Also - listen to your customers! Lots of people asked me if I would print my designs onto babywear, so I started doing it and it's now my bestselling range. Thank you lovely customers!

Thanks for sharing, Nell!

Sarah Von is a Vianza contributing columnist and interview wrangler.  If you follow her on Twitter, you’ll be privy to all sort of tweets about small business, good ideas and, um, cheese.

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Kim is a food and photography obsessed blogger and jewellery designer from Wellington, New Zealand. Working in offices convinced her that corporate life and office politics were not worth the stress, so she quit. Kim now divides her time between temping, blogging, and creating fun jewellery. You can befriend her on Facebook or Twitter.

You have laser cut jewelry in almost every imaginable shape (narwhals! cuss words! bones! scissors!) Where do you get the ideas for your pieces?

“They” say you should have a specific customer in mind for the things you create. My specific customer is me! All of my jewellery is stuff I wear. I'm constantly trying to reexamine my tastes and up my skills so I can make the things I really love.  I'm inspired by images everywhere and like things a little subversive.

Have you had any shapes that sold particularly well that surprised you?

The scissors have been my biggest seller thanks to a contract with ModCloth. Narwhals and unicorns have sold really well, but that's not very surprising.  People really love customised word necklaces. I get a lot of nickname, roller derby name and twitter name requests.

Do you do customized jewelry? If so, what's the strangest customization order you've received?

I do a lot of customised jewellery. Technically everything I make is customisable, one of the benefits of running a small operation and designing things myself. Nameplates have been a big hit and I get people sending me pictures to turn into vector graphics for laser cutting. It's a sure way to own something no one else has.

You're based in Wellington, New Zealand. Where do most of your orders come from? Have you ever encountered problems because you're so far away from everything?

By far the majority of my customers are in the US. I think mostly because I sell on Etsy, which is based in the US. It's getting harder and harder to compete in the US market, especially when it costs five times as much to ship there from New Zealand. The market in New Zealand is much smaller but it's something I would like to focus on next year.

What tools have served your design business, over the years? Any technical (or organizational) recommendations for hobbyist designers who desperately wanna "go pro"?

I spend a lot of time reading blogs and figuring out my own style. I scour the internet for better and cheaper suppliers. I connect with customers on my own blog, or through twitter and facebook. The Etsy blog and forums have a wealth of knowledge in them as well. The internet is your best friend!

I use Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and Lightroom, and when I was using a Windows computer I liked using Freehand. Good software is really helpful, but it doesn't have to be expensive if you use free programs like Inkscape.  Wordpress powers my blog and Etsy powers my shop.

Lastly, describe the type of world you'd like to design?

A world full of bright colours (no more pastels!), spacious green fields and calm clear waters.

More people supporting small business. A place where people aren’t so afraid to do the things they love.

Sarah Von is a Vianza contributing columnist and interview wrangler.  If you follow her on Twitter, you’ll be privy to all sort of tweets about small business, good ideas and, um, cheese.

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Here in the States, it’s Black Friday.

You might even be slumped over your computer after an early morning of shopping.

But pour yourself another peppermint mocha, because the holiday season is just starting and as a small biz, you’ll want to support your fellow indie businesses.

We’re here to help by rounding up the best initiatives that will connect you with your local indie retailers (note: this might be a great way to find shops you want to wholesale with!).

Small Business Saturday - “dedicated to supporting small businesses on one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year.” (retailers take note: this site provides marketing materials + tutorials to help you reach more shoppers!)

3/50 Project - “for every $100 spent locally, $68 stays in your community”

LocalHarvest - “real food. real farmers. real community”. While your supporting the locals, don’t forget you can get lots of your food locally too!

Got another resource for shopping with indie retailers? Share it in the comments!
 

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This is Part 3 in our multi-part Indie Business 101 series. Part 1 was about Getting Started, Part 2 was Tools of theTrade.

Now that you’ve gotten your business in order and mastered a few tools, you want to scale your business. One part of scaling is altering your production so that you can make more.

You have been selling to local stores but want to take your business to the next level by focusing your energies on the wholesale channel. Attending tradeshows and finding independent reps to represent your line sounds fun and doable. But the thought of spending even longer hours in your studio fulfilling large orders for retailers can seem daunting. Especially if your products need long hours of hands-on time. Since you also have to spend a significant amount of time running your business, sourcing materials and supplies, designing new products, processing orders, shipments & invoices, collecting payments – It may seem like you have to be super(wo)man to do it all.

It's not unusual for designer makers to get burnt out in the process.  Having a product that sells itself might seem like a great marketing strategy, but don’t forget that the product doesn’t make itself. All your marketing dollars spent on tradeshows will go to waste if you can’t fulfill orders in a timely fashion. Get organized before you venture into wholesaling and have a system in place to scale production and you'll build trust and confidence with your retailers. They'll believe that you’re a sustainable business, that is going to be around for a long time and that they can invest their resources in promoting your work in their shop.
 

Another key question to answer before your jump into wholesaling is - are you self employed or are you an entrepreneur?.  You can close your Etsy shop for 3 months, travel the world and have your customers wait until you're back. But unlike your customers,  your retailers won't be waiting. That’s the difference between being self employed  and running a business. If you decide on building a real business by wholesaling, be prepared for great success by having a plan and systems in place to support it, for the saying goes “success is when preparation meets opportunity”. Here’s how to get that preparation.

Visualize your workflow

As a creative business person use a visual tool to comprehend the universe of tasks and activities you do on a daily basis, their inter-relations, issues, duplication of effort and the value associated with each task. This can be a huge help to reflect and prioritize. It  will give you the insights where to focus, where you need help as well as highlight the inefficiencies in the process.

So what can you use to create this visual map? My favorite tools are mindmaps. There are many different mind mapping tools available in the market - both free and paid versions. For this exercise, a free tool like Mindjet or FreeMind will suffice.  Need inspiration?

I had Tara mindmap her handdyed yarn business as an example:

Image Credits :: Blondechickenboutique

She reports that having it all layed out like this helps her see both the workflow and the connections between tasks.

Go ahead, map your business. It can be fun and fulfilling and you might start seeing you business in a new light. 

Streamline your production studio

Organizing your studio  like an efficient assembly line, with specific areas marked out for each task, can increase your productivity. When  you need help with one or more aspects of making the product, your part time help can get started easily if all the tools and detailed instructions are available in the respective work area.

Here are some studio shots from Luminology, a candle making studio. The studio looks gorgeous, organized, clutter free and inviting, a place where you can feel relaxed and are at your creative best.

Image Credits :: Luminology

Note the time it takes for you to accomplish each step. This will give you some benchmarks to compare when you get outside help to take over that task.

Consider batching all the post-production/admin work you do and do it on certain days of the week for all customers. Running to the bank to deposit checks or dropping off the packages at Fedex, or returning voice mails –  have a specific time allocated.

Map your Plan B

If your business is humming along, your cash flow is positive, you're signing up new wholesale accounts and generally feeling good about life, you might not think about needing a Plan B. But you never know when life is going to throw you a curveball and if you are unprepared it could undo everything you have worked so hard to build.

Have a Plan B for situations like the following:

- when your computer crashes and you can’t get to your customer information
- you fall sick for an extended period and can’t make the products
- you lose the internet connection for a day and can’t get to your online applications.

Explaining to your retailers that you can’t ship the orders on time because you fell sick will make you look unreliable. Having systems in place to address such scenarios will prepare you for dealing with stressful situations should they arise.

Here’s  great advice from our very own Tara:

“I write all my recipes down, so even my husband could do production if necessary. I write everything down: my shipping system (how I buy shipping labels online, where the packaging is, what's included in each order, what I write on the thank you notes), my passwords to email/blogging/newsletter software, how to email my clients (so he could contact them if something happened to me and an order was gonna be late), etc. I keep it all in a Google Doc that I've shared with him. Any system you have - write it down and track it! You'll be ready if you choose to bring on a production partner or  an employee. “

Do you have your production and post-production recipe down on paper that anyone can follow? If not, its time you did!

Part time help

Assuming that you have mapped out all business activities, streamlined your production studio and documented your Plan B, you should be in a position to decide where and when you need help. It could be seasonal when you are deluged with orders (around the holidays), or part time on a weekly basis for both production and post-production work (like labeling, packing, shipping, invoicing, checking delivery status or sending emails to customers).

No matter how often you need help, having a reliable part time help that is trained to take over some of the tasks (when needed) can be invaluable for your business. This is the kind of “insurance” you should invest in to appear more professional to your customers. This approach works when the making-of-your-product does not need a specific skill that can only be acquired after years of training. If you’re a candle making studio, you can train your part time help to follow your recipe to make candles. But if it is woodworking or pottery or weaving, chances are you cannot outsource the entire process to unskilled help without significant training.

Outsourcing Production

Some of our previous posts on finding the right production partner or responsible production covers this topic in detail. So I’ll skip on the “how” and focus on the “why”.

If your production technique needs skilled labor and/or is labor-intensive, then it makes sense for you find a production partner that specializes in making that product to truly scale your business. I have said this before and I repeat - retailers are less interested in I-make-all-aspects-of-my-product story,  as you can be the single point of failure in meeting your commitments. Instead, build a system where you are overseeing all aspects of the product. Having a reliable production partner can be a huge help for your small business as you can scale up or scale down your production needs to meet demand. This is something you cannot do on your own with employees, unless you believe in hiring and firing as a way to grow your business.

While all these steps might seem overwhelming, take them one at a time. Not everything will be all at once; scaling is an iterative process. As you grow, continue to reassess how you might scale. The goal is not to work IN the business, but to work ON the business. It's the foundation for building your creative empire.
 

How do you plan to scale your production? Share in the comments!

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This is a guest post from Sherisa. She’s a jewelry designer and writer originally from Brooklyn, NY and relocated to Amsterdam, Netherlands in 2010 to start married life with her husband. In September she wrote  I am not a Sweatshop and we’re happy to have her sharing her take on What Indie Means.

From a creative standpoint, I have always been an independent artist. Since an early age, I've always thought for myself. I never followed crowds and I am notorious for thinking well into the future. Owning my own business is a natural extension of my creativity and I get up every day to work on what I love. Being an indie artist is allowing yourself to be mentally and creatively fully expressive. It is trying something new because you can, and if it doesn't work, at least you tried. It's finding exactly what makes you tick and working on making it flourish.

Being an indie artist can quite literally mean you have a uniform of t-shirts and PJs or sweatpants. We've all been there at one point or another. It occupies your mind in a good way. When you've really got it, it makes you tingle with excitement.

For me, it's working with different material and making jewelry I love, with love. It's sitting with my pen and pad or my laptop and writing non-stop for hours on end. It's listening to music really loudly in the middle of the day and cranking out work. It's stopping to take a break when I want for as long as I want. It's working at 8 am today and starting at 3 pm tomorrow and those are both perfect hours in those moments. While I revel in the gift of being able to function as an independent artist, it is not all roses and sunshine.

Being an independent artist also means making my own schedule and sticking with it, not because someone else forces me to, but because I want to. It means that I am responsible for my output. It means I don't have protection from a mother company. I am the top and also the bottom. It means understanding my abilities and being realistic in my limitations and working within that. There's nothing easy about it; it's something I work hard at daily. Even when it seems like there's no tangible output, there is always something worthwhile happening. It means reaching higher than you might normally at a 9 to 5. It means wearing lots (and I mean lots) of hats. There will be some faking it 'til you make it, but it's all about making it. It teaches you to delegate much more the further along you go. I find that being in my third year as an official business and finishing my first year living overseas, it is fuel for a different hunger. I am so ready to succeed here.

What does indie mean to you? Share in the comments!

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Kaleigh and Emma have been best friends since meeting at the Milwaukee Ale House in ‘07. Soon enough their artistic visions merged while craft beer spilled on their receipt paper sketches.  In ’10 the duo graduated college with a film, printmaking degree and  a minor in business. FOUR14 Paperworks was born as they settled into a studio and began creating quirky prints onto greeting cards. Now they’ve ventured out of just greeting cards & into calendars, gift boxes & custom design work of all kinds.  You can befriend them on Twitter, Facebook or follow their blog.

What is your more prized creation - the coolest thing you've ever made, with your own nimble hands?

We're really proud of this years calendar which is still underway (will be released October 21st!). We've successfully combined Emma's digital designs with Kaleigh's photographic vision into something very elegant and sexy. It's a new and modern twist on the popular pinup style calendar.

What is the worst piece of business advice you've ever been given?

It's funny because nothing is coming to mind!  We are so lucky to have such supportive friends and family in our lives. Even the strangers we meet while selling our work at markets or galleries are genuinely interested in our processes and just want to support us in any way possible.

What was the biggest entrepreneurial epiphany of your career?

Funny you ask. Kaleigh actually just moved on from a 9-5 job with a production company where she worked for over 2 years. Now the goal is to focus on FOUR14 full time. She wasn't being 100% fulfilled as an independent artist with the other job but still putting in crazy amounts of overtime to make FOUR14 work. We're strong believers that everyone should, and deserves to do, what they love.

Give us your top 3 indie artisans/designers to watch.

Just three?! Living in Milwaukee is so great because there are so many talented and driven individuals. We're also lucky because the general public is very conscious about supporting local artists & designers.

I'm obsessed with Violetville Vintage and the owner, Tina Poppy's, expressive approach to online fashion. She's adorable and has really made this business work for her. Such an inspiration from a business and artistic perspective!

Dwellephant is an amazing artist and designer. No matter what he creates, from advertisements to personal work, I'm impressed and a smile forms on my face. He has such a fun and imaginative point of view that is super uplifting.

I recently got to collaborate with a handmade book artist, Sarah Heck, for a custom wedding guest book design. She's such a pleasure to work with and knows her craft very, very well. Her books are beautiful.

If you could offer one sage snippet of wisdom to aspiring designers, crafters & artisans, what would it be?

Try to market yourself while always staying true to your vision. It's really not as hard as you may think! There is a definite shift in the creative process when thinking from a business perspective, but there's nothing more rewarding when a complete stranger is amazed by something you've created. The cash reward is always a plus. too!

Photo Credits :: Four14 Paperworks

Sarah Von is a Vianza contributing columnist and interview wrangler.  If you follow her on Twitter, you’ll be privy to all sort of tweets about small business, good ideas and, um, cheese.

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