« Side Hustle School

#117 - Shopify Employee Manufactures Handmade Desk Accessories

2017-04-27

A couple brings their love of handmade wooden accessories, technology, and design to life with a side hustle manufacturing handmade wooden desk accessories and phone cases.

Side Hustle School features a new story EVERY DAY of someone who started a hustle without quitting their job. You’ll learn how they got the idea, how they overcame challenges along the way, and what the results are. You need a hustle!

Share: #SideHustleSchool

Shownotes: SideHustleSchool.com

Twitter: @chrisguillebeau

Instagram: @193countries

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Maybe they there what's up, welcome back money. Miss Cristel about this inside us will school, quick refresher on the benefits of aside us hustle. It's not just about making more money, even though that's awesome It's also about having a creative outlines. Some kind of work, that's different. I'm your normal day job, something you in Roy doing, but it's not just a hobby. It's also something a boost. Your confidence built security for you create a new asset for you, and I mention that, because today story hits on air one of those benefits, and it also makes something like forty thousand dollars a year in part time income. It's all about an employee who makes handmade desk accessories with his wife. Sometimes, therefore, your own daughter, slash shipping manager, their story right after this
Today, story comes from a local outta in Ottawa. Canada By day, he's the head of a partner programme, a chopper by his side herself, with runs with his wife is Madeira craft. Business designing and manufacturing handmade wooden desk accessories and found cases a local, his wife. Technology and design may have a habit of collecting office furniture after it, local craft, shows around town. They thought melting their interests and creating on products working with the manufacturer to help bring your ideas to life. To find that manufacturer they talk to other craft or, as they found on Etsy, local shows they also did a bunch of online searching ordering samples from multiple sources to gauge the quality and speed of each vendor. They wanted the products they would eventually create to have the best possible quality So there are very particular on both the design and how to items felt. You held them. In your hand, this was not a fast track project. The entire process took about six to eight months, part time. Of course,
they went through five or six federations of each item, using prototypes to see how work in real life situations and sharing them with and family who acted as beta testers. Many Original ideas got shut down when they saw the actual prototypes and they ended up with their final product line by a lot of trial and error. This allowed them to get a lot of feedback, create some personalization and make sure they were a hundred percent comfortable with what there putting out in the world, then when they were ready to go to market, they didn't start with just a few hundred pieces. They placed an order from five thousand individual items, including dusk accessories, and I found an Ipad cases, and this was, admittedly, a big gamble and an investment, but with the new shop, if I store they built and the feedback from their friends and family, they felt it was a risk, we're taking the boxes and products took over much of their house and after completing production, they work with a photographer to get really great images of those items. In fact, out of that sixty eight month process, more than two months were spent, getting the right photos and creating the right marketing materials, because
These are items that are intended to be displayed on a desk. They focused a lot on that photography and then leverage those features on their website and social media. The experiment with Facebook adds with Google Adwords, but the best experience they had was actually with targeted Instagram ads In the first year of operations, they invested about a thousand dollars in social spending, mostly for those to grant ads and they got a return on. Investment not eight times that amount. They learned from comments and likes about which posts and therefore, which items were the most popular and so overtime, focused on a campaigns that people are responding to this social media advertising. Only got the ball rolling and brought attention they were doing it also generated sales and help to move some of those boxes out of their house. Something happen at first year that made a big difference. Madeira crafts was able to sell their products on several flash sale sites. You probably seen sites like this before maybe have purchased from them, if not e commerce websites that are set up with a purpose.
Using sales and pretty much all they do is have different sales. They might have a sale going for a week. It might be going for a day in my going They run out of inventory, but the businesses that run these flash sales are in constant, of new items and new inventory, because there business model, is to recruit new customers and get them purchasing as soon as possible. So the wayward Behind the scenes of vendor, like Madeira, crafts provides the flash l site with all the product images and descriptions, then the flash sale site added to their process handles the actual check out in payment and wants to sell ends, I've been like Madeira, crafts or any of the others typically have about a week to get everything that was purchased, prepared and ship to a warehouse. Naturally, the Flash L sites purchase the items at one cost, customers and pay a higher cost, and the prophet has been split in some fashion between the flash sale site and events.
Not really Madeira Crafts operation. They were approached by one of these sites that asked them to participate. They decide to take a chance, they went for it and then, interestingly alone notice that it's a very incestuous. History, because once they were on one flash outside several others began to approach them and asked who was their products as well, so in the first year, They work with several of them, including touch of modern city, social and huckberry. If you're not familiar with these sites at all I'll make sure to like them up in the show notes, you can take a look based off that social media advertising and the flash. As well as people who just came to their website directly, Madeira Crafts profit and their second operation was about forty five thousand dollars and because a look works at shop. If I it was good opportunity for him to use his own platform, which he's passionate about while himself learning about e commerce and seeing
it's like for the other business owners who used the same service. His advice is to find a product that excites you and causes you to wake up extra early thinking about ways to share it with the world. He also says that I always think about expansion, but how more people can get their hands on your product, which is exactly what he's done through the? I shall cite this business runs in the family. Look in his wife have a four year old daughter who they already referred to as their shipping manager in us, grows up she'll see not only her parents going off to work, but how did credit something for them. Jobs as well right there at home I don't think I've mentioned flash sales at all before and if you manufacture something. This is definite something to look at. There are a lot of these sites out there somewhere, larger user base than others, of course, when it works well, your vendor. That has something that is attractive to the customers on that site, while the Good NEWS is,
get a lot of sales. All at once can definitely have a big effect and if there's any downside is that the price is going to be a lot lower than what you would normally cell on your website, because it after all, a flash sale. So I have to make sure that yours, able to get an profit to make that worth it for you, and also the customers that you get. The goal is that some of them will transfer over and become a fan of your products as well. But their first loyalty is usually to that site where they purchased from. She won't necessarily have a lot of repeat business from them. They belong to those five shall sites because they want to pay less. They want to get a discount. A bargain. So do not automatically going to be excited about buying something else from your full price, but still sometimes it works and for the right product, something like these kind of desk accessories. That alone and his wife were selling. It can be a real, at that time. As you see from this story and many others aside, hustle is more and just extra income. It's also just about building something. Apart from your day, job even if you love your job and creating an asset for yourself, Michael with
So is that you want just listen to the stories and be inspired everyday. I want to encourage you to take action inspiration into something you're building for yourself, just like you heard today, if you'd like to learn more about flash sale sites receive the kind of things that Madera Crap makes just come over to Silas will school dot com one hundred and seventeen? That's why Seven. As always, I thank you for listening. I'm critical about this. A status school.
Transcript generated on 2020-08-06.