I was going to start by apologising for the
length of this blog. After all, it’s my first one and I want you to enjoy it,
not end up feeling like you’ve read an essay and are bored stiff! I’ve decided
not to say sorry though, and instead ask you to bear with me just this once! It
is long, but it gives a pretty full picture of how Hop Stitch Jump and Sock Monsters came to be, as well as a reflection of the beginning of my small
business. So here begins the baring of my soul, and a promise that future blogs
will be both less of an autobiography and more light hearted...honestly!
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| No need for winter clothes! |
So here I am, a year in and enjoying the
variety of this challenge, although there’s nothing new there. In my past life as a teacher, I was Head of
ICT in a school and every day was different.
My career was very important to me and I dedicated myself to the
children I taught. Then I became a mother.
It’s three years since I accepted that while teaching really is my
vocation, the fact is that being in a classroom caring for children largely
means working in the daytime and having somebody else care for my own small
people (we have two and are expecting our third). There are some fabulous
childcare providers out there and nurseries and childminders work so well for
so many of my friends and their families that I was genuinely surprised when I
had a constant niggle on my return to work after Baby Number 1 was born; I just
found it so hard to devote myself to my job in the same way that I’d done
before I became a Mummy, and I felt like a failure. I didn’t feel that I was
doing anything as well as I could or as well as I used to; I was spreading
myself too thinly and wasn’t able the best mother, teacher or wife that I knew
I was capable of. Something had to give.
When the school that I worked in hit a really dreadful low in staff
morale and there were a number of changes that meant going to work was harder
than ever before, the decision suddenly became much easier.
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| Our penultimate Sunday of island life. |
Giving up a career, even temporarily, is
such a big step. The thought of it must make everyone’s head spin like mine
did! How would we manage financially? Could I really care well enough for our
children that I could give them everything that they needed to be well-rounded
and confident small people? What would our family and friends think about our
decision? For us, there were other
things to consider, too. You see, we
were living overseas on the back of my job and our accommodation was also
provided by my employer, so we also had to consider whether we’d be able to
settle back into like in the UK
after five years away. Would The Husband be able to find work as easily as he’d
done before we left for warmer climes? Where would we live? Would our family
and friends still have space for us in their lives? Did we even have enough warm
clothing to survive even a British Summer never mind a British Winter?! I won’t bore you with the entire deliberation
process but suffice to say we decided that I would give my notice at work, we’d
return to England,
find a house to rent half way between our two families and give it a go. So we
packed a crate, sent all of our belongings 4500 miles on a ship and boarded a
north-bound flight. The rest, as they
say, is history.
Our first year back in the UK was
interesting, in a real “hit the ground running and get out of your laid-back
island ways” kind of way. The Husband did indeed find a job, and our family and
friends did still have time and space for us – the two great hurdles were
easier than we had expected. Once we had
been “back home” for about 15 months, Baby Number Two arrived. We now had twice as many mouths to feed and
only half the income we’d been used to, but we were managing. Our reserves had
dwindled though, and money for the extras and luxuries was a little more
difficult to come by so we decided that once I’d had a maternity period with the
new baby, I would try to find some private tuition work to top up our income
for the goodies. Times were hard for everyone though, and despite my wealth of
experience and my flexibility during evenings and weekends, tuition fees were
just too much to find for most families and interest in my sessions was low: we
decided that cutting back on spending was the way to go.
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| My first ever Sock Monster! |
As tiny as they were at the time, our
children were beginning to develop a rather full and hectic social calendar,
which was brilliant for them but added an extra burden to our budget. Quite
separately to this, Baby Number 1 and I had been playing with socks and making
all manner of creatures and on the back of this, I made a Sock Monster for her.
She loved him, I loved him and our friends seemed to, too. A few people suggested
that I make them to sell and although I didn’t see selling as an option at the
time, I did start to make them for gifts. In the first few months, the party
invitations kept rolling in for the children and a few of our friends had
babies – guess what they all received? Correct – a Sock Monster! Little by little, the requests from friends
came in when siblings also wanted a Sock Monster or they too were stuck for
present ideas. And so a monster was born! Alongside this, I’d started making a
few other little bits and bobs like hair clips and hair clip holders and name
plaques, and I realised that I would need a broader business name aside from
Sock Monsters. After much um-ing and
aah-ing, along came Hop Stitch Jump.
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| Hair clip holder |
I began trading in October 2010 and have had
the most exhilarating year. Like everyone who starts out on their own, I really
hoped that things would take off for me, but I never imagined that I would have
been kept quite as busy as I have! I can’t thank the people who have supported
me enough: everyone who has bought items I’ve made, from orders for one-off single
hair clips to corporate orders for 125 Sock Monsters, has played a part in
helping me to get on my feet and stay there, not to mention the emotional and
practical support from my family and friends! The statisticians and journalists
are so keen to remind us that it’s all too easy to fall on your behind as a new
business, and every order I’ve received has kept me from being another
statistic. The Husband has been an absolute rock. The shout of “Shift change”
when he gets home at 6.30 after a busy day at work signals the start of my
night of sewing while he takes over with the Small People and the house. His
support has been awesome during the nights he’s stayed up into the wee small
hours to help me when my back’s been up against a deadline, plus all of the
extra duties he’s taken on when I’ve worked at the weekend – juggling two
Tumble Tots sessions and two under-fives’ parties in one day is no mean feat!
There have been times when I have been busy
enough to contemplate organising daycare for the Small People and it took some
real soul searching in trying to weigh up the balance. Was having someone else care for them while I
built up my own business really any different to having someone else care for
them while I was in a secure job with the reassurance of someone else paying my
wage? The last thing I wanted was to defeat the whole object of starting Sock
Monsters and Hop Stitch Jump, and so the night shifts have continued and my Mum
has stepped into help me out during the day in the weeks when I’ve had too much
work on to be able to meet my deadlines by working in the evenings and weekends
alone. She’s been great.
Looking back over my first year running a
business (how bonkers does that sound?!), the strongest theme is my learning –
it has never stopped and every day really has been a school day for me.
Learning is not a new concept to any of us and having been a teacher in my
previous life, education has always played an enormous role in my life; I’m
just more used to being the imparter than the learner! Here is a little
snapshot of what I feel I’ve learnt. I expect that much of it is very similar
to the experiences of anyone who has dipped their toe into the pool of being
self-employed, and no doubt there is a whole lot more for me to learn.
I’ve discovered that loads of people want
to help you learn when you’re starting out. There are some really useful formal
channels such as the soon to be disbanded Business Link, which has provided me
with so much, from really important legal stuff to people to bounce ideas off
to people to have a coffee with and who made me feel that I wasn’t the only one
who needed fifty hours in a day. I think I’ve attended six or seven of their
events and have found every one so useful – I for one will be very sorry to see
the back of their public face. I never thought I would be glad of interacting
with the Tax Man, but HMRC also offers some great training and practical advice
for the self-employed. There have been some less official bodies of help, too,
including online forums, networks of people I’ve met through the Business Link
events, and advice from my family and friends, some of whom also run their own
businesses and are creative.
Most of the advice I’ve been offered has
been readily and happily accepted, but when you have a clear picture of where
you want to get and what you’ve done so far, it can be tricky to smile as you
listen to people offer you suggestions for improving what you do, albeit that
it’s all offered with the best will in the world. I can be a bit defensive if
I’m honest and friendly advice on making my work better sometimes casts a
shadow over many weeks of hard work in producing something to the point of “big
reveal.” I’ve realised that it really is hard to step back and not take things
too personally – it’s a bit like my first term in the classroom, when every
wrong answer from a student made me feel as though I wasn’t teaching well
enough and every grumble from a child who didn’t want to do the work I’d set
made me feel as though I wasn’t exciting or dynamic enough. I feel much the
same when potential customers moan about my prices or offer their idea for ways
I can improve what I do. I guess I need to “Suck it up, cupcake!” and remind
myself of another important lesson; not only will I never please all of the
people all of the time, but I didn’t set out to in the first place!
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| Superhero capes |
Having said all of that, I really do think
I must be pleasing plenty of people! Apart from the month that I shut my order
book while I worked on a massive order and then had a family holiday, I haven’t
had a week without an order for something customised, and every time I put
ready-to-post items in the online shop, they sell within a day or two. I’ve
only just started to “get” that people really do want to buy the things I make!
We’re fast approaching my second business Christmas and there are no signs of a
let up, thankfully! Orders for Sock
Monsters are coming in steadily and reading through my emails, ready-made ones
are likely to be popular. Corporate orders have been put to bed for the year (I
think!) and I can concentrate on the fun, individual monsters. I have Hop
Stitch Jump orders for a colony of capes, a herd of hoodies, and a cacophony of
clips and holders! I’m also about to launch a new range of gifts that will see
children’s drawing masterpieces transformed into useful textile keepsakes such
as aprons, napkins, shopping bags, pillowcases…I seriously can’t wait for
these, and hope they’ll be a great success!
And I think that draws me to somewhere
close to the end of this first blog! (Are you still here? Hello? Please don’t
breathe such a loud sigh of relief!) The only thing that’s left is to answer
the questions that were asked on the Sock Monsters Facebook page:
“What did you find was the biggest challenge this past year?” Definitely, juggling my time! Man, I know what it’s like to be
busy, I’ve helped to timetable a whole school of staff and students, I can
organise, but this was a whole different story! I’m not the most natural night
owl and time never stretches as far as I’d like!
“....and to balance that question, what was the high point during
the year?” Customer feedback, without a doubt!
Better than any sales figures is knowing that what you do touches people.
Earlier in the year I had an email from a customer whose son had shown an
interest in her browsing photos of Sock Monsters on Facebook – pretty
surprising really because he had a serious fear of monsters, particularly those
under his bed L Seeing an amazing
opportunity, his mum placed her order with me and the little man had his own
Sock Monster within the week. It slept with him in his bed every night and he
had no need to be afraid of night time monsters any more because he had his
very own buddy to protect him! Another little boy who lives with Autism and who
needs something comforting and reassuring in his tray at school for when the
going gets tough has a Sock Monster lurking in there – could I be any more
honoured?
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| My daily to do list! |
“This time last year...... what do you wish someone had shared with
you in a blog?” This was a really tricky one! I
wish somebody had shown me the whole of the year in video snippets so that I
could brace myself for the craziness. But really, I think I wish someone had
told me how important diary keeping is in business. I don’t mean the kind of
diary that tells me where and when I need to be each day and has a "to do" list a mile long, I mean the kind of
diary that only the meticulous can maintain, but that we all wish we did! I
have just decided that enough is enough and I have a Life Book. It rocks and it
has space for everything! I am building up to the dream of going beyond beyond
“pretty well organised” to being some kind of supreme being in the field of
record keeping! I know it won’t work for everyone, but I find it useful to have
one book that has notes of when I ordered new stock, the deadlines for big
orders, the name of the lady at the council who’s in charge of renting business
units, the hours I’ve spent working out pricing and filling in my accounts
records, conversations I’ve had with corporate customers, ideas for new
products and the name of the man on the radio who I’d like to follow on
Twitter! Everything. All in one book. I don’t dare imagine what I’d do without
it now!
“How to set-up your own business on small budgets and find the time
to do it?” I’m not sure that I’m entirely qualified
to answer the time part of this question – it’s my toughest daily challenge –
but I can give pointers for setting up on a small (or in my case, non-existent)
budget. But not today. Today I have to remember that I said I wouldn’t go on
much longer and I’ve almost written a dissertation! So another time, I promise!
This is it, the
end! The final paragraph is here! “Huzzah!” I hear you shout! All that is left
now is for me to thank you for reading this far and to promise you that my
future articles will be more focussed and much, much shorter! Oh, and I need to
thank you all. You are part of the Hop Stitch Jump and Sock Monsters team, and
in no small part. Thank you for helping me be able to spend my children’s
pre-school years with them; I love every minute with the crazy little critters!
Ooh yes, and just one more thing – if you have any feedback to share about this
blog or any aspect of Hop Stitch Jump or Sock Monsters, I’d love to hear it.
Now it’s goodnight
from me and goodnight from me!
Catherine :o)
