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Making handmade soap can be
challenging and also very fulfilling. Marketing handmade soap
can be down right daunting. After you sell a few bars to family
and friends, where do go from there? Craft fairs and Christmas
bazaars are a natural choice, though they both have very limited
seasons. If you make a commitment to a retail space, then you
are truly taking that next big step. That step however could
be financially fatal. Many crafters are not in a position to
make such large commitment, especially at the outset of their
endeavor. This is why finding a viable alternative to renting
retail space is the single most important task you will pursue
in assuring your crafting hobby turns into a successful small
business.
The great equalizer in the world
of small business is the internet, or so we were told. Yet there
are thousands of small, and large businesses alike that have
failed in the arena of ecommerce. Are there any lessons to learn
from these failures? Is it possible for a small crafter to compete
with the super retailers.
The main advantage of being
a crafter is that you posses a product that is truly unique and
it has ongoing demand from a very loyal customer base. I have
had soap buyers spend weeks to track me down, just to get a bar
of my soap that another crafter was selling at a fair. These
customers are committed to buying products from local crafters
because it helps local communities and supports local economies.
These are the types of customers that the crafter should be targeting. |
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