Happy business birthday to me!

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!

                               

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.

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.

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.

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!

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?

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)