How To Sell Your Work To Boutiques, Part 1: Getting Your Foot In the Door
Vianza
For many crafters who want to take their business to the next level, selling wholesale or consignment to brick and mortar shops is large but necessary step. Although it can be daunting, andis a financial risk, the rewards – both monetary and promotional – can be great. In this Viana article by Abby Kerr, many tips are laid out on how to approach and work with retailers, which should be added to any business plan.

Every Little Bit ~ Betz White on Zero-Waste in the Sewing Industry
Sew, Mama, Sew!
If you’re into the needle craft, sewer extraordinaire, Betz White, shares some fantastic ideas, on how to truly stay green with you craft by elminating as much waste as possible. From using digital patterns to applying no-cutting techniques, as well as upcycling household items (turn your pillow case into a nifty apron), White provides simple instructions on how to flex your creative muscle while saving a little corner of the environment.

Crafty Wonderland’s Super Colossal Spring Sale
Portland’s Art + Craft Extravaganza
Ever since our 2010 Summit of Awesome, we’ve had a love affair with everything Portland, Oregon. If you’re out that way, we implore you to stop by Crafty Wonderland’s Super Colossal Spring Sale (one-day only – May 7th) , to peruse and buy cool handmade goods, make crafts all day at the Collage table, and meet and greet several crafty authors, including Heidi Kenney, Susan Beal and Cathy Callahan.

Crafting a Career on the Road (and On Stage)
Torontoist
Life on the road in any sense can be hard, but comedian, crafter and blogger, Becky Johnson, makes it look awesome. In this Torontoist post, Johnson’s fascinating life is put in the spotlight: As a traveling comedian who started knitting, crocheting, and button-making as a part-time business, Johnson took her life on the road as an opportunity to sell her crafts, start The Sweetie Pie Press blog/shop and create Toronto’s favorite winter fair, City of Craft. She also recently got Kickstarter funding to get back on the road for an interactive crafting/blogging tour. This busy dame is definitely someone to check out.

Can Rob Kalin Scale Etsy?
Inc.com
If you sell on Etsy, you need to read this article by Max Chafkin. It’s a thought-provoking, behind the scenes look at Etsy, that includes a look at its investors, profit and where Founder, Rob Kalin, wants to take it the company as a whole. the article focuses on the main problem that plagues many business: How do you grow while thinking small?

Cathy Pitters is a crafter from Portland, OR who creates Bossa Nova Baby, a line of handcrafted clothes and accessories, and who co-organizes Crafty Wonderland, PDX’s art and craft extravaganza. Many of you may have heard her speak about how to organize a craft market at the Summit of Awesome last year or met her at the Show of Awesome, which she organized with Hello Craft as part of the Summit festivities. I first got to know Cathy in 2007 when we happened to be booth neighbors at the Renegade Craft Fair in Chicago.  I was already a fan of hers though because she was a member of PDX Supercrafty and I kept up with their website and enjoyed their book, Supercrafty.  Since meeting, I’ve had the pleasure of hanging out with Cathy in Brooklyn, Portland, Chicago and DC, where we’ve continued the tradition by being booth neighbors at Crafty Bastards the last few years.

Cathy made time for a quick chat earlier this week in the midst of final preparations for Crafty Wonderland, which will be next Saturday, May 7th.  If  you are in or near Portland you should definitely check it out!  I hope you find this little bit about Cathy inspiring. Turns out, dreams do come true!

How did you get started with crafting? And how did Bossa Nova Baby come about?
I feel like there never was a time when I wasn’t crafting! As a kid, my Mom was always making things with my sister and I. We would hand make our holiday gifts every year – candles, painted rocks, shell ash trays (!!!). So I feel like what I do for a living now is a natural progression. I really started crafting for profit shortly after my son was born in 1997. I was looking for a way to stay home with him while making some extra cash. I started making funky clothing for kids and selling them at local fairs and shops then later online. As my son got older it was a refreshing change to move away from kid’s items and start designing adult clothing and accessories. Then getting a Gocco Printer changed my life! I still sell my work online and at local shops but also travel to large craft fairs around the country. I feel so lucky to be doing what I love in a community of such amazing people!

What do you make these days?
I primarily work with my Japanese Gocco printer to create clothing and accessories which combine screen printing and embellished top-stitching. I print onto sweaters + sweatshirts and also hand make skirts that incorporate the printed designs. I also use the screen printed images on accessories like iron on patches and scissor cozies. This year I will be adding zippered pouches to the mix – I’m super excited about these!

Tell us about Crafty Wonderland.
My friend and business partner Torie Nguyen and I started Crafty Wonderland  in April of 2006 as a monthly art + crafty sale that featured 40 local vendors selling their goods in a basement rock venue called Doug Fir Lounge. We both had been selling our work around town at different events but felt like Portland was lacking a regular indoor venue. We ran the monthly show for almost three years and over that time saw a huge increase in the demand from both shoppers and vendors. In December of 2008 we made the decision to transition to a twice yearly show that would be on a much larger scale.  We now hold the sale at the Oregon Convention Center in May and December and feature over 200 vendors in 60,000 sq. feet of space! The larger venue gives us plenty of room to offer fun extras like free DIY make and take areas, donated booths for non-profits and a crafty author book signing area.

How did you decide to do a pop-up shop? And how did it go?
Last fall we were approached by the City of Portland to participate in their pop-up shop program. The city works with building owners and local designers to fill vacant storefronts downtown during the holidays. We had always dreamed of opening our own shop so we were thrilled to have the opportunity! The city subsidized part of the cost of the shop so it was a great way to test the market without a whole lot of risk. We decided to limit the shop to Portland area artists only – partly for convenience and partly because we loved the idea of a store that was entirely local. We brought together about 100 artists & crafters – most of whom were also vendors at our craft fairs. The shop opened in early November and was scheduled to run through the end of the year but the public response was so amazing that we decided to stay open and negotiated to lease the space on our own. As of now we are set to stay open through August of this year at which time we will do more negotiating and hopefully renew our lease to stay into the future. It really has been a dream come true for us!

Plenty of people indulged in unconventional behavior in the ’60s. But what Dennis Havlena did was atypical even for the hippie era. As a 20-something without much income to fund his growing interest in playing music, he took some wall paneling and a construction helmet and built a guitar. “The darn thing worked,” he recalls. “It worked pretty well.”

Since then, the now-64-year-old Northern Michigander has built, among hundreds of other scrounged-material music makers, a banjo from a tennis racket, a hammered dulcimer from metal conduit, and a Highland bagpipe from PVC pipe and upholstery vinyl. He also creates instruments of his own invention, such as one played by bopping halved golf balls like in a game of musical Whac-A-Mole. The semiretired educator’s philosophy is “as inexpensively as possible,” and he tends to use words like “stuffy” and “elitist” when describing people in thrall to more traditionally constructed instruments.

Most listeners, he figures, can’t tell the difference between something that was made cheaply but well at home and something that came from a store with a three- or four-figure price tag attached. Thus the $20 lumberyard hurdy-gurdy and the $30 cookie-tin kora – and Havlena’s dedication to finding a hardware-store or other substitute for even the least costly of components. “For instance,” he says, “if there is a ‘real’ banjo tensioner bracket that costs three bucks each, I will always go with a chunk of angle iron with a few holes drilled in it, which costs about a quarter or two and works well but isn’t as pretty.”

A couple of dollars saved isn’t much, and thrift isn’t the real heart of what Havlena does. He plays and exhibits his instruments for school kids all over Michigan. He maintains an extensive website with detailed instructions on how to build many of his creations and posts videos of them being played on YouTube, where hundreds of thousands have taken a curious click. His propane-tank Hank Drum is now manufactured and sold by a host of professional makers and played, refined, and pondered by the 150 members of the online Hank Drum Collective. One recent topic of discussion was whether the instrument’s “open source design” could or should be patented – something Havlena is too busy “diddling” over his next project to worry about.

On the phone from Cheboygan, Havlena talks about why passion doesn’t have to pay, how Google has revolutionized bagpipe-bellows research, and what happens when you upset a hurdy-gurdy guru.

Where did you learn the skills to build musical instruments?

I didn’t. I didn’t get skills anywhere. The proper answer to that question is it probably boiled down to a whole lot of trial and error – and a whole lot of error. If something didn’t work, I’d know what not to do the next time. I got interested in Irish bagpipes. I had never seen one, much less played one. The only thing I had to show me how to build a set of Irish bagpipes was an old album cover. A particular case in point, the bellows. I had no idea how big they were. I scaled it off the fella’s hand. I ended up building three different bellows before I got it right. When the internet came along, that was really a godsend. Right now you could go to Google and put in “Irish bagpipe bellows” and you’d probably be able to build them off the information you got.

Would you say there are at least certain types of instruments that anybody could make?

Oh, certainly. And that is a big thing, not only with making instruments. A big thought of mine is, people get it in their mind they can’t do something, and they can’t. For some reason, it’s mostly the ladies. For some reason, ladies think they’re not mechanically inclined. As far as I’m concerned, anybody that can handle and use a sewing machine, that “mechanically inept” argument doesn’t stand up. I’ve worked with a lot of kids through Odyssey of the Mind. A lot of them have used my stuff for projects. A lot of them didn’t know beans about music. That might be an advantage. A stuffy concert musician is bound to tell you that some of my stuff won’t work. A kid who’s not a stuffy musician who sees this on the Web page, he has every reason to believe it will work.

You told me you’ve made some enemies over the years. Instrument-industry enemies?

I don’t go out to make enemies. But for instance, the big guru in this country of hurdy-gurdies wrote me an indignant letter. He said, “How could you insinuate that you could build a hurdy-gurdy for $25?” The kits start at $600 to $700. But the guy’d never heard it. And that same hurdy-gurdy that he was talking about, over 10,000 school kids a year hear my hurdy-gurdy, and it just works wonderfully. The same thing happened with the lady that runs the Hardanger-eight-string-Norwegian-fiddle society of the world. She did not see how I could possibly convert a regular cheap fiddle into a Hardanger fiddle, which I did. People get elitist about certain things. They try to knock the simple things. They don’t want to think they’ve put a thousand bucks into something you can build for $25.

Why is it so important to make instruments by hand, rather than just buy them in a music store?

OK. (a) You’ve got a workable instrument that plays good if you do it right, if you experiment and do it right. (b) It’s super-rewarding, even a simple thing. And (c), you learn so much. And a subset of that (c) is, you make a mistake, you do it right, you won’t make that mistake again. It’s a direct involvement with the music that you end up playing. You made the instrument; you refined it; you did it inexpensively. It sounds good; it plays good; people like it. Isn’t that kinda what music’s all about? You don’t have to know how a car works to drive it. I think instruments are a lot more interesting, and there’s so much really neat stuff to discover about how music works and how instruments work.

What inspires you to invent new instruments?

You know, there’s all kinds of goofy instruments that never caught on. You go to a music museum, you can see some of these things. Walking-cane fiddles. Man, I always wanted to build one. It’s like a walking cane with a little handle and, should the mood strike you, you unscrew the handle, pull out a bow, take the cover off and you got a little soft-volume fiddle. You know, stuff like that is intriguing.

Seeing something cool and neat, like when my wife and I went to Chicago and saw the Blue Man Group, is another big impetus. I got interested in the hang drum, and it was ungodly expensive. So I thought, shortly after coming back from the Blue Man Group, Whoa, what if I take seven to eight tubes and arrange them in the same circular playing configuration of a hang drum? Would that work? And sure, it works. It’s on my Web page.

Are there projects that don’t work out?

I’ve got three or four instruments in the garage that look great, but that’s it. They didn’t sound good. The most recent flop was a version of my stringed instrument that plays like a hang drum but differs in having tuned lengths of electrical conduit in place of the strings. It didn’t work because there wasn’t enough swing distance of the lever mechanism to hit the tubing hard enough to sound it properly. At a certain point I realized it’s not worth beating a dead horse to get it to work. So not everything works, no. But that’s not a bad thing. Because you learn. You learn what not to do, you learn what to do.

Have you ever wanted to turn making instruments into a business, for instance selling the propane-tank Hank Drum you invented?

No. I worked for an old farmer, years ago, who was a fiddler. And he cautioned me. He says – and this is terrible, I hope my daughter doesn’t hear this – “If you like something, try not to make it your business. Because it’s a good chance you’ll end up not liking it.”

I find it way more rewarding inventing, building, and “perfecting” these creations than duplicating them repeatedly. Because of this stubbornness of mine, I missed out on making perhaps some serious money. I.e., there are now dozens, if not hundreds, of companies making and selling my invention. I’m fine with that. Just about every maker who sells my drums has been kind in crediting me with its invention – except one. And this one is the most successful one.

You consider your main instrument to be the old-time fiddle, but you can pretty much play anything. How’d you manage that?

Now here’s a secret: If you play two tunes on an instrument, you can fool most of the people. Like musical saw. I can play three or four tunes on it. I wouldn’t want it to be my only instrument. The bagpipe I play maybe 50 tunes, tops. A lot of instruments, like the kora – I just really love that instrument – I can’t really play anything on it. I just improvise and make nice sounds. Early on I realized what I am is a jack of a bunch of musical trades but a master of none.

You recently spent two months making a capo, which retails for $20. Was it worth the time?

There’s obviously all sorts of different people in this world, with different thoughts on the subject. I don’t know how many times I’ve been told, in a good-natured way, “You have too much time on your hands.” Which I don’t. … I maintain that if a person likes to do this, or thinks they’d like to do it but says they don’t have time, well, think a little bit: Maybe I won’t watch American Idol tonight; maybe I’ll go in the garage and see what I can do to make a banjo. There’s all sorts of spare time that people don’t think they have.

(vintage Kmart tag photo by Roadsidepictures)

“$22 for $35 worth of letterpress cards!” I get so mad when I encounter crafters selling their wares at ridiculous discounts. And recently a spate of handmade discounting schemes has popped up, making me fear the Walmartization of crafts has begun.

First up, Heartsy.me is like Groupon for handmade goods. Vendors apply to offer a deal—which must be at least 50 percent off—and the site’s members vote on which should be accepted. Selected sellers create gift certificates, which Heartsy buys off you and promotes on their site.

Quite Unique is more of a traditional wholesale situation. The site offers a daily deal poised to sell out fast—“one unique handpicked item per day at a great value.” It’s the “great value” part that smacks of big-box discounters to me. (Is craftsmanship not valuable at full price?)

And, of course, Etsy introduced coupon functionality on the site in November 2010. You pick the discount you want to offer and go hog wild.

Shoppers are primed to react to discounts. (If you’re into social history, I highly recommend Ellen Ruppel Shell’s book Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture.) But discounts are largely a phenomenon of the era of mass production—it pains me to see handmade items’ prices slashed like off-brand iPods. Will discounts boost your Etsy sales? Maybe. But I think they’ll do crafters much more harm than good in the long run, for these three reasons.

1. Discounts make you undervalue your time.
Crafters are already notorious at underselling themselves. Too often, we simply price our goods at what we consider the going rate, rather than taking into consideration the cost of materials plus the cost of your time and any overhead you have. I fully believe in making a living wage, and I believe every crafter should do the same. (If you think I sound ranty now, just read pages 27 through 30 of my book.) More than likely, you’re already selling your work for too little. If you discount it any further, you could even be losing money.

When there are dozens of people selling similar things on Etsy, you may think you have to lower your prices to compete. But I think a customer is more likely to save up to buy a pair of steampunk owl earrings that they really love for $55 than spend $5 on a pair that’s marked down from $10.

2. Discounts don’t draw the kind of customers you want to have an LTR with.
You might think a buck’s a buck, but fair-weather shoppers who only buy when it’s cheap aren’t the kind of customers you can count on. Discounts don’t create repeat customers—they only create customers who expect more sales.

If you consistently offer discounts on your handmade items, what incentive does a shopper have to ever pay full price? We need to focus on educating buyers of handmade items why our products are priced what they’re priced, and why they’re worth it. Creating personal connections with customers is what handmade is all about.

If you’re struggling to make sales, maybe you don’t have a solid idea of who your audience is yet. Are your products appealing more to college students or empty-nest moms? Spendthrift yuppies or up-and-coming country folks? When you know who your customers are, you can figure out how to best reach them, and what prices they’ll pay. Discounts won’t do that for you.

3. Discounts cheapen your brand.
Let’s face it: Most handmade goods are luxuries. They’re lovely nonessentials that people buy because they want to—whether driven by wanting to support a small business, to consume more ethically or simply to have beautiful things. When you’re a craftsperson, being the cheapest isn’t going to help your business. Making quality products—and pricing accordingly—will.

Think about it this way—do you want to be a discount store shampoo brand, selling economy-size bottles of shampoo for $3 with a 25-cent-off coupon? Strive to be Aveda: Making and selling high-quality, beautiful products that attract a clientele that doesn’t need a discount incentive to be convinced to buy from you.

Tick Tock! Crimson Clock from 1byliz

The last minute flurry of holiday activity is upon us. Don’t panic. Yes, time is short, but don’t get desperate and shower your loved ones with useless plastic and mass-produced junk. Take a deep breath and keep reading for last minute gift ideas you can still buy or even make, including a quick and easy zipper pouch project with video instruction from my favorite lady in the whole world (thanks Mom!).

You Can Still Buy Handmade

It’s true! You can buy handmade even this late in the game. Here are some suggestions:
Check your local handmade retail shops, including any holiday pop-up shops (like these in Portland, Atlanta and Providence). After a quick whip around the web along with some phone calls, here’s a list of shops that will be open either late tonight or during the day tomorrow (check their sites or call for exact hours).

Magpie in Somerville, MA
Art Star in Philadelphia, PA
Double Dutch Boutique and Red Tree and in Baltimore, MD
Young Blood Gallery in Atlanta, GA
Renegade Handmade in Chicago, IL
Fancy Tiger in Denver, CO
Schmancy in Seattle, WA
Land Gallery, Frock Boutique and Collage in Portland, OR
Rare Device in San Francisco, CA
Reform School in Los Angeles, CA

You can also try places like Whole Foods, which tend to carry lines from different crafty businesses like bodycare products from Biggs & Featherbelle or jewelry from Figs & Ginger. Check the sites of your favorite artists for a listing of retails shops that carry their products. You may be surprised and delighted by the increasing accessibility of handmade items.

Give Your Crafty Friends Patterns

I know lots of crafty people that are always looking for a new pattern to try. Patterns from .pdf downloads are a great way to handle last minute giving for this group of folks.

Crochet Handwarmer Pattern from adventuresofjr.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves Cross-stitch Pattern from My Paper Crane.

Sublime Stitching has various PDF patterns available, including this one featuring designs by Carson Ellis.

Lots to choose from on Magpie Patterns, including knitting, sewing, crochet & embroidery.

You Can Still Make Stuff

These knit envelopes look like a great project for a plane or car ride. Magpie Patterns has a bunch of patterns you could purchase as a gift or make yourself. I particularly like the Breckenridge Cowl from French Press Knits and think the “instant gratification” nature of the project sounds promising for last minute making. Lots of kids at your holiday gatherings? Marimekko has a fun star wand project that looks easy and would make cute gift toppers or festive place cards for your holiday table.

Zipper Pouch Tutorial

If you have basic sewing skills, some fabric & access to a sewing machine, here’s a quick & easy zipper pouch you can whip up in 30 minutes.

Hello Craft Presents Crafting with Mom: Quick & Easy Zipper Pouch Project.

Basic step-by-step instructions included after the jump.

Quick and Easy Zipper Pouch
Supplies used:
-fabric (we used one pattern for the inside & another for the outside)
-zipper
-fuseable fleece (optional)
-Seam-to-Seam (optional- you can use pins instead)
-scissors
-sewing machine (or needle & thread)
-iron

Instructions
Step 1: Cut fabric & fuseable fleece to desired size.
Step 2: Iron out any wrinkles.
Step 3: Adhere fuseable fleece to back of the 2 pieces of outside fabric.
Step 4: Apply Seam-to-Seam to top edge of print side on one piece of outside fabric.
Step 5: Adhere fabric to one side of zipper. If it doesn’t stick, adhere with iron. Do not iron the fuseable fleece side (it will melt).
Step 6: Apply Seam-to-Seam to top edge on print side of lining fabric.
Step 7: Adhere lining fabric to zipper on same side of the zipper teeth as the outside fabric, but to the back side of the zipper. The fuseable fleece side will be facing the wrong side of the lining.
Step 8: Draw sewing line if desired. Sew both pieces of fabric to the zipper. You’ll need to reposition the zipper pull to complete the seam. See video for specifics.
Step 9: Repeat steps 4-8, applying the 2nd piece of outside fabric & lining on other side of the zipper teeth.
Step 10: Position so outside fabric & lining pieces are matched up & facing each other. Trim excess zipper & pin if desired.
Step 11: Sew seam down one side. Sew seam down 2nd side.
Step 12: Sew bottom seam on outside fabric/fleece side.
Step 13: Sew bottom seam on lining side, leaving a gap in the middle to turn the fabric right-side-out.
Step 14: Turn fabric right side out.
Step 15: Poke out the edges with a pointed utensil (my Mom uses a hemostat or bone folder)
Step 16: Sew seam at bottom of the lining on the right side of the fabric.
Step 17: Tuck lining into bag and admire you’re awesome work.

Now, off to finish my list. Happy last minute making & shopping!

The conference, Crafting a Nation, brought together an impressive list of panelists. And while not exactly our top choices to talk about the role of craft as it pertains to the economy from the individual maker to the broader role of craft in the community and nation as a whole, it was still a strong cast of characters who spoke.

Panel topics ranged from the economy, the role of museums and collections, the DIY movement, education, history and science. A lot was covered in two days, but many topics and needed conversations were left out, fell short or even hit the dreaded third rail – mainly, what are “the kids” doing these days. I was probably the youngest in the room who stayed for the entire two days.

Several themes came out of this experience and in a few posts I hope to condense and present on the topics of youth in craft, the DIY movement, and patrons of craft for your thoughts and opinions as well as some possible suggestions to the organizers on how to make next year even better.

So stay tuned and craft on!

Step 1

I created a simple triangle design in Illustrator with the Hello Craft logo and repeated the design to fit as many flags on a single sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper.

Step 2

I exported the file from Illustrator and saved it as a .jpg. I then opened the file in the Silhouette software and scaled the file to fit on the page within the cutting guides.

Step 3

I then traced a simple triangle with the line tool in the Silhouette software and duplicated the shape to fit over each flag.

Step 4

I opened the cut style window to make sure that the cut lines were where they needed to be on the paper.

Step 5

I then sent the saved file to my inkjet printer directly from the Silhouette software.

Excuse the color, as my printer is running out of color ink, but: Printed!

Step 6

I then lined up the printed sheet on the adhesive cutting mat and loaded it into the machine.

Step 7

I lined up the mat with the guides found in the machine. Make sure you really pay attention to these lines to get the cut as close to where is should be as possible. I hit cut in the software, which sends the file to the Silhouette.

Step 8

After the machine was done cutting, I unloaded the cutting mat and pealed the little cut flags off of the adhesive cutting mat. Then using white glue, I attached two pieces together and glued them to a match that had it’s flammable head removed.

Ta Dah! Mini-Pennant Flag

Contest!

Don’t forget, we’re giving away one of these bad boys. For a chance to win, all’s you have to do is:

• Leave us a comment here.
• Follow us on Twitter and mention this contest in a mention with @hellocraft
• Friend us on Facebook and leave a comment about the contest for us there
• Stop by the Hello Craft booth (#57!) at Crafty Bastards and join our email list there for a chance to win.

That’s right! You have four chances to win! So hop to and good luck. The winner will be announced right here next week!

Only U.S. residents and only one winner per household

Here’s what your playing for:

• A Silhouette machine (a $299.99 value)
• Software for Windows XP/Vista, Mac
• Power cable, USB cable
• Two Cutting mats (one for thick media, one for thin media)
• One cutting blade
• $10 gift card to the Silhouette Online Store

If you decide to purchase a machine before October 4, use the discount code: WORLD to receive:

• $50 off (receive for $249.99)
• Two rolls of Heat transfer ($29.89 value)
• $10 Gift Card to the Silhouette Download Store(Comes in the Box)
• Cutting Blade (Comes in the Box)
• Two Cutting Mats(Comes in the Box)

All for $249.99 (A savings of $79.98)

Image by Flickr user odreiuqzide

In my mind, small business owners are like decathlon athletes. Running your own company requires an impressive cocktail of skills: creativity, resourcefulness, organization, and diligence, executed tirelessly and all at once. This is especially true for the brilliant and talented creators who hand make their own products. I’m awe struck and exhausted just thinking about it.

As the economy fell in the past few years, no one was sucker punched as hard as small businesses. And with their crucial place in the economic food chain, it’s not surprising that everyone suffered. Small businesses employ nearly 50% of all workers and are responsible for more than half of job growth in the past 20 years.

I hope to start my own business one day. When I was two years old, my babysitter told my parents that I had the attitude of a businesswoman and would become one when I grew up. Although she was probably referring to my stubbornness against sharing toys, she was right.  I’m a huge advocate for the entrepreneurial spirit and an avid supporter of unique boutique companies. As such, I was interested to hear that President Obama signed his Small Business and Credit Act into law last Monday, and eager to investigate it’s possible implications for the handmade market.

Generally speaking, the law will offer struggling entrepreneurs and small business owners a well-earned break by providing $42 billion in tax cuts and lending. The aid package includes a $30 billion Lending Fund, administered by the Treasury Department, to encourage pre-approved community banks to grant loans to small businesses. Upon the law’s enactment, thousands of small business owners who have long been awaiting loan approvals in this tough economy are expected to have money in their pockets immediately.

It will also provide $12 billion in tax relief, increase the amount of money small business owners can take out on loans, and create changes in government programs. The ultimate goal of the law is to promote hiring and growth, with a projected creation of 500,000 new jobs. And in the big, national and global picture, possibly (knock on wood) jump start re-hiring and economic recovery.

But what can this mean, specifically, for hand made entrepreneurs and their ability to maintain, grow, and experience a greater quality of life while running their own businesses? This is a breakdown of some details from the bill that could have a direct impact on the D.I.Y. economy:

•  Bigger loans: Larger lending limits permitted under the new law encourage entrepreneurs to start their new businesses now. So if you’re gearing up to launch your start-up, there’s no time like the present! The aid package expands lending limits on express loans from the US Small Business Association, which are used to process new orders, and for purchasing supplies and inventory. (In crafty language, you can take out more money to binge purchase yarn.) There are also loan limit increases for start up capital micro-loans and manufacturing related loans.

•  Tax cuts and exemptions:  The sewing machine you’ve been lusting after is now tax deductable!  Small Business owners will be able write off equipment purchases and the first $10,000 in start up capital.

•  Health Insurance : The self-employed can now deduct health insurance costs for themselves and their families as business expenses on their 2010 tax returns. According to the National Association for the Self-Employed, this could save each owner $459- $968 in tax dollars next year.

If you’d like more information, please visit some online resources I’ve listed below.

Time will tell if Obama’s new package has the swift and positive affect that is optimistically anticipated by The White House. What are your predictions or opinions? Do you think this law will impact you and your business, and if so, how?

I hope to hear from you, and see you all at Crafty Bastards this weekend!

Links:

National Association for the Self-Employed offers information on qualifying for deductable health insurance costs, as well as other resources and aid for the self-employed. www.Nase.org

U.S. Small Business Administration provides statistics, counsel, and support for Small Businesses. www.sba.gov

Click here for a very in-depth summary of the new law written by govtrack.us, an online research and tracking service for congressional news.

Targeted specifically to Etsy sellers, the Holiday Marketing Planner is a low-fi way to keep track of your holiday products, shows to apply to and important dates. Even if you are not an Etsy seller, you can still use the planner as the questions, calendars and note sections are easily interchangeable for your mode of sales.

Handmade Success’ planner, while not anything you probably haven’t thought of if you are a seasoned handmade seller, is a simple collection of the questions and lists you should think about and plan for, all in one place. The most useful section of the planner isn’t the printable calendar but the marketing questions it asks you including your press list and what items you want to list and when.

The only draw back of the planner is that it is low-fi, no fancy excel spreadsheets and documents, just a plain format you can print and sit at the kitchen table with along with a cup of coffee and fill it out.

Raleigh Denim: Handcrafted in North Carolina from David Huppert on Vimeo.

While you might not be thinking Barney’s New York, this couple grew their handmade business from apartment size to factory size all the while keeping the triple bottom line (people, planet, profit) in mind. This video is amazing and inspiring and full of handmade lessons. Take a moment to watch and learn about another side to indie business.