Turning Your Passion for Handmade Crafts Into a Business

Is creating hand-crafted patches a never-ending bliss for you? We won’t be shocked if it is. After all, it is a fun and cool way to add style to your bag or jacket, but did you know you can turn such crafts into a business? Yes, you can, and this is no hogwash.

There are stories of people who began in several ways and for different reasons. In the end, they obtained success out of their art and craft businesses. If they can weave their hand-crafts into profitable businesses, so can you. 

How? Read on to find out…

Digging Deep Into Your Passion

Your favorite TV shows, fashion lines, and drinks, why do you stick to them? They show you a relatable story. An inspiration that tippy-toes on your mind and keeps you coming back for more.

When you’re doing what you love, you won’t feel like it’s work at all as a lot of passionate small business owners would share. This is the reason you need to sort out and dig deep into the details as to why you’re passionate about your craft.

Mind-setting is the groundwork in building a business, and it starts with finding out why you love your craft so it can instill that strong motivation for entrepreneurship.

Doesn’t that connection make you feel like you belong with your favorite consumables? That feeling of belonging is the first thing to consider. Analyze the common ground between your product and its market.

In other words, build your crafts to perfection and remodel your products into what your consumer desires.  

What’s more, give your brand a unique face. If you don’t have a logo, you can create a custom business logo to help you stand out from the crowd!

Discover the Right Audience

Since it’s a business, there should be a potential market willing to pay for what you do. Before you hit the drawing board and create a million custom patches or pins, you must know who your target or potential customers are based on what you love to do. Trace your interests with the handmade crafts you have made so far. 

Does your embroidery work seem to gear towards making team patches? That means you have the opportunity to make them for schools, sports teams, or club owners. It can even go as far as targeting companies looking to improve brand awareness.

Getting Your Tools Ready

In other words, you need to prepare the basic resources you will need to mass producing your work. If you’re working on custom patches, tools like quality threads, water-soluble stabilizer, backing, needles, temporary adhesive spray, and quality scissors will come in handy. You will also need a clean space to keep the finished products and power supply for the embroidery machines. Of course, you already know this!

Now, selecting an embroidery machine depends on the niche. If you’re going to work on shirts, you’ll need a tubular sewing machine. And if you want to make embroidered patches, you need another machine for that. 

Admin and Logistics

Some crafters tend to forget these aspects, but the accounting, paperwork, and systems involved are the crucial elements that will turn your passion for crafts into an official business. Do your own research, or better yet consult other business owners to guide you on how you can make the registration process easier and other start-up paperwork.

It is a must to do the numbers of how much you’ll need to set up the business, the taxes involved, and maybe even the cost for manpower if needed.

On the other hand, it won’t hurt to create an end to end process of your business even if you have not yet recruited your first official customer.

Pricing Correctly for Profit

We’ve mentioned about doing the numbers, and even if Math is not your favorite subject, this is a necessity to ensure that you are not losing any money.

For example, on patches, usually, costs are based on a per-thousand stitch rate. This rate is then multiplied by the number of pieces. You can also add all the costs incurred, including fabric and space-time. Another way to go about it is this…

You can set an hourly rate and tell your clients how long it will take to finish the work before you begin. This will be determined according to the time the machine takes to complete the designs and the labor costs involved.

Remember, a satisfied customer is the foundation of every successful business! So make sure that your operations are streamlined to satisfy your customer’s needs quickly, efficiently, and courteously.

Marketing Your Business 

You already have that top-notch business structure, and you have identified your potential customers. Research on how you can reach them. Is social media the right marketing channel to reach them? Will word-of-mouth be a good start? Are you capable of both? Those are the questions you’ll need to answer.

Word of mouth is a good way to market a patch business. Create a customer contact database and communicate with them frequently. Happy customers can spread your work by telling other prospective clients.

Also, never underestimate the power of the internet. You’d be surprised to see how a 140-character post on social media will boost your business and bring in new clients. 

Creating Custom Designs

If you want to give customers custom designs, you may need to digitize your work. You can either purchase digitizing software and do it yourself or hire a professional. The latter is a smart choice, and rightly so. Hard work is good, but smart work is even better. 

As a startup, you need to make a good impression. And that includes understanding the need for precision and proficiency in embroidery digitization, art conversion, and patches. 

If you feel that you can’t produce your products yourself, there are companies like The/Studio that can manufacture your designs if your craft is more into creating custom patches, lapel pins, enamel pins, and other products. You can even just send us a sketch and our design team will be ready to assist you with cleaning up the details for you.