Grow Your Handmade Business
By Kari Chapin · Reviewed by Jess Soutar Barron

Grow Your Handmade Business is the book to give someone who is setting out on the professional handmade journey. People who are gungho enough to pursue such a trip won’t necessarily stop long enough to buy the book themselves, but it is one they should read.

On the gift tag you might write something similar to the quote found on page 65: “Surround yourself with people who support you, people who understand the long work hours, the importance of making dreams happen, and people who share their resources and community with you.”

For all its brash American “dream this” and “visualise that” (“Dreaming big is one of the best business skills you have”, writes author Kari Chapin) it’s a humble, honest, human and very personal book. I enjoyed its morselised structure, its grown-up pragmatism and its Greek chorus of creatives who add weight to the tools and advice penned by Chapin herself.

Some of the language is suitably American OTT: “Actualise your dreams!” Chapin coaches, shamelessly calling someone a “possibilitarian”.

I know the ‘slow made’ industry in the US is far larger and the ability to ‘make it work’ far grander than in New Zealand but the rules and tools are still valuable.

The book carefully balances strategic financial forecasts with “trust your gut” mantras, and allows you, nay encourages you, to have professionals on board. But that’s scary when you’re making $5 soaps or $20 bunting strands.

I salute its acceptance of new tech, and the ability to communicate is a strong theme throughout: communicating to the world about your business; communicating with peers, associates, mentors, helpers and your creative business community; self-communication.

The book’s a little hit and miss in terms of style with one page being sanctimonious sugar and the next helpfully honest. The addition of the Creative Collective is a nice way to move it from self to a wider view point but there are perhaps too many voices and it’s hard to keep them all straight in your head.

Overall Handmade Business is reassuring. It’s a good friend, a tough mentor. It makes you tackle the age-old working in versus working on balance and that double-edged sword of success: you are no longer a potter or a knitter or a baker, you are a BUSINESS OWNER and those two things are quite different.

Bite-sized information is supported by formatting that invites you in and charming typesetting that rewards reading.

There’s a lot of probing questions in here that, if faced seriously, could leave you asking “Am I starting a business or going in to therapy?” But early on it sorts the mice from the makers and forces separation between a “sometimes profitable hobby” and a “fully fledged business.” Handmade business ventures always rely on one pivotal thing: YOU, and because of that this type of book becomes a self-help one full of: get enough sleep, know your limits, make time for yourself, be clear with boundaries.

Grow Your Handmade Business asks you to dig deep on a personal level then wrenches you, kicking and screaming, into the hard reality of financials, mission statements, boundaries and support systems – it counsels: “Saying no makes more room for saying yes,” – and in some ways lets you off life a bit so you can concentrate on your BUSINESS. After all, that’s always been the issue with ‘pin money’ – taking it seriously and forcing those around you to as well.

From page 59: “You don’t have to accept every challenge that comes along, you can skip a community obligation or two, and you don’t have to do everything all by yourself.”

Phew! Now back to reconciling the accounts.
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Jess Soutar Barron is one half of the dynamic duo behind Hawke’s Bay’s fledgling craft empire Coco and Co and the fabulous Fruit Bowl Craft Jam.

Grow Your Handmade Business is available from Bookreps New Zealand, who have a special offer just for Felt readers – purchase your copy and have it shipped for free by entering the code FELTFREE at checkout!

Craft Inc. – The Ultimate Guide to Turning Your Creative Hobby into a Successful Business
By Meg Mateo Ilasco · Reviewed by Jess Soutar Barron

Take what you love and turn it into what you do. Easy. Or is it?

There’s more to it than simply increasing rates of production. Meg Mateo Ilasco, American, arty, business minded, has penned Craft Inc. – The Ultimate Guide to Turning Your Creative Hobby into a Successful Business. It’s the book to read while you’re making the decision rather than after you’ve quit your 9 to 5 and turned your sun-porch into a studio.

Although very American, with a fair chunk requiring translation for NZ crafters, there’s a heap of useful stuff that can be used as a work book for aspiring professional makers. Bit by bit it’ll unwrap all the areas to consider before leaping in.

Your workspace is all important. Rather than a room with a view you’re asked to consider a room with a muse. A space that inspires AND lets you create unhindered. Some of the tips included seem simplistic but during this big time of change it’s the small things that tangle and it helps to have a road map. No matter how creative, makers love tick-box lists as much as the next woman.

One of the areas that really resonated for me, and what I see in the makers I work with, is turning the handmade into mass production. Mateo Ilasco gives some good tips for efficient production and again asks readers to take a reality check. The very thing that turned you on to your craft may be the very thing that’s lost when you go “into business”.

Once you’ve turned your slow-made wonders into units you then need to sell them, and that’s another hard reality. When what you love is an almost anti-economy of self-made, gifting and exchange, being faced with supply/demand graphs, ins and outs columns, profit and loss, can be a threatening turn off. Mateo Ilasco has some excellent tips for selling, whether it’s markets, shops or online. The pricing advice on page 87 is very helpful and on page 126 she provides examples of how to harness that same creativity that made the products, to sell them.

It’s a beautiful tactile book, with a generous layout and welcoming typeface, encouraging you to return again and again to its pages. Helpful, comprehensive, articulate – it inspires and gives a reality check in equal measure. It is a revised edition so some may have the 2007 incarnation, but if you are moving forward from cottage-craft to cottage-industry this is the guide book for the journey.

Jess Soutar Barron is one half of the dynamic duo behind Hawke’s Bay’s fledgling craft empire Coco and Co and the fabulous Fruit Bowl Craft Jam.