Untitled - Indie Retail Academy

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indieretailacademy.com
twitter: @clareyuille
pinterest: @plaisir
my shop: plaisirshop.co.uk
Clare Yuille is an indie retailer, a small business blogger and an actor.
She’s big on helping creative people build businesses that make them happy.
And Mexican food.
She’d raffle her granny for a taquito.
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I’m Clare. I’m the founder of Indie Retail Academy, and I help creative
people like you sell their work to independent retailers.
I’m going to let you into a little secret. I don’t do it for the good of my
health.
I don’t do it to be nice. Or because I’m working towards my Girl Guide
badge in Advanced Helping. Or to pass the time until Midsomer Murders
comes on1.
Nah. That’s not it all. Want to know the real reason?
You’re an artist. So am I. I know that can be a damned hard thing to be.
At times, the pressure to throw it all in the bin, get a job in a call centre and
let that part of yourself drift away can be overwhelming.
In response I can only say SCREW THAT.
You’re a frikkin’ artist.
You’re plugged into something important. You conjure things up.
Whether you choose to do that through the medium of sculpture, textiles,
stationery, jewellery, prints, or any other art form is irrelevant.
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Don’t worry, I’m recording it.
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So forget drifting away. Not on my watch.
And especially not because starting and running a creative business is
challenging.
Sweetie, you’re an ARTIST.
You eat challenges for breakfast. You were made to solve problems, ask big
questions, tune into deeper meanings and notice things other people miss.
Remind you of anything? Like running your own business, perhaps?
And while we’re at it, cast your mind back over all the obstacles you’ve had
to overcome to get to where you are right now. It’s not exactly been a
breeze, has it?
You’re a marvel of natural engineering. Just like a shark2.
You’ve already got the talent, courage and determination to create a
successful business from your art. And I’m here to help.
I’m assuming:
 You make a lovely thing.
 It’s already selling pretty well.
 You’re ready to go up a gear.
Since you’re reading this, I’ll take a wild guess that you’re interested in
growing your business through selling your lovely thing to shops.
This e-course is designed to give you an understanding of how wholesale
works and how it makes you money.
Before we get to that, however, let’s take a quick look at some of the other
benefits.
Wholesale is a way of scaling your business.
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But you have cooler hair.
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That means producing larger quantities of your product, selling more in
each transaction, widening your customer base and making more money.
The wholesale business model can also make things more predictable.
When a shop places an order you’ll be able to work out how long it will take
to make those items and therefore when you’ll get paid.
When you sell directly to the public, you have to react to sales as they come
in. Wholesale lets you call the shots much more.
Another major advantage to selling your work to shops is that you’ll have
the opportunity to reach many more customers than you ever could on
your own.
When you team up with a retailer, your stuff gets promoted by their
marketing strategy as well as your own. That can hugely increase the
number of people who know about you.
For the freedom.
If you want to be your own boss and make a living from doing what you
love, wholesale could be the way to go. Sure, it’s scary when you’re just
starting out, but you’ve done scary stuff before.
Part of the fear is not understanding how the process works, and this guide
is here to make that better.
We’re going to break down the process into sections so you get a thorough
understanding of how wholesale can work for you, for the retailer and how
what you need to do to get started.
Sound good? Then let’s get to it. I’m game if you are.
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At the risk of triggering an unpleasant flashback to that time in primary
school when Mrs Wormthrapple made you stand up in front of the class
and spell “physiognomy,” let’s start with a definition.
noun the sale of goods in large quantities to a retailer.
adjective, adverb buying and selling, or concerned with
buying and selling goods in this way.
It’s not exactly titillating, I’ll grant you, but it’s a good, honest, workmanlike
kind of word.
The two things to grab onto here are large quantities and to a retailer.
Wholesale is all about bigness. We’re usually talking about selling huge
wodges of stuff when we use this word, not teeny tiny amounts. To put it in
food terms, wholesale is an enormous side of roasted hog, not a cucumber
sandwich.
If you sell your work directly to the public, you’re probably used to orders
of only one or two of each item when you make a sale.
That ain’t the case in wholesale.
Shopkeepers don’t just want a couple of your hand-knitted nose-warmers,3
we want twenty, or sixty or a hundred-and-five.
We need large quantities in order to keep serving our customers, and it’s
less expensive for us to buy a lot all at once than small amounts again and
again.
There are always exceptions, however, and it’s perfectly possible to
wholesale a single item, but in general wholesale means BIG.
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Or whatever lovely thing you make.
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The other important bit of our definition is to a retailer.
If you sell your work to a shopkeeper who intends to resell it, that’s
wholesale. Anything else, like selling on Folksy, Etsy, on your own site or at
a craft fair, is retail.
Let me put it like this.
If you sell a nosewarmer to your gran, that’s retail.
If you sell three nosewarmers to your postman, that’s retail.
If you sell seven nosewarmers to a single customer on Etsy, that’s retail.1
If you sell me twenty-four nosewarmers so I can resell them in my shop,
that’s wholesale.
Retail means selling small quantities of goods to members of the public for
their own use.
Wholesale means selling large quantities of goods to merchants for the
purpose of resale.
So now we’ve got our heads around the definition, let’s get down to the
really important stuff.
I like the way you’re thinking.
Art is all very well, but you can’t retire to Bora Bora, pay your council tax or
buy a box of Frubes with a carefully crafted objet.
Seriously, try that in the ten-items-or-less queue at Tesco and see what
happens. The slot on those card machines just isn’t big enough.
But we’ve stumbled across rule one of Indie Retail Academy here, which is:
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It’s not original, but as principles go it’s admirably succinct. And if it isn’t
already, I’d urge you to make this your number one rule too. Pronto.
Artists deserve to get paid. End of story.
As an artist you create value by conjuring up magnificent things from the
ether and using your skill, experience, energy, unique perspective and
training to make them a reality.
That’s a noble pursuit and I hope you see it as such. One of the reasons
Indie Retail Academy exists is to help you make money from your art.
If that idea makes you uncomfortable, here's what I want you to know.
Being interested in money and wanting to get paid for what you do isn’t
grasping, selling out, forgetting your roots or ANY OTHER CRAZY THING
that might be flitting across your mind.
You’re an artist. You create value. You deserve to get paid. That is all.
If you want to understand how selling your stuff to a shopkeeper leads to a
happy feeling in your tummy when you look at your bank account, the key
word is VOLUME.
We’ll go into this in depth, but here’s the short version:
To make money in retail you sell small quantities of products at a
higher price
To make money in wholesale you sell large quantities of products at a
lower price
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Yep, you read that right.
If you want to do wholesale, you’ll have to sell your work to shopkeepers
for significantly less than the retail price. Usually about half, in fact.
Hang on!
Before you fly into a rage, throw your computer out of the window and
become the subject of a class action lawsuit by injured pedestrians, let me
point out where things get good for you.
Yes, wholesale means selling your work for less per item, but it also
means selling much larger quantities of items.
The money is in the volume. You make less on each widget, but your
stockists are buying loads of widgets at once. Get it?
Looks like you might be able to buy those Frubes after all, huh?
But don’t start spending all your money on yoghurt just yet. Before we can
go hunting for the big bucks, let’s work out whether your product is retailready.
I know. Yikes. But it's going to be okay.
Oh alright, let's have one Frube each just now. Just to keep us going.
Right.
Ready?
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Okay. We’re going to do something slightly weird. Just go with it.
Let’s imagine your product is on the table in front of you. Or on the wall. Or
warming the nose of a small child who’s sitting in your lap.
We’re going to take a really close look4 at it - and only it.
Let go of any worries about its price, your production schedule, or who
nicked your egg and cress sandwich from the communal fridge even though
it was very clearly labelled.
All that stuff is floating up into the sky or down into the earth.
It’s leaving your mind and your body because you don’t need it right now.
Bye, worries.
Bye, tension headache.
See you in hell, sandwich thief.
Now that stuff has gone, we’re going to think about your eyes.
Give your eyelids a flutter.
Are they real? Seriously?
You must eat a lot of asparagus. Or whatever it is that’s good for eyelashes.
Sorry. I’m back.
So you’re breathing in and out smoothly. You’re noticing where your body
connects to the floor or your chair. You’re feeling the touch of your clothes
against your skin.5
God, I hope that kid hasn’t got a cold. If he does, you’re dealing with it. Seriously. I can
handle everything else, but not that.
5 Or not, if that’s how you roll. I mean, maybe you could throw on a pair of PJs or
something, but whatever. Maybe you do your best thinking naked. I ain’t judgin.’
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Your eyes are beginning to feel really clear and open. Energy is flowing up
through the earth, tingling all the way up your spine and into your eyes.
It feels like you can see better than you’ve been able to for ages.
And it’s taking no effort. You’re just breathing and seeing. And noticing the
sensation.
So let’s look at your product. The whole thing, including any packaging,
labels or tags.
Not as an artist.
Not as an entrepreneur.
You’re just looking. Perhaps in a way you haven’t looked at it before.
Look at the details. Take your time.
When you’re ready, answer these questions.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1. What colour is your product? Is there a name for the exact shade you’re
looking at? If not, invent one. Maybe it’s forest green, milk bottle white or
the colour of wet sand. Be as descriptive as you can. If there are lots of
colours, name them all.
2. What shape is it? Is it a regular shape like a rectangle or a circle? If not,
invent a name for the overall shape of your product.
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3. What texture is it? Smooth, rough, wooly? Where else have you felt a
texture like that? Write down what it reminds you of – as many different
things as you can.
4. Does your product have a particular smell or make a sound? Describe it.
If not, make one up. Maybe your painting smells like wet grass, or your
birthday cards sound like pennies dropping into a pool. It’s okay to feel
this is dumb. Do it anyway.
5. Imagine you’ve shrunk to the size of a pinpoint. You’ve just landed
somewhere on the surface of your product. What does the landscape look
like to you? Is it dark and overpowering? Smooth and open? Write it down.
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6. Now imagine that you’ve actually gone inside the fabric of your product.
You’re jostling up against its atoms. What’s the mood like in there? Are
those atoms ready to party? Are they calm and serene? Write it down.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Gosh, that was intense.
You might feel it was intensely stupid, but here’s my point.
I can see your lips moving so I’ll give you a second to work that out.
Hey, you think fast! I knew you were a smart cookie.
This little exercise might seem rather ridiculous to you, but I’m an actor. I
once spent four hours pretending to be a tree frog. This is actually pretty
tame for me.
The reason we did it is because sometimes when artists try to assess their
work, a lot of stuff gets in the way.
Fear, for one.
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And a misplaced 6 sense that it’s time to put your Grown-Up Serious
Business Person hat on, and become someone who’s all about the
spreadsheets.
That’s really not the case.
You always knew it, but now it’s in the front of your mind.
You just plugged into its essence. Like those blue guys in Avatar7. You and
your lovely thing are now of one mind.
So now, we’re going to look at your product again, but this time with your
business eye.
But there will be no donning of hats. We’re simply going to observe
whether the outward aspects of your product match up with its essence.
Retail-ready products have inner and outer aspects that compliment each
other. There’s no discord.
Let me show you what I mean with some examples.
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But sexy. You misplace stuff in a really hot way. Has anyone ever told you that?
I haven’t seen it. It seems icky. Is it icky? I think it’s icky.
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This is the Garden Scarf, made by Lee May Foster-Wilson of Bonbi Forest.
Below is the Cloud Brooch made by Ruth Williams and Brendan Fan of I Am
Acrylic.
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You know that thing they do in American movies, where two teenagers are
thrust into a cupboard by their friends and expected to do…something8 for
seven minutes?
Well, we’re going to do that right now, but instead of inflicting unsightly
bruises on each other’s necks we’re going to zip through the seven qualities
retail-ready products have in common.
Yeah, you keep that calm expression. I’m about to ROCK YOUR WORLD.
Retail-ready products are of the highest possible quality. It doesn’t
necessarily follow that they’re made of the fanciest materials on the planet,
however. It simply means the fabric of the object is stable and not about to
fall apart, it has intrinsic value and the finish is perfect.
These things are all true of the products made by Bonbi Forest and I Am
Acrylic. Take a look – the quality shines out of them.
I can’t actually help you with this one. As an artist, you must hold yourself
to the highest professional and personal standards and produce work that
you’re entirely proud of.
If you don’t, can’t or won’t, your work isn’t good enough to sell in a shop.
If it’s a piece of jewellery, the clasp works. If it’s a bath bomb, it fizzes when
dropped into water. If it’s a printed scarf the dye won’t run in the rain. You
get the picture.
Obviously, this can be subjective. The purpose of a painting might be to stir
the emotions of the viewer, but clearly there’s no guarantee that will
happen to everyone who casts an eye over it.
When I was sixteen, this would have involved launching into a diatribe on how the
normative value of beauty is social construction enforced by the patriarchy in order to
reproduce its own hegemony. Good times.
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Nevertheless, the painting shouldn’t crack or fade if you said it wouldn’t.
Your stuff has to do what it says on the tin, not only when it’s first bought,
but also over time where appropriate.
As a producer or manufacturer of goods, you have legal responsibilities
towards those who come into contact with them. It’s your job to know what
these requirements are, to comply with the law and to ensure your lovely
thing is not a hazard to others.
This could mean your product has to carry a warning - that it contains
small parts which represent a choking hazard to small children, for
example. It could also mean that you’re required to have your product
tested or certified in some way before it can be sold.
There are no grey areas here.
The particular legal requirements which apply will vary depending on your
type of work and where you live, but if you’re in the UK good places to start
include:
The Trading Standards Institute
The British Hallmarking Council if you work in precious metals
The Department for Business Innovation and Skills
Government Services and Information
This list is by no means exhaustive and it isn’t meant to be. Wherever you
live in the world, you have to go looking for this information and be certain
your work exceeds the minimum standards.
You may also wish to take formal advice on whether you need product
liability insurance.
Retailers can’t risk their customers getting hurt or damaged by the
products they sell. We want to see that you’ve ticked every box. In the
picture above, you can see Lee-May’s label which gives information on
what her scarf is made of and how to care for it.
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As a shopkeeper, there’s nothing worse than getting some lovely new
product in stock, putting it out on the shelves then having to write it off a
week later because the packaging rips or gets marked at the slightest
provocation.
That’s a complete waste of money.
Your packaging concept has to stand up to life in a shop and look fabulous
no matter how many people have touched it.
Where necessary, it also has to properly protect what’s inside. Cellophane
wrapping that tears easily looks shoddy, and means your lovely thing could
get damaged.
That’s just not good enough.
Again, hold yourself up to the highest standards. Look at how other artists
and big companies who make similar products package their work.
If you make jewellery, for example, think about providing gift bags or
boxes, like I Am Acrylic has with their Cloud Brooch. That’s really handy for
both retailers and customers and it makes your work look and feel even
more special.
If you read the word “branding” and suddenly started hearing a high
pitched whistling in your head that blocks out all rational thought, that’s
okay.
I SAID THAT’S OKAY. Just sit quietly for a while until the bad noise has
stopped.
We’re going to look at branding in detail in the next section. For now, we’ll
start slowly by taking a closer look at the Garden Scarf. And let’s crack open
a case of describing words while we’re at it.
Here’s how I might describe the scarf:
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Violet, floral, natural, pink, feminine, tactile, friendly, relaxed
Have another look yourself – here it is again.
Next, let’s look at Bonbi Forest’s branding.
Features of her label and logo that jump out at me are:
 Natural forms
 Relaxed, slightly undone feel
 Hand-drawn and hand-coloured lettering
 Artwork and treats sounds nice
 Warm, friendly and useful note on the label
 Label and tag are printed on high-quality card
 Environmentally friendly inks and the scarf has been fairly traded
 Colours are sophisticated and soothing
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So there’s a big overlap here between Lee-May’s product and the ideas
she’s purposefully attached to the product.
Everything’s pulling the same way. There’s no conflict between the
messages her branding is giving out and the work itself.
Polished, cohesive branding like this is what retailers want to see.
Products with good branding are easier to sell because it’s obvious who
they’re for – not only to the shopkeeper, but to the customer too.
From what we’ve written down above, what kind of person do you think
this scarf would appeal to?
How about:
 Women
 Aged from about 16 upwards
 Who’ve been known to get chilly
 Who enjoy natural forms and patterns
 Who have a feminine but sophisticated sense of style
 Who dig the fact it was made by an artist, not in a factory
 Who care whether the items they buy have been ethically produced
 Who like relaxed and playful accessories
This is only scratching the surface and there are lots of other things we
could add, but just look at what’s happened.
We’ve gone from having a target customer of women, which is roughly 3
billion people, and refined it down into a much more manageable group.
Lee-May’s branding waves a big hello to this collection of people. It helps
them to find her.
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As a side note, it’s also worth mentioning that retail-ready branding is also
unobtrusive.
Don’t slap a massive label on the front of your product. Most shopkeepers
will just peel it off and that’s rough on the nails.
It’s fine to have a tag or sticker with your name, details and website
address somewhere on your lovely thing. Just make sure it doesn’t take
attention away from the lovely thing itself.
If you can’t take a great photo of your product it’s not ready to sell to shops.
This isn’t about your photography skills. If you suck at taking pictures it’s
easy enough to learn or to find someone who knows what they’re doing.
It’s about the product itself.
Let me tell you a story. In the early days of Plaisir, we stocked a small
collection of ceramic cups.
They were kind of off-white, with smooth, tactile surfaces and no handle. If
you picked one up it felt great in your hand – pleasingly round and
comforting, with no unnecessary details.
If you held one and stared moodily out of the window, you could easily
pretend you were a Swedish detective trying to solve a series of grisly
murders.
Well, you could if you were me.
So the cups were great in person. The trouble started when we tried to take
a picture of them for our website.
Have you ever tried to take a photo of a featureless off-white cup against a
white background?
The result is so desperately boring that after the twenty-ninth try I was
ready to commit a grisly murder of my own.
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We tried coloured backgrounds and so on, but that meant it looked weird
beside the other items on the page.
Fab product, awful pictures. It was a nightmare.
You need to be able to take great photos of your work in order to sell it to
retailers.
They need great photos in order to sell it to their customers.
Photos are a big deal now. Yours have to be of the highest standard, and the
product itself must be photogenic.
You know that thing some people have? You know, that thing.
They might not be the most conventionally attractive person in the room,
but you can’t take your eyes off them.
They somehow seem to take up exactly the right amount of space.
You want to keep looking at them for a tiny bit longer than normal.
When they ask you for a pen you get flustered and accidentally ask them to
marry you.
Yeah, them.
That thing they’ve got is charisma. It’s a rather mysterious quality and it’s
hard to put one’s finger on exactly how it works9.
One explanation is that it’s a combination of personality, presence,
communication and body language. Oh, and probably pheromones too.
The irony being, of course, that if a sufficiently charismatic person asks you to put
your finger on… well, pretty much anything, you’re likely to obey in a flash. Bastards.
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Your product could do with a bit of that.
The seventh element of being retail-ready is a sort of charisma for
inanimate objects. It’s called shelf appeal.
It’s not a specific requirement, as such, more a combination of the previous
six elements.
It’s a glimmer of magic around a product that makes a customer drop the
bag of cat litter they’ve just bought, glide over, pick it up and whisper where
have you been all my life?
Retailers live for moments like this.
Sure, it makes the till ring and to us that’s a really sexy sound.
But there’s also something in there about joy.
It reminds us shopkeepers that we’re not just meat puppets who endlessly
empty and fill shelves and stockrooms. We remember why we wanted to
open a shop in the first place.
I can’t tell you how to imbue your work with shelf appeal, other than to
give yourself to the process of making and selling it.
You’re the expert on this one.
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Before we decide about this one way or another, let’s take a second to
check where you are.
Each line below is a continuum for one of the seven elements of retailreadiness we’ve just looked at. The line runs from not ready to very ready.
Consider what we’ve talked about. Then look at your product and mark its
current position on the line.
For example, if you think your product is of the highest possible quality the
line would look like this:
X
___________________________________________________________________________
Not ready
Very ready
If you think your branding could do with a bit of sprucing up, however, the
line might look like this:
______________________________________________________________________________________
X
Not ready
Very ready
Okay? Be as honest and accurate as you can.
Here we go.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1. Quality
______________________________________________________________________________________
Not ready
Very ready
2. Functionality
______________________________________________________________________________________
Not ready
Very ready
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3. Meets legal requirements
______________________________________________________________________________________
Not ready
Very ready
4. Packaging
______________________________________________________________________________________
Not ready
Very ready
5. Branding
______________________________________________________________________________________
Not ready
Very ready
6. Is it photogenic?
______________________________________________________________________________________
Not ready
Very ready
7. Shelf appeal
______________________________________________________________________________________
Not ready
Very ready
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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One more thing then it’s time for a very large gin and tonic.
Fish out your results from the first exercise we did. You know, when we got
all tantric.
We’ve now looked at your product in two ways –inside and outside.
If the outward appearance of your product is fighting with its inner
essence, your product isn’t ready to sell to shops.
Throw a bucket of water over them, distract them with a tube of Smarties
or sit both sides down and get them to talk about their feelings.
However you roll, any trace of conflict between the inner and outer aspects
of what you make must be soothed away.
Look at the scores you gave your product above. In which areas are you
less than ready?
Branding, functionality or packaging perhaps?
To get from not ready to extremely ready, something has to change.
Something needs tweaked.
To uncover it, have this kind of conversation with yourself:
 Okay, I’ve chatted to the atoms that make up my product. I know
what mood they’re in.
 I’d describe that mood as ___________________________________.
 So how can I tweak my branding so that it reflects that mood?
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Or
 Hmmm. My packaging doesn’t seem to be quite ready for retail yet.
 Gosh, I wish I had someone to ask for help. Billions of helpful little
fellows who know my product intimately, for example. They’d totally
know how to fix it.
 Hang on!
 Hey, atoms! Get over here dudes, I need your help.
 I’ve got a packaging problem here. It’s not right yet. Any suggestions
on how to bring it into line with what you guys have got going on?
You know what?
Have the gin first. It’ll make talking to your product’s atoms waaaay easier.
Don’t worry.
We’re not going to talk to your atoms, and if you want me to tweak your
features you’ll have to take me out to dinner first.
But this is important.
Starting and running a wholesale business is going to have a big effect on
you.
Since I don’t know what your circumstances are I can’t tell you exactly what
kind of effect, but rest assured that you’re going to have to work hard.
Maybe harder than you’ve ever worked before. Are you up for that?
Only you can answer that question, but here are some things to think about.
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You’re going to need:
We’re going to look at this in detail, but it’s sufficient to say that your
wholesale business stands or falls on the figures.
Two things are definite: you’ll have to do some maths and sometimes
things are going to get tight financially.
Can you cope with that? Can your family?
Do you actually know that you can produce a certain amount of your
product within a specific timeframe?
Retailers will want to know the turnaround time when they place an order,
and it’s no use if you say their delivery will arrive in a week when it’s
actually going to take you a month to make all those items.
Can you make that many and still fit in eating, sleeping, time with your
family and all your other commitments?
You’re going to be sending out lots of parcels. Any idea how much that’s
going to cost?
As we’ve talked about, whatever packaging your item is sold with needs to
stand up to being posted, unpacked, merchandised and examined by
customers.
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Secondly, you need to know how you’re going to ship a delivery without it
getting damaged. You’ll probably need things like big boxes, bubble-wrap,
jiffy bags, cellophane, polystyrene chips, labels and packing tape.
Have you got somewhere to store and use all that stuff?
Retailers need to see really good photos of your work - that means well-lit,
in colour, with a mix of white box and lifestyle shots.
The best place to put them is on your own website. Setting up your own
home on the web, with your own domain name, makes you look like a
professional outfit.
It also gives you the chance to convey a more rounded picture of who you
are to potential stockists. They can check out your blog, find out more
about you and perhaps read some glowing reviews from previous
customers. Each of these little things helps to build a bridge between you
and your target retailer.
Have you got the time and skills to create and maintain a decent website?
If not, are you willing to learn or can you afford to pay someone to do it for
you?
Approaching shopkeepers about stocking your work is a huge topic in itself
and outwith the scope of this course.
It’s absolutely crucial to your success, however.
You need to research shops, find potential stockists and know what to say
when you do get in touch.
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To increase the number of connections you make, you might also want to
consider things like exhibiting at trade shows or, eventually, even
employing a sales rep.
Shops have a whole language of their own – terms like minimum order and
net 30 days.
In order to sell to them you need to talk like them. Simple.
This is a package of information – either digital or on paper - containing the
nitty-gritty stuff a retailer needs to know in order to make a decision about
stocking your work. It should include:
A cover letter, personalised to each specific shop, which introduces
your work and pitches your products
A wholesale pricelist or linesheet.
Your terms and conditions. Do you operate on a sale or return
basis, or is it strictly wholesale (do you know the difference?) Is
payment pro-forma or 30 days? Do you have minimum orders or
quantities? Is there a carriage paid level? Are you registered for VAT?
What are your cancellation, damages and returns policies?
Your catalogue or lookbook, which contains pictures of your items.
An easy-to-use order form, which helps the retailer choose and, if
you wish, offers incentives.
31
This is a bit of a no-brainer.
You need to know what’s going on in your sector or you risk being left
behind. Staying current means you and a potential stockist are on the same
page.
In fact, if anything you should be a little bit ahead. You need to know who
your competitors are and be able to express what’s different about what
you do.
This means reading magazines, visiting trade shows and being informed
about the world you’re working in.
Have you thought about how you’ll encourage a retailer to keep ordering
your products?
Taking time to build a real relationship can mean that the orders keep
coming your way even when a retailer is cutting other suppliers.
For this to work, you need to check in with your stockists and find out
what’s happening at their end.
Can you offer exclusivity within their area, high-res photos so the retailer
doesn’t have to take his own or promotional material to go on the shelves
alongside your products? How can you contribute to their success?
32
This is going to take up a lot of your time and energy.
A LOT.
As we saw, the driving force behind wholesale is volume. Everything you
currently do gets scaled up.
More items to make, more boxes to pack, more shops to contact, more
photos to edit when it’s already 3am.
Does the idea of all this make you happy?
Does it light you up inside?
You don’t have to answer right now, but keep checking in with how you feel
about it.
33
Ah, branding.
It used to mean something unpleasant involving the hindquarters of a cow
and red hot metal, now it’s a fluid concept that strikes fear into the heart of
newly fledged entrepreneurs everywhere.
34
Branding is about ideas and desire. And desirable ideas.
If you want to sell your work, to retailers or anyone else, you need to know
about branding.
There are lots of ways to explain it. Here’s my way.
Humans live in two places.
The first is in the physical world, which is filled with physical objects like
stones and cats and melon ballers. So far, so obvious.
But humans also live in another place, and that’s inside our own heads.
Instead of physical objects, that world is filled with ideas.
So there’s a physical melon baller, which you can hold in your hand.
And there’s the idea of a melon baller, which lives in your mind.
Instead of letting people look at your stuff and come up with their own
ideas from scratch, you give them a bit of help.
Now, we can easily agree on the characteristics of the physical melon
baller. It’s got a nice yellow handle, the metal parts are all shiny and it’s
easy to use, even on melons which aren’t completely ripe.
Here, have go.
Fun, right? Melon balls are totally due a comeback.
It’s much harder, however, to say for definite what the idea of a melon
baller looks like. That’s partly because we can’t see into peoples’ heads, and
partly because each person’s ideas are shaped by their own unique
experience.
35
When Tim sees a physical melon baller, for example, he gets these kinds of
ideas in his mind:
Fussy. Tricky to use. Old fashioned. Pointless. Just cut the damn thing up
with a knife.
It’s fair to say Tim’s not a fan of melon ballers. They don’t speak to him
except in an annoying way.
To get Tim to buy a melon baller, you’d have to attach a seriously attractive
idea to it – an idea desirable enough to overcome all his current, negative
ideas about them.
When Jeremy sees a melon baller, however, he gets these ideas:
Old fashioned. Vintage. Kitsch. Nostalgic. Kitchens in the 1950s. Taking
time and care over how food looks. Playful. A tiny bit glamorous.
Wow. Jeremy’s got a really different take on the whole melon baller debate.
He quite likes them. He’s much more predisposed to buying one than Tim.
So let’s say Jeremy’s in a shop. He’s got a spare tenner in his pocket and he
sees two identical melon ballers. They’re both £9.50 and are the same in
every respect, except for their branding.
Which one will he pick?
Let’s take a look at their branding.
36
Okay, call off the dogs.
We can probably expect Jeremy to pick the first melon baller.
Why?
Because it coincides with the pictures that are already in his head. The
company which makes the first melon baller has attached these ideas to it:
Fun. Retro. Nostalgic. Quality like you got in the old days. Heritage.
Tried and tested design. Vintage.
They did this through their branding, which includes:
 a retro colour combination
 typefaces and shapes which are reminiscent of those used in the 50s
 the word original as in the original and best
 original also has connotations of heritage and longevity
 they’ve also used premium which backs up the idea of great design
 they’ve included the year they started making melon ballers, which is
actually in the fifties
This product is practically jumping up and down in front of Jeremy, begging
him to buy it.
It’s calling to him because it matches up with all the favourable ideas about
melon ballers he already has in his mind.
37
Why has Jeremy even got those ideas in his mind?
Why does he give a toss about melon ballers at all? Tim doesn’t.
The reason is that the pictures in Jeremy’s mind – his ideas about nostalgia,
fun, playfulness and so on – reflect deep emotional needs.
I know.
You wouldn’t think a melon baller could satisfy a deep emotional need but
there you go.
People don’t go around with their heads full of random ideas. There are
always reasons for the meanings and pictures we attach to things.
Maybe this is how Jeremy’s mind works:
Idea about melon baller
Deep emotional need
kitsch and quirky
need for play
need to feel unique
retro and nostalgic
need to feel safe and loved
triggered by memory of
grandmother’s kitchen
heritage and glamour
need to feel I deserve the
best
To get really shit-hot at branding your work, you need to look at the deep
emotional needs it satisfies. It won’t satisfy every need for every person,
but you should be able to narrow it down to two or three.
If you don’t know what those needs are, ask someone who loves what you
do.
38
Keep asking them until you get right down into the bedrock of why they
love it.
That’s where you’ll find the gold. Satisfy those deep needs and your
customers and stockists will come back again and again.
But back to Jeremy.
The last time we saw him, Jeremy was standing in front of a rack of melon
ballers.
One of them was leaping out at him while another model left him cold, even
though it was identical in every way.
The decision about which melon baller to get suddenly became very easy
for Jeremy - the minute he saw the packaging.
So branding is not only a way of attaching favourable ideas to your product.
It’s a way of getting their attention, of saying Hello! I’m over here! I’ve got
something that you’re really going to like, Jeremy!
Great branding is like sending up a flare.
It gets the attention of people who already have favourable ideas about
your kind of product, helps them to find you and makes their decision
about buying your stuff really easy.
But here’s the important bit.
39
That flare is not for everyone. If you try to create branding that appeals to
everyone, you end up reaching no-one.
Products that blast out hello! messages to everyone with a pulse just
become part of the noise of modern life. We tune them out.
For branding to work, you have to be really specific about who your
product says hello to.
It’s time to talk about your ideal customer.
When you’re clear about who your product is for, everything gets easier.
It’s easier to sell it to customers.
It’s easier to sell it to retailers.
The right partners become obvious.
You’ll spend less time searching for potential stockists and less time
pitching your work to retailers who aren’t interested in it.
Sound good?
Ready?
It’s niche.
Broad brush strokes are out. If you try to appeal to everyone you’ll reach
no-one.
You’ve got to get micro. That’s where the money is.
Why?
Okay.
40
They’re both landscapes, they’re both in oils and the colours, quality and
price of the pieces is the same.
One is by an artist who paints everything. She paints still lives, portraits,
seascapes, abstract art and she’ll even do you a picture of your dear
departed dog McMuffin if you want her to.
The other painting is by an artist who only does landscapes.
In fact, she’s spent twenty years painting landscapes. Sometimes she paints
the same view over and over again. She does tiny landscapes and big
landscapes, but whatever she produces, it’s always a landscape.
She’s painted so many landscapes, that she’s become known as the
Landscape Lady. That’s her thing.
Now, I’m choosing this painting for my boss’s office. She’s sent me out with
a thousand pounds and told me to come back with something she can gaze
at when things get stressful.10
I want to make the best possible choice.
Which painting am I going to buy?
Easy. The Landscape Lady is going to get my money.
Even if I know bugger all about art, which is absolutely the case, I can see
that the Landscape Lady is a specialist.
If she’s been painting the same tree and hill and bit of hedge for the past
twenty years, she’s probably got pretty good at it.
Added to that, she’s got a name for being the artist who knows about
landscapes. If you want a really special landscape painting, she’s the person
you go to.
The word is that she’d really like to gaze at the muscular form of Julian from
Accounts, but you didn’t hear that from me.
10
41
If my boss’s husband storms into her office and demands a divorce on the
grounds that she’s clearly having it off with Marco from Sales11, she’ll be
able to distract him by saying “Gosh darling, I don’t know what you’re
talking about. Did you see my new painting? It’s by the Landscape Lady.”
And he’ll know who that is.
It’s hard to get known for being really good at one particular thing when
you do…everything.
That’s not to say that the other artist has to restrain herself to a single
subject if she doesn’t want to.
She can paint any damn thing she likes in her spare time. But if she wants
to make a serious business out of her art, she’d be wise to pick one or two
subjects that she’s really good at.
The dogs, for instance.
I mean, I feel really comforted by having this portrait of McMuffin hanging
over my fireplace. Feels a bit like having him back again. It’s almost as
though that painting has somehow satisfied one of my deep emotional needs.
You know the cat’s been looking peaky lately. Chairman Meow is twenty
seven now, after all.
Perhaps when he is, ummm, no longer with us I might ask that artist to do a
painting of him for me too.
Then there are the hedgehogs, of course. One of them has a very bad cough.
Do you think she does hedgehogs?
11
And Boris who fixes the photocopier.
42
One of the best things you can do for your business is to think small and
specific.
Working out what kind of niche customer to target is not about
demographics. Knowing their age group and which newspaper they read
won’t help you sell anything.
Knowing WHY they read that newspaper and how they secretly feel about
being 37, however, is a different story.
In fact, you’re going to tell me that story right now.
Bonjour, monsieur worksheet!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Actually, you need to supply your own paper for this one.
You know what you can use? Toilet paper. The good quality stuff, though.
Double quilted.
Or, you know, any long strip of paper. I’m just trying to be helpful.
So we’re going to play a game you might remember from being a kid. It’s
that one where someone writes the beginning of a story at one end of the
paper, folds it over and passes it on.
The next person continues the story, folds it over and passes it on.
When the paper’s been all the way around the group, you unroll it and read
out the whole thing. Hilarity ensues.
Yeah, I never thought it was that funny either.
But we’re not trying to be funny.
What we’re trying to do is narrow down your target customer from every
person on the planet to something much, much more niche.
So get your long bit of paper, and at one end write this:
43
My ideal customer is a human being.
Fold it over.
Now answer these questions in turn, folding over between each one.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Is your ideal customer male or female?
What age are they?
How do they feel about being that age?
What colour of socks are they wearing right now?
Do they have children?
What colour is their hair?
Is it curly, wavy or straight?
Are they short or tall?
What did they have for breakfast this morning?
What do they do all day?
44
How do they feel about what they do all day?
If your ideal customer could pick any age and stay that age forever, which
age would they choose?
Why?
What’s their favourite drink and why?
What does your ideal customer’s living room look like?
What do they wish their living room looked like?
What’s the best possible present they could receive on their birthday?
What does your ideal customer have nightmares about?
Where do they go on holiday?
Why do they pick that place?
What’s their favourite book?
What really annoys your ideal customer?
45
What problem does your product solve for them?
How does it solve that problem?
How does your ideal customer feel about having that problem solved?
Write down a reason why your ideal customer wouldn’t immediately buy
your product.
And another one. What’s stopping them from buying it? What’s running
through their mind?
One more. What other possible objection could they have to buying your
product this very second?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
46
Tips:
 Don’t spend ages reflecting on these questions. Your first response
is usually your best one in this case.
 Answer your own questions too. Write down how your ideal
customer feels about jewellery, or what she most hates about
buying birthday cards.
 See if you can find a photo of your ideal customer. Rake around on
Pinterest or tear something out of a magazine. Stick it up in your
workspace to remind you of who you’re making things for.
 This really helps.
When you’re finished, unroll the paper.
The person described is who your branding has to say hello to.
Not anyone else, just them.
You now have much clearer ideas about visual things like the colours and
style they prefer, as well as a handle on some of their deep emotional
needs.
You’re also aware of some of the reasons why your ideal customer won’t
buy your product. This means you can work backwards to take those
objections away.
For example, if their reason not to buy is it’s too expensive, maybe it’s time
to emphasise the fact that your product will give them pleasure for years to
come.
And it’s worth pointing out that I’m not just talking about your logo here.
47
Remember that branding is about attaching an idea to your product.
You can certainly do that through things like your logo and packaging, but
it goes much further than that. It extends to the words you use to describe
the lovely thing you make, the photos you take and the kind of service you
offer.
Even the way you answer the phone.
There’s so much to say about finding and approaching potential stockists
that I can’t go into it all here. But put it this way:
When you’re looking for potential stockists, identify the retailers they’re
attracted to.
A blanket approach ain’t gonna cut it.
Get specific. Find evidence to suggest your ideal customer would really dig
this place before you even think about getting in touch.
By putting in the work now, you’re setting yourself up for an inbox full of
wholesale orders further down the line.
Sound good?
48
49
Your wholesale price is the amount you charge retailers for your work.
It's the lowest price at which you'll ever sell the lovely thing you make, but
that doesn't mean it's a painful, humiliating, welcome-to-the-workhouse
kind of price.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
Let's start with a clean slate. For the moment, forget everything you know
about pricing your work. Clear your mind.
I'll help.
Picture a perfect beach being gently washed by the tide of a lazy ocean,
leaving behind acres of smooth, golden sand untouched by human hand or
foot.
That's your mind, that is.
Don't ask me what that crab is doing there. It's probably symbolising your
insatiable desire for prawn cocktail crisps or something12.
Now, what we're going to talk about next involves maths and money.
You may or may not find that rather triggering, by which I mean you might
feel immediately overwhelmed, uncomfortable or unable to take it all in
right now.
If this is you, THAT'S OKAY.
I mean it. Hate away.
You don't have to be a mathematical or financial genius to run a kick-ass
wholesale business and take your holidays in Aspen.
In any case, we're not actually talking about you right now.
All we're doing is taking a stroll through the theory. We're just shooting the
breeze. No decisions have to be made or conclusions drawn.
12
I have that insatiable desire myself.
50
Before we get started, an important caveat. There is no perfect pricing
system and one size certainly doesn’t fit all.
To get specific advice tailored to your business, talk things over with an
accountant. Pricing is part art, part science, and they might be able to save
you a lot of headaches in the long run.
The system we're going to talk about here is one of many options, and was
originally devised by Megan Auman.
Some artists take a different route and prefer to make a clear division
between the wholesale and retail elements of their business.
That means they don't factor in costs connected to the retail side of things,
like Etsy fees, when calculating their wholesale price. They keep the two
separate.
That might be something that's helpful to you at some point, but for now
we're going to keep things simple and look at your business as a whole.
You might ultimately decide on a different method, but regardless of how
you arrive at your wholesale price, it's essential that you take the stuff
we're going to look at below into account.
It's also worth mentioning that what we're going to work out is the
wholesale price for one item.
If you make more than one kind of product, you'll need to go through this
process separately for every item in your collection.
51
It's simply the cost of all the materials you use to make each item.
To work out this figure, collect your receipts and find out what you paid for
the raw materials that make up your product.
Whether it's paper, inks, fabric, clay, canvas, silver, or wool, your lovely
thing is made from something, and you probably had to fork out some
hard-earned cash to obtain it.
Let's say you make screen prints using a gocco printing machine.
Your prints are pretty special because you use extra thick paper and three
kinds of ink. You also use three fine mesh gocco screens and six light bulbs
per design.
Your gocco machine needs crisp photocopies to burn onto the screen, so
you have to take your original drawings to the print shop before you start.
When the prints are dry you sign them, back them with stiff card, slide each
one into a biodegradable cellophane pocket and seal the whole thing with a
custom sticker.
Wow.
I'm suddenly remembering why I sell lovely things rather than make them.
From the receipts you've ferreted out of your handbag and pockets, the
cost of buying the materials for your last batch of prints broke down like
this:
52
 Paper, cut to size by you = £9.50
 3 tubes gocco ink + postage = £12
 pack of 10 gocco light bulbs + postage = £22.75
That's £2.27 per bulb and you used six, so the cost of bulbs for
this particular batch of prints = £13.65
 3 gocco screens + postage = £7.50
 Photocopies of drawings = £1.50
 100 cellophane pockets + postage = £6.21
 100 pieces of stiff card + postage = £10.29
 100 customised stickers + postage = £4.25
Added together, total cost = £64.90
You made 25 prints with these materials. If we divide £64.90 by 25 we
get the direct cost of making each one, which is £2.59
That's part one of your wholesale price. Write it down somewhere and set
it aside for now.
53
This time we're going to look at some other costs in your business. We're
interested in all the stuff you need in order to operate, but which isn't
directly required to make your lovely thing.
We're talking about things like:
 Etsy or Folksy fees
 Website hosting fees
 Paypal fees
 Cardboard boxes, bubble wrap and other packaging materials
 Rent for your studio if you have one
 Stationery
 Advertising on blogs or in magazines
 Professional fees for help from people like accountants or web
designers
 Transport to and from your studio
 Equipment like a glue gun, metal-working tools or a printing press
 Specialist design or financial software you use only for business
 Subscriptions to industry magazines
 Research materials
 Utility costs for your studio - electricity or gas, water, your phone line
and broadband
This isn't a complete list but you get the idea.
54
To squash all those costs into a single figure we can use to calculate your
wholesale price, we're going to add them up then divide the total by the
number of items you can produce in a month.
So pull out your calculator and add up all your indirect expenses for a
single month.
Now decide how many items you think you can realistically make in that
month.
If you can, look back at your records and count up how many you're
generally making in a four-week period.
Now take the first number and divide it by the second. The number sitting
on your calculator is your per-item figure for overheads.
Let's go back to pretending you're a gocco-printing whizz and walk through
that again.
55
Your overheads for the month look like this:
Etsy fees = £36
Blog advert = £25
Pack of 12 stiffened envelopes for posting out orders = £4.99
Paypal fees = £12.50
Magazine subscription = £4.50
New guillotine for cutting paper to size = £12.99
Squeegee for gocco machine + postage = £5.50
Total = £101.48
Now let's think about how many items you'll realistically be able to make
this month.
Let’s say you do two print runs of 25 each, giving a total of 50 new items.
So take your total of £101.48 and divide it by 50.
That gives a total of £2.02.
This is part two of your wholesale price.
Write it down somewhere obvious and go have a cup of tea or something.
And put some sugar in it - you've earned it.
When you're ready, we'll move on.
56
This is where lots of artists and designers shoot themselves in the foot.
Let's just say it: creative people often suck at putting a price on their work.
We can also be pretty dreadful at putting a price on our time, labour and
expertise.
Maybe it's because when you're closely connected to something it's hard to
give it a market value.
Let's pretend an eccentric millionaire takes a fancy to her and desperately
wants to add her to his "Cats of the World" menagerie.
Maybe he's been searching for a small black and white cat with a sarcastic
expression to be the centrepiece of his collection.
Look, I said he was eccentric, alright?
So he asks me how much I want for her.
Now, I know my cat of old. Her features, benefits and advantages can be
stated thus:
 Nice purr
If I was feeling particularly generous and even-handed, I'd probably admit
to the prospective buyer that she:
 Leaves disembowelled robins on the doormat.
 Often barfs up half a mouse on the kitchen floor.
 Repeatedly scratches the hell out of one particular area of wallpaper.
 Barges into the bedroom at six in the morning and squeaks in your
ear.
There's nothing I don't know about my cat,13 just as there's nothing you
don't know about your product.
Except where she's been when she comes home smelling of Gitanes, Youth Dew and
gin.
13
57
But I’d still find it hard to put a figure on what she's worth.14
When you're in a dynamic, evolving relationship with something, as you are
with your creative process and the lovely thing you make, trying to see it as
a commodity can feel unnatural.
Wrong, even.
But remember rule one of Indie Retail Academy: show us the money.
You create value. It's time to allow some of that value to come back home.
What's a reasonable wage for everything you do to run your business?
How much time do you spend working on it, anyway?
Need a quick reminder of what you do? Chances are it's all of this and
more:
• product design
• sourcing and purchase of raw materials
• prototype development
• product manufacture
• branding
• packaging design
• copy writing
• photography
• sales
• customer service
• web design
• social media marketing
• email and print marketing
Apart from that time she did that thing to my favourite boots. Or in my favourite
boots if you want to get specific. On that occasion I would have happily paid you to take
her far, far away.
14
58
• accountancy
• advertising
• inventory management and dispatch
• administration
• cleaning
• IT support (fixing your sodding printer / phone / website)
• continuing professional development
That's rather a lot, huh?
If your mind's gone blank, try this little trick to figure out what your hourly
rate currently is.
 Add up the amount you made in sales from the last month.
 Count up how many items you sold to make that amount of money.
 Work out the direct cost of making that number of items.
 Work out your monthly total for overheads
 Add your direct costs for the items you sold to your monthly
overheads.
 Subtract this figure from the amount you made in sales. This shows
how much was left over once your costs are taken care of
 Work out how many hours you spent on your business last month
 Take the figure for left-over-money and divide it by the number of
hours you worked.
59
 This figure is your current hourly rate.
For our printmaker, that looks like this:








She made £350 in sales last month
She sold 25 items to make that much money
The direct cost of making those 25 items is £64.90
We know her overheads total for last month is £101.48
Add her direct costs to the overheads: £64.90 + £101.48 = £166.38
Subtract £166.38 from the £350 she made in sales, to give £183.62
She spent 27 hours working on her business last month
So £183.62 divided by 27 gives an hourly rate of £6.80
£6.80 per hour
Shocked?
Doesn't seem very much in light of everything that's involved in running a
business, huh?
Do this revealing little calculation on your own figures and let it inform the
decision you make about your hourly rate. Here's one thing to keep in
mind:
Remember, you're not trying to be affordable here. We're not actually
thinking about your stockists and customers at all right now. They come
later.
All we're interested in at the moment is rewarding you for what you put in.
So set your rate at a figure you think is a fair reflection of your value, skill
and experience, and that's a little bit higher than what you're comfortable
with.
60
Whether that's £10, £50 or £100 an hour is entirely up to you.
Once you've settled on your hourly rate, there are a few final calculations to
do and we're done with part three.
 Work out how many hours it'll take to make the number of items you
want to sell in a month. Include not just the actual making time, but
all the hours you'll spend on the other areas of your business too.
 Multiply that number of hours by your hourly rate and you'll get a
cost for your labour for a whole month.
 Divide this figure by the number of items you're going to make in that
time. This number is part three of your wholesale price.
Imagine you're a printmaker again and let’s take a quick spin through that.
 Your decide to pay yourself for your time and labour at the rate of
£20 per hour.
 In order to make enough items and keep your business running
smoothly, you're going to spend 30 hours on your business.
 So your labour cost for the whole month is £30 x 20 hours = £600
 We'll divide that by the number of items you're going to make in that
time, which is 50, so that's 600÷50 = £12.
 So your payment for your time and labour comes in at £12 per item
61
Phew!
That was a tough one. Why don't you take yourself out for a pizza, and
don't hold back on the fancy toppings.
Go on, have those extra artichokes, you deserve them.
Now we've hit the motherlode.
Building profit into your wholesale price is crucial.
Why? Because this is the part that allows your business to grow.
What we've worked out so far is your cost price.
If we add up the three figures you wrote down at the end of each section,
we get an overall figure for how much it costs to make your lovely thing.
To put it in a more mathematical way:
direct costs per item + overheads per item + time and labour per item
= cost price per item
But that's not enough. For your business to grow you need profit.
Profit is more than just the money that's left over when your expenses are
taken care of.
Building profit into your wholesale price means that if you hit your sales
targets, you'll make more than you need to meet your basic expenses.
When you've got more money than you need, you can invest it back into
your business.
That might mean new equipment, a better work space, a research trip, an
employee, a new logo, a new website, prototypes of new products, a
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coaching session, an accountant, a PR company, a stand at a trade show or
something else entirely.
Investment allows your business to go up a gear.
It allows you to do more, be more, give more and sell more to your beloved
stockists and customers.
It also means you can do less.
Less of the stuff you hate (your accounts, cleaning, setting off for distant
craft fairs at four in the morning) and less of the stuff that exhausts you.
When your business is profitable you've got the time and space to set up
systems that take you out of the equation.
Or learning how to work some new-fangled social media site when actually
you don't give a toss and would much prefer to be at a cool artists'
convention in Berlin, making connections in person and getting inspired.
When you make a profit, you can afford the time to write a really
comprehensive FAQ page that cuts your customer service enquiries by half.
You can also either pay someone to look after your social media strategy, or
just be confident enough to say "You know what, my business is doing great
so let's not even bother with this new site right now. If it's still around in
three months, we'll think about it then."
Profit allows you to spend less time working in your business, and more
time working on your business.
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It gives you the space to take a step back from the details and look at the
big picture.
Still not convinced? Think of it this way.
You're setting things up so that future-you is well equipped to deal with the
opportunities and challenges that arrive further down the road.
In three months time, maybe your printer will finally give up the ghost.
If you build in profit now, future-you can buy another one.
This time next year, you might be invited to exhibit at a prestigious trade
show.
If you build in profit now, future-you can immediately put down the deposit
and start planning her stand.
In two years' time you might decide to overhaul your website, be accepted
to stock a major high street retailer, or want to spend six months on
sabbatical in Japan.
If you build in profit now, it'll be easier for future-you to say "Yes!" to all
those things because she's got the resources to make them happen.
That's how profit helps your business, but let's not forget what's most
important here. That's you.
Now, I don't know exactly why your started your business and what kind of
life you ultimately want to live, but let me have a go at describing what it
might look like.
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Okay, I'll just close my eyes for a second and tune into your frequency.
Hmmmmm.
Yes, the mists are clearing. Something's coming through. Here's what I'm
picking up.
When your wholesale business is fully formed and thriving, there's a
feeling of enough-ness in your life.
You always have enough money. You're prosperous and content. You're a
source of generosity and support for the people you love.
You also have enough time.
You choose what you do with your day. You can stay home with your kids,
fly to Paris with a handsome performance poet called Casimir, or spend a
week holed up in your studio working on a new product range, and your
business will still tick along very nicely.
Lastly, you have space - literally and in your head.
Your workspace or studio is clean, warm and comfortable. So is your home.
You have room to think big thoughts, to decide what happens next, to work
out what's calling out to be created. You're free.
Gosh, that was intense.
Just give me a second to come back to this reality. And a cup of tea. And
three chocolate hobnobs. Biscuits are very grounding, you know.
So was I close? Does that sound at least a little like the life you want?
Amen to that. I want it for you too. And do you know how you're going to
get there?
Every step of the way.
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So how do you work out the profit part of your wholesale price?
Easy.
For now, all you have to do is pick a figure.
You can decide to make it a percentage of the cost price or simply an
amount of your choosing.
We're going to revisit this later and do some fine-tuning, so for now it's fine
to choose a profit figure that feels about right.
But keep in mind everything we just talked about, okay?
Let's go back to our printmaker and work out her profit figure.
The three amounts we've calculated for her so far are:
Direct cost per item : £2.59
Overheads per item: £2.02
Payment for time and labour per item: £12
If we add these up we get her cost price, which is £16.61
For now, this printmaker decides to make her profit figure 50% of the cost
price.
So £16.61 ÷ 2 = £8.30 per item
Picked your own profit figure?
Great. That's part four of your wholesale price.
The moment has finally arrived.
Perhaps you thought this day would never come, but you and your
calculator have had this date with destiny from the start.
You're about to meet your tentative wholesale price.
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I know, I'm shaking too.
It's simple. All you have to do is add up the four figures you just worked
out.
To put it in way mathematicians would approve of, it looks like this:
direct costs per item + overheads per item + time and labour per item
+ profit per item
= wholesale price per item
Go on. Grasp the device in your trembling hands and do the sum you were
always meant to do.
I'll join you by working out our printmaker's wholesale price. It looks like
this:
£2.59 + £2.02 + £12 + £8.30 = £24.91 is her wholesale price per item
Got it?
Write down your figure. Put down the pen.
Now try to collect the scattered fragments of your consciousness. Maybe
have a jammy dodger. They always help un-blow my mind.
And by the way, very good work.
Your wholesale price is nothing less than the rock your business is built on.
It's the minimum amount you'll ever part with your work for. Set it too low
and your business will slowly suffocate under the weight of your costs and
expenses, no matter how many stockists you have.
Set it too high and retailers will think there's no opportunity for them to
make money from selling your product, regardless of how amazing it is.
You literally can't afford to get your wholesale price wrong. It's that
important.
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Now, the wholesale price you wrote down a moment ago isn't exactly solid.
It's an educated guess.
You're reasonably certain about the first three parts - direct costs,
overheads and labour - but you pretty much plucked your profit figure out
the air.
Or, you know, someone else. He just happened to pop into my mind. For no
reason.
Gosh, it's hot in here, isn't it?
Before we get into that, however, let's talk about how your wholesale price
gets magically transmuted into the price customers pay in a shop.
Here's how it works.
When you sell your lovely thing to a shop, the retailer pays you the
wholesale price.
They then need to work out the retail price of your product, which is the
amount they charge their customers.
To get this figure, the shopkeeper multiplies your wholesale price by at
least 2.
Like this:
wholesale price x 2 = basic retail price
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If we circle back to our printmaker again, that would mean her basic retail
price looks like this:
£24.91 x 2 = £49.82 is the basic retail price
Those figures are a bit untidy, so let's round them off and say that her
tentative prices for this particular print are £25 at wholesale and £50 at
retail.
Do this sum to work out your own retail price and write it down.
In reality, many shopkeepers will multiply your wholesale price by more
than 2 to arrive at their retail price. They might multiply it by 2.5, 3, or even
higher if they think their market can sustain it.
So now you've got that idea under your belt, and before we move on to
refining your prices, let's talk about the shadowy world of undercutting.
You see, what some artists and designers don't realise is that when you
start selling your work to shops you change the basic fabric of your
business.
This is in part because you start serving a whole new type of customer your stockists.
Now, most entrepreneurs would agree that making a habit of screwing over
your customers isn't exactly the route to success, riches and your picture
on the cover of Time magazine.15
Wholesale is a business-to-business process. It all happens behind the
scenes, away from the eyes of the wider public.
That can give some artists and designers the feeling that their stockists
aren't actually proper customers at all.
15
Slime magazine, on the other hand, would welcome you with open arms.
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This is extremely not the case.
Let's say you make greetings cards.
If an ordinary Joe buys your work directly from you, he'll probably spend
about £3 in a single transaction. Maybe £9 if he pushes the boat out and
buys three cards.
And let's say he loves your work so much that he only ever buys his cards
from you. If he buys 20 cards over the course of a year, that adds up to £60.
Now let's say that Joe sends one of your cards to his mate Steve for his
birthday.
Joe's a devoted fan of your work, but it doesn't do much for Steve. He thinks
it's alright, but it's not really his kind of thing.
That's okay though.
Everyone's entitled to their opinion. It's the thought that counts, right?
So far, so good. Now let's look at the same situation, but replace Joe with
one of your wholesale stockists.
Retailers don't just want one or two cards, we want loads.
In a single transaction, we'll often spend significantly upwards of £100,
especially if you specify a minimum order amount.
So across the course of a year, a stockist might spend £1000 on your cards,
or even more. We're talking pretty big numbers here.
And let's think about risk.
As we saw, if Steve doesn't like the card Joe sends him, the consequences
aren't particularly dire.
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If, however, a stockist spends a whack of money on your cards and their
customers don't like them, the consequences can be severe.
Retailers have to speculate to accumulate, so if your cards don't sell there's
an immediate problem.
At best, it's an expensive mistake. Some shops will be able to absorb the
loss and move on. For a business that's already on a knife-edge, however,
buying the wrong products can lead to disaster.
The point is that your stockists are valuable assets.
We spend more with you in each transaction, and more across the course of
the year, than your retail customers. We're pretty loyal too. As long as your
stuff keeps selling, and you keep looking after us, we're likely to stick with
you.
When we make an order we're essentially gambling that our own
customers will like your work enough to buy it.
Buying stock is always a risk, but if a retailer is willing to place an order, it's
because we can see the value of what you do and are excited about sharing
it.
None of this makes us more important than your retail customers, of
course, but it's important to understand that your stockists are customers
too.
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We're also your allies and champions. As partners in your success, we
deserve your professionalism and respect.
Undercutting happens when an artist or designer sells their work direct to
the public for less than their stockists are able to charge.
This means they're selling their product to retailers at a particular
wholesale price, but selling the same products through their website, on
Etsy, Folksy or at craft fairs for less than double that wholesale price.
Want a quick example?
Pretend I'm buying your widgets for a wholesale price of £5. The very least
I can afford to sell them for in my own shop is £10.
But, hang on. You're selling the same widgets on Etsy for £6.50.
You, my friend, are an undercutter.
Why do shopkeepers get cheesed off about this? Well, it's pretty simple.
You're trying to have your cake and eat it.
Undercutters want the large sales and increased exposure that comes with
wholesale, but also want to maximise turnover through their own retail
channels by offering their work at an artificially low price.
Stockists can't possibly compete with that.
And to be honest, we don't want to.
If it becomes clear that a supplier is undercutting them, most shopkeepers
will immediately stop working with them.
Undercutting isn't cool and it isn't fair. It's also incredibly unprofessional.
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Want to make sure you don't undercut your stockists? It's pretty easy.
When you sell your work directly to the public, don't charge less than
double your wholesale price.
That's it.
Does this mean that you might have to increase your Etsy or Folksy prices
when you start selling your work to shops?
Yep.
How about the prices on your own website? And the prices you charge at
craft fairs. Do they have to go up too?
They sure do. If your current retail prices aren't at least double your
wholesale price, they'll have to go up when you start selling wholesale.
Some artists find this unsettling.
Increase my retail prices? But my Etsy sales will totally drop off!
I make a large proportion of my income from craft fairs - if my prices go up,
my customers will abandon me!
People will think I'm a money-grabber!
These worries are understandable, but they're based in the idea that what
you sell, how you sell it and the people you sell it to are all fixed, eternal
things. They're not.
Your business is an evolving entity. It changes over time.
Sure, if you put your retail prices up, a few of your current customers may
disappear. That's okay.
Why?
Well, for one thing, it's extremely hard to build a thriving business on
customers who are that sensitive to price.
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I mean, come on.
Do you actually want to offer your stuff to people who look at it and go
"£25 for this! Is she kidding? If it was £10 I might consider it, but it's not
worth that much."
They'll never be loyal to you, will remain stubbornly unimpressed no
matter what you do, and will complain vociferously about your product,
service, website, packaging and dress sense given the slightest provocation.
In short, they're nothing but trouble.
The kind of customer you do want says things like "£25 for this! I'd pay ten
times as much! Just look at all the work that's gone into it. Unbelievable.
Where's my credit card?"
For your business to thrive, you need customers who get you.
People who are so in love with your talent, skill and unique point of view
that they'll buy pretty much anything you make, regardless of how much it
costs.
Customers like that aren't going to be scared off by small, or even large,
price increases. If they want your stuff, they'll find a way to get it.
Remember those?
That makes you literally valuable to them. As long as you keep serving up
that value, they're not going anywhere.
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When you're starting out, it's easy to feel that the first type of customer is
all you've got. That's not the case, though. You've got both kinds. Every
business has.
And do you know the best way to sort the wheat from the chaff?
Put your prices up. Confidently.
The good ones will stick with you, the less good ones will fall away.
You'll also become visible to a whole new type of customer - the ones for
whom your work has been far too inexpensive up to now.
There's a wider point here, and it's about being prepared for change.
When you start selling your work to shops, the winds of change are going
to whistle all the way through your business - maybe even into places you
didn't expect, like your retail pricing.
Make sure you've got your thermals on.
Now let's explore a little side issue.
As I said, your stockists may decide to multiply your wholesale price by
more than 2 - perhaps 2.3, 2.5 or even more. That means that your product
may ultimately be available from different stockists for a range of retail
prices.
If you're worrying about this variation, don't.
Unless it's something you feel strongly about, you don't have to enforce a
single retail price on your stockists. That's the quick route to a migraine.
Instead, I'd suggest you take the view that once a stockist buys your work,
it's theirs. Whatever retail price they choose to sell it at is up to them.
You can be pretty certain, however, that the retail price they settle on is
highly unlikely to be anything less than double your wholesale price.
That's the baseline. In fact, it's your recommended retail price, or your RRP.
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As long as you sell your work directly to the public for nothing less than
your RRP, your stockists won't get cheesed off. Or en fromage, if you want
to get continental about it.
Your conscience is clear, your ethics are pure, and you can sleep the sleep
of the just.
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Okay. We're not going to need the services of Mr Calculator this time, for
the moment, at least.
It's time to do some (purposeful) mucking about on the internet!
So here's what's going to happen.
I want you to go hunting for your competition. Not so you can print out
their photograph and use it to line your guinea pig's hutch, but to gather
some cold, hard facts.
We're going to go on a intelligence-gathering mission that will help you
refine your wholesale price and get a fresh insight into the mind of both
your customer and potential stockists.
So get a pen and some provisions. I find a jar of smooth peanut butter and a
spoon are useful companions to any kind of internet-based research, but
you may have your own predilections.
Start off by thinking about your own product.
In the space, write down its name, rough retail price and a list of its
qualities and features.
If you're a jeweller, it might look like this:
Oak leaf charm bracelet
Rough retail price: £90
Qualities and features:
handmade
two sterling silver leaf charms
waxed cotton braid
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adjustable knots
option to personalise with two initials per leaf
packaged in tissue paper with custom sticker
As you can see, we're going for a cold and unemotional description here.
Think Data from Star Trek. Or the scary replicant from Blade Runner. Or
the Terminator.16 Think about how they'd list the qualities and features of
your work.
Don't get tied up in this. Write down as many features and benefits as you
can, then move on.
Product name:
Rough retail price:
Materials used:
Qualities + Features include
Look, I grew up in the eighties and nineties, okay? If these robot references mean
nothing to you then feel free to substitute a particularly emotionless Pokémon or
something.
16
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In the next bit we're going to look at your competitors.
You're probably already aware of a few artists and designers who make
your kind of lovely thing. Go look at their websites.
If you're on Etsy, Folksy or any other handmade marketplace, do a search
for your specific type of item.
Use the worksheet below to write down what you discover.
Next, move on to the wider world. Pick a couple of major high street
retailers and find out if they stock something similar to your product.
Look at some independent shops too, and online-only retailers.
What we want to know is:
 Who else is selling your type of lovely thing?
 What's their retail price?
 Where is it being sold?
Etsy, Folksy, Dawanda, on their own website? If it's in a bricks-andmortar shop, is it a high street chain, an independent retailer, a
gallery or a museum shop?
 What are this item's qualities and features?
What kind of materials is it made from, does it come gift-wrapped,
can it be personalised? Is the design intricate or simple, is it ecofriendly or cruelty-free? Is it hand-made or mass-produced? Is there
a choice of colours? You get the picture.
 How does it compare to your product?
A simple plus or minus sign is all we need here. If the item you're
looking at has more qualities and features than your own, put a plus
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in the box. If it has fewer, put a minus. This is going to be subjective,
but try to think like a customer and be as honest as you can.
 What's the standard postage cost for delivery in your country?
This tells us a couple of things, such as how heavy, how fragile, and
how urgently customers might need your kind of product.
Okay.
Before you get started, I want to tell you something important.
I'm not asking you to decide whether your competitors' products are better
or worse than your own.
We're just trying to get a feel for where they fit into the continuum of oak
leaf charm bracelets, baby blankets or tote bags which are available in the
world.
And if this exercise makes you feel a bit crap, that's okay.
Working out where we fit in among our peers isn't renowned for being a
particularly delightful experience.
It's a bit like that moment when you've smoothed warm wax onto your shin
and now there's nothing left to do but rip it off. You either have to get on
with it or go through life with your trousers, random bits of furniture and
confused bees stuck to your leg.
I think you can do this, even if it does sting a little.
Ready to test that theory?
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Print this out for every competitor you research -
Product name:
Retail Price:
Seller name:
Where is it being sold?
Qualities + features:
How does it compare to your product?
Standard postage cost:
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+
or
-
When you've completed your eggnog-fuelled-spy-a-thon 17 information
gathering process, it's time to draw some conclusions.
The main thing we want to know is your whether your tentative retail price
is in generally the right place.
We can tell this by looking at the range of retail prices you wrote down for
similar products and noticing where your price fits in.
If your retail price is at the lower end of the range some explanations
could be:
 You’ve sensed the need for a simpler, more streamlined version of
this kind of item and created something that's appealing but which
comes without unnecessary frills
 You use less expensive materials than other artists
 Your design is less intricate, or it takes less time to make
 Your wholesale price is off. Maybe you're not paying yourself enough
for your time and labour, you haven't accounted for all your direct
costs and overheads per item or you haven't built in enough profit
A lower-end retail price is theoretically good news because it means
retailers can make a significant margin on your product, and you can too
when you sell it direct to the public.
Nine times out of ten, however, a retail price that's significantly lower than
the competition will be the result of a mistake or an omission when you
were calculating your wholesale price.
17
Or you could just have a Ribena. You choose.
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If you're certain your wholesale price, and by extension your retail price, is
solid, decide whether you can bump up your hourly rate or profit figure.
Remember the first rule of Indie Retail Academy.18
Even if you feel you're being fair to yourself and your business, perhaps
you could stand to be a nadge more generous.
If your retail price is at the high end of the range, investigate why.
Maybe it's because:
 You make the premium version of this item, using only the highest
quality materials
 Extra stuff comes with your product, like high-end gift wrapping or
personalisation
 It takes you a long time to make each product
 Your wholesale price is off. Maybe you're paying too much for your
raw materials, your overheads are astronomical or your profit figure
is unrealistic
A retail price at the high end of the range isn't a bad thing.
If your product is truly premium, if it scintillates with luxury and is the
apogee of craftsmanship, there are customers and stockists out there who'll
want to buy it.
You do have a problem, however, if your item is lovely, desirable and
appeals to a customer on a median income, but comes with a retail price
that only Russian oligarchs could afford.
It's show us the money. Or if you prefer your mottoes a little less influenced by movies
starring Tom Cruise, artists deserve to get paid.
18
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Go back through your receipts and see if there's any way to reduce your
direct costs.
Maybe you can buy your raw materials in bulk or find a single supplier so
you don't have to pay more than once for shipping.
If it's your overheads that are causing the problem, shop around for better
deals.
Switch your broadband supplier, find a less expensive packaging solution
or start walking to your studio instead of taking the bus.
Once you've exhausted those avenues, look at your hourly rate and profit
figure.
We might be living in a time of austerity, but don't immediately jump to
making savage cuts unless they're warranted.
The same goes for your profit.
But if your hourly rate and profit figure are justified and sustainable at this
stage in your business, leave them alone.
Reduce your costs in other ways. If push comes to shove, scrap your
current product and design a new one that allows you to make what you
need to make, and more.
You certainly wouldn't be the first artist to go back to the drawing board,
and painful though it may be, you might be glad you did.
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Sweetie, you have done SO WELL.
You are seriously kicking ass here. Look at all the stuff you now know about
your product, your pricing and the marketplace you’re operating in.
Let’s pull it all together.
You know how wholesale works.
You know what retailers are looking for.
You know who your ideal customer is.
You know what problems your product solves for your ideal customer.
You know how to make your product wave hello to that customer.
You know your wholesale price.
You know your basic (or recommended) retail price.
You know where this price places you in relation to your competitors.
You know how to think like a buyer.
If there are adjustments and refinements to be made, you go ahead and
make ‘em. You know what to do.
The point of doing all this research is so you that you can position your
product in the marketplace with confidence.
You’re doing it in a considered, thought-about way, rather than just
conjuring up a price and hoping for the best.
Two things to keep in mind:
 How do I want to be perceived by my ideal customer?
 What value would my ideal customer place on this item?
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For any particular item, products with prices at the high end of the range
are usually associated with the finest craftsmanship, luxury and the best
possible quality.
Items at the lower end of the range are seen as the no-frills, basic or budget
options.
Where do you want to position yourself on this scale? Where are you most
visible to your ideal customer?
Secondly, remember it’s not you who’s buying this item, it’s your ideal
customer.
If your work meets the high standards you’ve set yourself and fills your
customer’s deep emotional needs, you don’t have to feel weird about asking
them to pay for it – even if that price feels high to you.
As long as you’ve done your homework, you can be pretty sure that your
ideal customer thinks you’re worth it.
And you should too.
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Sale or return, or consignment, is the practice of loaning your work to a
stockist. No money changes hands at the time of the loan.
If your items sell, you get a percentage of the retail price – usually a split of
around 50/50 or 60/40 in your favour.
I’m certain you spotted the fatal flaw in that sentence.
It’s the word IF.
There’s no guarantee your work will sell. If it doesn’t, you get nothing.
When things do sell, you only get paid for those items. So it’s perfectly
possible to hand over stock worth £100 and only get £20 of it back at the
end of the month.
Or at the end of three months. Or six.
Other potential problems include:





Your items being stolen
The shopkeeper forgetting to pay you, or paying late
The shop going bust when they owe you money
The shop going bust and not giving your stuff back
Your items getting damaged while on display
The problem with sale or return is that all the risk stays with you, the artist.
You’re taking it on trust that your goods will sell and that the shopkeeper
will deal with you fairly.
The retailer is in the sweet position of getting stock to sell with no initial
outlay and, potentially, a large measure of control over when and how they
pay you.
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The attraction for artists is the idea of getting your foot in the door.
At least your work will have the opportunity to sell, and if it does it could
be the start of a mutually beneficial relationship with the retailer.
That’s fair enough.
To be clear, I’m not saying that sale or return is all bad. We work that way
with some suppliers for our own shop.
In some cases, like high-end galleries specialising in fine art or
photography, sale or return is standard practice.
But for many artists, having work scattered all over the place and not
knowing if or when you’ll get paid is less than ideal.
To balance this out, most people rely on a sale or return agreement. This is
a document which sets out the conditions under which you’re offering your
work and lists:

the items you’ve supplied, their quantities, descriptions and selling
price

how long you’ve agreed to supply the goods for

who’s responsible for insuring the goods

what happens if your items are stolen or damaged while at the shop

how, when and how much you want to be paid for each item

a statement of ownership, which says the goods remain yours until
you’re paid for them
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Regardless of how scrupulous your consignment agreement is or how
trust-worthy your stockists, that’s a lot of caveats and small print.
It’s also a lot of waiting and hoping that your stuff sells and that nothing
goes wrong.
So let me ask you this:
This way of doing things is simply called wholesale.
If the retailer wants to stock your work, they either pay for it before it
leaves your sight, or within an agreed time frame of your choosing – usually
30 days after delivery.
Doesn’t that sound pretty good?
Compared to sale or return, wholesale is clean and simple.
If you set a decent minimum order, you’ll get paid in big blocks of cash
rather than dribs and drabs as things sell.
And once you’ve waved it off at the post office, you can strike each order
from your to-do list. There’s no checking in to see if your stuff has sold.
That ain’t your problem – it’s the shopkeeper’s.
Only offering wholesale is also a statement of confidence and strength.
You’re saying your stuff is worth the investment. No half measures for you.
Now it’s time for some caveats and addendums of my own. It’s a horses for
courses situation, and sale or return might work for you, particularly if:

your items have a high selling price and stocking one or two would
involve a very large outlay for the retailer
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
you’re in an early, fact-finding stage. If you’re not sure if you’ve got a
business or a hobby, sale or return might allow you to dip your toe in
the water and get some valuable feedback
Get in touch with the shopkeepers and say that on a particular date you’re
switching to wholesale only.
Ask if they’d be kind enough to let you know which items they’d like to
keep (and pay for,) and which items they’d prefer to return.
Sure, it’ll take a bit of doing and you might lose some dead wood along the
way, but it clears the stage for the next phase of your business to begin.
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We’re here.
We’re standing outside the door of your wholesale business.
There’s lots more to talk about once we get to the other side.
Things like how to actually approach retailers about stocking your stuff.
Working out your terms and conditions. Designing a line sheet. Exhibiting
at a trade show.
Receiving your first order. Going woohooo! and running round your office.
Phoning your Mum.
Treating yourself to a celebratory scotch egg.
But all that’s on the other side of the door, or at least it could be.
We need to decide whether you’re ready to turn the handle.
Here’s the best business advice I’ve ever received.
What do you want, exactly?
Describe it to yourself. Get a big bit of paper and write it all down. Tell me
exactly what your business looks like when it’s complete.
What do you do all day?
How much money are you making?
Who are you serving?
What kind of lovely thing are you creating?
Then work backwards.
How do you get from here to there? How long do you want it to take?
Is wholesale the way to do it?
I know you’ll make the right decision.
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So what now?
I really hope The Joy of Wholesale given you some clarity and the
motivation to forge ahead, whichever route you choose.
You know what you need to do.
Now it’s simply a case of, you know, DOING IT.
In order to help with that, I’d like to offer you the opportunity to have an
email consultation with me about your wholesale business.
We can talk about whether your product is ready for retail, your branding,
pricing, how to differentiate yourself from your competition, how to
approach retailers about stocking your stuff – whatever you need.
The reason I’ve chosen to offer email consultations is because I can do it at
a lower price point, and I know that you probably don’t have money to
burn right now.
I’ve also found that sometimes people feel a bit uncomfortable about
talking on the phone – they feel nervous or worried about not knowing the
answers to my questions, or they’ve got a job or kids or a really demanding
dog19 and it’s hard to get concentrated time to talk.
I don’t want that to be an obstacle.
So if you need help and want to make sure you’re heading in the right
direction, you’re very welcome to purchase an email consultation for £49.
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Two words: Dog Whisperer. That guy is a GENIUS.
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You can ask me any three questions about your business, and I’ll write
back within 48 hours with the longest, most helpful, most in-depth answers
that I can give.
Then you can put it into practice, get some traction and start making a pile
of notes.
The only catch is this: you must purchase the consultation within 1 WEEK
of downloading this e-course.
That’s because I want to be sure you’re serious about working on your biz.
If I’m going to be investing my time into your success, I want to be sure
you’re committed to making it happen.
So if you’d like an email consultation, click the link below. You’ll be able to
download my mini-questionnaire and get started on your three questions
right away.
Get an email consultation
For now, though, it’s good bye from me.
This is big stuff you’re doing here, so take care of yourself, okay?
I’m off for a mojito and three episodes of Dr Who.
With every warm wish for your success,
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Rachel Russell from Hello Wilson, Graphic Designer
Rachel redesigned the branding for both Plaisir and Indie Retail Academy.
She specialises in creative businesses, she’s a dream to work with and she
combines crazy skills with impeccable taste.
Patricia van den Akker, Director of The Design Trust
Patricia has a huge gift for helping creative people run fulfilling businesses.
Check out the great benefits that come with her Business Club.
The School for Creative Startups
A top-of-the-field training course for creative people. Learn everything you
need to know about starting and running a sustainable business, in a way
that’s tailored to artists.
Handmade Success
A fantastic blog specialising in marketing and social media training for
artists and designers
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Click to write a thirty second review of The
Joy of Wholesale
Tell me what you need next by emailing me:
clare@indieretailacademy.com
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