If you live in a town with a college or pro team, then there are business adventures to experience, money to be made! This is how a small incident turned into a craft business with products in 10 retail stores!
Our two oldest daughters, who I believe were around 12 and 10 at the time, were at a friend's house on the day of an FSU home football game. The friends lived near the stadium so they set up a coke and candy bar stand in their yard and made an impressive amount of money. My girls had a blast and came home exclaiming, "Next week is another home game and our friends said we could sell with them." I told them that was great but that they couldn't compete by selling the same products so they needed to come up with something different. They had a stash of sand dollars (from the FL coast) and they decided to paint them garnet and gold (FSU colors) and glue magnets to the back. Knowing that all experiences are educational I didn't dampen their enthusiasm by sharing my real feelings, to-wit: "Who in their right mind would by a fragile sand dollar on the way to a game where you are in the middle of throngs of wild and crazy fans?" It's a good thing I didn't dampen their enthusiasm because the sand dollars were a hit! What I learned was that it pays to keep your mouth shut (I'm still working on that lesson) and that FSU fans will buy ANYTHING if it has garnet and gold on it.
Side note: If you decide to make products for a team, you cannot add their logo or name w/o licensing privileges. Because licensing is costly we never included logos or the FSU name. We simply made our products garnet and gold.
The girls were out of sand dollars but ready to sell something at the next home game. At the time we were in a homeschool co-op studying American Indians. I taught the kids how to make leather and feather earrings at the last co-op and I realized that if we made the earrings garnet and gold instead of turquoise and black that they would probably sell. At this time I new very little about the wholesale/retail industry, but I was soon to learn a lot. I began by scouring Walmarts for garnet feathers, but couldn't find them. Our city (Tallahassee) at the time didn't even have a Walmart and I had to drive to Quincy. I also went to craft stores. The solution was to buy red feathers and dye them garnet in my washing machine. We began producing earrings using supplies we purchased at retail. We broke the process up into steps and paid a certain amount per step. Putting a bead on the leather strip was something even the 3 year old could do and we paid something like one penny per bead. We quickly realized that paying per hour was not economical because some children were much slower and not as ambitious or hard working as others. By paying per job the child could make as much, or as little, as they desired. The earrings sold so well that we began to expand our line. I knew how to weave ribbon into a braid so we braided garnet and gold ribbon and glued that to headbands. My husband said, "Why don't you make these so they go around your head the way the Indians wore them?" Great idea! I designed a headband that was adjustable, fit around any size head, and it had streamers of ribbon, beads and feathers hanging down in back.
A friend wore a pair of our earrings into a retail store and the cashier asked who made the earrings and how could he get in contact with us. That was the beginning of having the products in retail stores. By this time I learned that if you get a sales-tax exemption number and license you can buy products wholesale. The sales-tax exemption registration was free and the license, which allowed us to sell on city right of aways (non-permanent merchant) was only $25 or $35 per year. With the tax number and license I began ordering supplies wholesale to be delivered to my door -- no more searching for products and dying feathers! By the way, do you know how large a package is that holds 10 pounds of feathers????? It's HUGE! Once the first retail store bought our products I went to other stores showing them what we made and in no time the products were in ten stores.
Warning: If you design your own products, be aware that someone will soon steal your design and sell it as their own. There's not much you can do outside of spending lots of money and time. I was at a craft show located right next to a lady selling MY headbands. I picked one up to examine her handiwork (which was inferior, but close to my design) and as I looked at it the lady said, "I had to buy one of those at the store in order to figure out how to make it." She didn't realize she was talking to the person who designed the headband. I didn't tell her either. I went over to another vendor and shared the story with her. She said, "Honey if your product stays uniquely yours for a week, you are lucky." Someone once said that "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." I was flattered.
We learned many, many lessons from this endeavor and I'll share more in blogs to come!
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