Hand-Dyes For Sale: How I Turned My Hobby Into A Business by Melissa J. Willauthor docx

If you do want that business how-to book, make sure you find one written for your particular area because if there's one thing I know about running a small business, as soon as you hang

Hand-Dyes For Sale:

How I Turned My Hobby Into A Business

by Melissa J Will

author of Fabric Dyeing 101:

Simple Instructions For Beautiful Fabrics

Version 1.0Copyright © 2011 Melissa J WillISBN 978-1-4657-7514-6 All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this free ebook Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes If you enjoyed this

book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at

Smashwords.com , where they can also discover other works by this author Thank

you for your support.

Here Comes The Man

What Do You Mean I Have To Be The Secretary?

Wrap It Up, I'll Take It

Show Time

The Popular Ones

The Numbers Don't Lie

There are plenty of useful resources about creating your own small business and this is definitely not one of them What I want to share is my personal experience taking a hobby I loved and turning it into a small business and some of the struggles and successes along the way

If you do want that business how-to book, make sure you find one written for your particular area because if there's one thing I know about running a small business, as soon as you hang your shingle up, The Man comes looking for you, ready to double your service fees and tax them some more It's not easy to make a hobby profitable but I know I'm glad I gave it a try

It all began when I was actually just trying to make a quilt I'd never made a quilt before but of course I decided to make one that required hand-dyeing fabrics to get the colours just right I'd never dyed fabric before either, but I was ready to try that too It was just not in my character to simply buy a kit with commercial fabrics and follow instructions I wanted my quilt to be unique Plus, I couldn't follow sewing patterns to save my life

Fabric dyeing is a great hobby if you happen to love both fabrics and colour Every colour you can possibly dream of can be made with Procion MX fabric dyes While intending to simply dye

a few fabrics for my quilt, I ended up staying up far too late at night while my family slept, experimenting for months on end, exploring every possible colour and value combination I could think of And they were all so impossibly beautiful

I ended up with about 100 times more fabric than I needed for a quilt (or a dozen quilts) and, by necessity, decided to try selling the surplus so I could fund more supplies

This book is purely my own experience as an entrepreneur with an art-based business What started out as a simple quest to sell some fabrics, gradually took on a whole other direction with unexpected possibilities

While I never managed to get a full night's sleep throughout the process, I did have a rather wild ride along the way All in all it was a good experience for a homebody-introvert with an

obsession for colour I hope you enjoy my story

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Restless Mommy

When my youngest child was a baby, we made the decision that I would quit my full-time job and stay home with the kids I had always worked and supported myself since I was teenager and this was a huge step for me It meant relying on someone else for income (hello trust issues!) and

it also meant giving up outside employment which I had always enjoyed I had always wanted to

be a stay-at-home parent and this was my chance It would require some very careful financial management, but my husband was supportive so we gave it a whirl

In Canada we have paid maternity (and paternity) leave In my day it was six months long (Today it's one year.) The full impact of leaving my job set in around my daughter's first birthday when the regular pay cheques had dried up and I stopped being invited to office parties with the old gang With past connections fading, it was time to create a new life You don't realize how much you rely on the companionship of your co-workers until they're no longer talking too loud

on the phone in the next cubicle And truthfully, work was my main source of friendships

because I am otherwise so disastrously shy that I avoid opportunities to meet people the way others step around live electrical wires

While I missed the pseudo-security of a steady income, extended health benefits, and daily conversation with non-teething humans, it was exciting to be free to explore new opportunities I had never been well-suited (pun intended) to office life, having no interest in time-wasting rules and regulations, fashion, shoes, mini—fridge lunch thievery, or forced obligations Kindness and good manners, yes Productivity towards real goals, yes All that other stuff, no If you can do a job in jeans and hoodie with a breastfeeding baby on board, I'm there! I loved a challenging, creative job but the confinement of office life was very hard on my soul I had long liberated myself from that portable torture devise known as pantyhose and never ever wore high heels Having tasted the freedom of never facing another office Christmas party or guilt-enforced charity drive, I knew I could never go back

I'd always dabbled in self-employment Back in my university days, I earned good money

drawing diagrams for a teacher of sign language I'd also taken on various odd jobs painting murals, sewing speciality items like slipcovers and curtains, designing posters, and so on I once sewed an entire superhero costume for someone's dog including a wire-lined cape that made it appear that the wee bulldog was indeed flying

Today you can buy such critical essentials at pet superstores, but back then, it required some innovative sewing Frankly, I was amazed how much disposable income some people have and I was rather grateful to have the extra work Sewing the dog costume paid about 4x more per hour than my job as a unit clerk in an emergency and trauma unit It's kind of like professional sports salaries: our society really has its priorities straight! Of course you should earn more sewing dog costumes than working in a life-saving team! Who knows what heroic efforts that bulldog made? And for the record, bulldogs become incredibly wiggly when you're trying to measure their girth That sewing job wasn't all fun and games

I come from a family of self-employed pioneers—writers, musicians, builders, you name it The thrill of never knowing if you'd earn enough to survive is engraved in my DNA I look back on

my childhood quite thankful that I had no idea how close to the edge we lived as my father built

a career as a freelance professional writer (It eventually paid very handsomely: when we were grown and gone, of course.) Without wishing to page Dr Freud, I should say that I also married a self-employed entrepreneur and all the uncertainty that comes with it

After my first year of new motherhood, I looked up to notice the fact that I'd rarely left my house

that entire time The routine had me feeling a little too housebound so I went on the wild side and attended a show featuring Amish style quilts I had never seen quilts like that in person and I was astonished by how beautiful the colours were These quilts were made from old, re purposed clothing, and the unexpected colour combinations transfixed me I came home declaring that I would make a quilt like that.

My mother taught me how to use her sewing machine when I was about eight years old but I avoided ever trying to learn how to use a sewing pattern because the instructions seemed

profoundly intimidating (And they were: I swear Vogue patterns back then were written to inflict mental anguish on unsuspecting sewers.) Stubborn and very determined, I sewed everything I wanted (dolls clothes, bags, blouses, skirts) by simply thinking through what was needed, step by step I knit the same way: I envisioned the project, I thought about it, and knit Now an adult and still stubborn and determined, I was confident I could make this Amish quilt the same way And why not? It's not like the old Amish used commercial sewing patterns

I didn't really have a plan except I knew I wanted beautiful solid colour fabrics that both

complimented and aggravated each other, the same way the ones at the quilt show did I started buying bits and pieces where I found them but I was really underwhelmed by the selections available in fabric shops I also scoured thrift shops in hopes of finding suitable clothing to cut

up, but that proved rather fruitless as well Solid colours in quilt-weight cottons and wools are hard to find today in a world of mass-produced synthetic prints

A little frustrated but not daunted, I then decided I would simply dye my own fabrics Certainly this is how the old Amish got their colours? Keep in mind, this was before the internet was brimming with its current plethora of information (reliable and not so much), so I went to the local library and read up on natural dyeing techniques I soon realized that I was not keen on dealing with the harsh mordants required for some colours, and learned that the clear, bright, bold colours I was seeking could readily be achieved with synthetic Procion MX dyes for natural fibers I was familiar with them from tie-dyeing at summer camp

I got the one book they had on the subject (since that time there are hundreds on the market including my recently— 2011— published eBook), and I mail ordered a fabric dye starter kit with fuchsia, turquoise, and bright yellow dye powders A local quilt shop owner sold me a bolt

of bleached, white quilter's cotton, and I was raring to go

What I never expected was how ridiculously beautiful the fabrics would be I had never seen this type of hand-dyed fabrics in person before and they really were drop-dead gorgeous if I do say so myself My first rainbow set of colours was a success I had to do more

Next I tried other recipes that combined my basic dye powder colours plus a few new colours in various proportions to create earthy tones like mossy greens and browns, and various secondary colours like popsicle purple, rich ambers, and emerald greens

Oh my!

For someone who gets naturally giddy from delightful colours, I had found my new favourite thing to do

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She Dyes By Night

I started dyeing fabric every single night after the kids (and my husband!) were in bed There was a talk radio show I really liked from midnight until 3 am and I would listen to that while I worked During the day, while I took care of my kids, I would keep a note pad nearby and jot down any new recipe ideas that came to mind

What happens when you combine this with that? Or add a pinch of black to red and yellow? (Rich, pumpkin orange.) Or yellow on top of the other colours? (Vibrance.) Or switch to a

different blue, or red, or yellow? And what if you put a little less dye in each pot? Do I really need to use this much dye powder? (No.) The possibilities were endless And the exciting part was, with these particular dyes (Procion MX), there are no bad colour combinations It's not like paints where you mix colours together and end up with mud These dyes are transparent so each colour participates in the final product What may look like mud with paints, looks like rich, multi-faceted tree bark with the fabric dyes And you know how the sky can have a zillion shades

of blue from the horizon upward? That same effect is easy to achieve with these dyes

The first technique I learned was for a mottled texture, often resembling frost on a window or salt crystal patterns With some experimentation, I discovered a really easy way to make solid coloured fabrics as well

To organize my experiments and avoid accidentally trying to same thing twice, I developed a charting system that made it easy to record recipe details and, later, allowed me to easily

duplicate any results I liked This chart system became an invaluable tool both for my own fabric dyeing and later when teaching others the secrets from the midnight kitchen dye adventures

To gain confidence that the colours were permanent and would not run, I repeatedly conducted washfast or colourfast tests (dampen the dyed fabric and iron it until dry between two white pieces of cotton or wool fabric—if there is dye on the whites, it's not properly rinsed)

Everything was fine I knew I could use the fabrics in a quilt and not have to worry about that Not that I was ready to sew with the fabrics: there was still so much experimenting to be done

I would buy one or two 15-yard bolts at a time and dye sets of ⅛ and ¼ yard pieces After a few weeks and about 200 yards of dyeing, my bulk purchases started to get the shop owner's attention and she asked to see my hand-dyes When I brought in a suitcase full of samples, brimming with dozens of colours and values, she was smitten Without a moment's hesitation she said, “You should sell those They're gorgeous.” And then, without missing a beat, she added, “Can we barter? Your hand-dyes for my dye fabric?”

I was flattered but hesitant My gut instinct said, Don't barter with this woman! But

unfortunately I let myself be overwhelmed by her forcefulness Later you'll see why I refer to this woman as Mrs R Flag

While I'm not big on The Woo, I do have faith in my own hunches and intuition (a.k.a spidey sense) yet I struggle to listen to it sometimes in new and intimidating situations The way I see it,

my brain picks up way more information and signals about people and experiences than I

consciously process My spidey sense is the intermediary saying, “You may not know what's wrong here but at least listen to the warnings, Missy.” In business, as in life, those inner nudges are your inner security team

Around the same time Mrs R Flag expressed an interest in the hand-dyes, my husband started to notice the stacks (and stacks and stacks) of hand-dyes laid out for all to admire around my work

table in the living room He hinted that, while he didn't really know anything about sewing or quilting, he suspected I had a lot more fabric there than I needed for a single Amish quilt Very perceptive, that husband of mine is.

Knowing that I wasn't anywhere near done with experimenting with the dye possibilities, I decided I would indeed try selling some of the fabrics since we did not exactly have a budget for fabrics and dyes in these volumes With encouragement from a few others, I was totally charged

up with the idea of starting my own small business

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Brand Epiphany

As a homebody and introvert, I decided I was best suited to opening an online mail order

business That way I could work when it suited me, and not have to face my anxieties about meeting people or, heaven forbid, chatting with strangers

I felt very lucky with my hand-dye shop: the basic theme just came to me

I had long been obsessed with the (now) extremely clichéd, poorly reproduced, and overused paintings of Claude Monet Yes, I was a water lily fanatic I admit it When my husband and I were courting, he game me a gorgeous poster of a lesser known water lily painting and I

treasured it both because it was an unexpected gift and it demonstrated that he understood what I

loved (besides him) Ahhhhh! That was sweet.

In French, the name Claude rhymes with toad You pronounce it Clode I was attracted to

Monet's paintings because of the colours and textures My hand-dyed business would be my Ode

to Claude I hope you just said it the rhyming way It's sounds a little odd otherwise

Ode to Claude: Monet-inspired hand-dyed cotton fabric

Another good aspect to this approach of creating painting sets was that I didn't have to be exact each time Each of Monet's paintings contain a whole lot of colours: so I could vary which ones I put in the set depending on what stock I had on hand and what I was experimenting with

The Monet theme also lent itself to some good fun using Monet as my spokesperson to announce sales and whatnot in the business newsletter Fun! I longed for a life-size cutout of him to have at craft shows but I never did manage to get one

My husband, while known for his brains and beauty, also happens to be a very good graphic designer and, knew computer code He designed a gorgeous logo for my business and showed

me how to write HTML code for an online shop This was before online shopping carts were affordable or reliable (and long before Etsy brought art out of the el-cheapo pricing of eBay), so I had to create a system that customers felt confident using but wouldn't require personal phone

calls to secure credit card information (PayPal was not yet around either.)

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To Touch Is To Love

Quilting, like knitting, is a tactile activity Knitters need to feel the yarn to know if they want to work with it Quilters want to touch the fabric, see designs or patterns, and confirm with their own eyes that the colours are indeed pleasing To accommodate this, I created a swatch card of all of my standard colours (real fabric swatches attached to card stock with a glue stick) that could be mail ordered I charged $10 but that money could be applied toward the customer's first order This ended up being a wise decision: there were some weeks where swatch card orders accounted for over half my sales revenue (I began to suspect that there's a secret swatch card hoarding cult out there.) My initial error was to not indicate an expiry date on the first cards I sold Eventually I realized that deadlines create business and from then on all swatch cards issued had a 90-day expiry date reinforced with two email reminders Many more swatch cards translated into fabric sales this way

To keep costs down, I first uploaded my site piggybacking on my husband's domain While it wasn't the most professional thing to do, I really didn't want to fork over the money for hosting until I knew the business would actually generate some revenue After about a year or so, my husband surprised me with the purchase of my own domain It was very romantic Today it's not nearly as costly to do so, but in those days, it was foreplay I assure you

The technology of the day presented other obstacles I could not manage to photograph the fabric

in a way that presented the colours fairly accurately on the computer screen, and of course, colours look different on different screens Someone suggested scanning the fabrics and it

worked fairly well It was slow and tedious but it was better than nothing Still, I was at the peril

of variations in monitors and, worse, other people's perceptions Science has proven that no two people see colour the same way But the only thing that mattered for me was that most people would like what they saw Bandwidth was also still a big issue so I had to keep my images small for mercy of those on dial-up (like I was)

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Online Shop Ready For Business: Is Anybody Out There?

With the site uploaded and fabrics priced and ready to go, I had to find ways to attract customers There weren't nearly as many avenues available back then as there are now, but in some ways that was advantageous People were excited to get online and try things out If you had an art shop or blog, you quickly became known in that community

I emailed various other online business owners and quilt artists and enquired whether they might link to my site In those days it was common to receive formal link requests Thankfully, a few years later that all went out the window I was sure to do my homework and determine a

common ground that would benefit both parties before requesting a link Once there were outside links to your site, the search engines would index it Within the first two weeks, links went up, traffic grew and I received numerous requests for swatch cards

I was notified of my first order by email It seems an entire quilt guild had reviewed my swatches and placed a bulk order The cheque would be arriving soon in the mail You know how some businesses frame the money from their first sale and display it on the shop wall? Not this one That cheque was for over $800 and it was headed straight for the bank Similar large orders soon followed

Cowabunga, baby

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Making It Official

I had decided from the start that I wanted to run a debt-free business I did not want to chain myself to The Man, especially since we were trying hard to live within our means so I could continue a vagrant life of unemployment I had seen far too many hobbyists call themselves businesses, and then proceed to under-price their goods and fund their overhead with outside income (usually from a hardworking spouse) or max out credit cards to keep afloat That's not a business It might be fun, but it's not a business

However, starting with zero funds, I knew it would be wisest to make my first supply purchases

in bulk to make the fabrics really cost effective To do this, I needed to formally register my business with the government (for tax exemption and wholesale purchases) and I needed a short-term loan

I had my first encounter with the local small business help office and I have to say, I was less than impressed I felt like the staff were so busy with their charts and graphs and staff meetings and measurements of all the clients they were “assisting”, that they had their heads up their nether regions and could barely listen to what I was needing or answer my questions I ended up fumbling around on my own, finally obtaining my business licence and getting a short-term loan from my mom (my best cheerleader) I would like to think these tax-payer supported offices do better today Or maybe you have to the manufacturing some incredible techie devise to get their attention

I approached Mrs R Flag at the local quilt shop to share my business news and see if she could introduce me to her fabric source so I could purchase larger bolts directly

This is where you start seeing people's true colours She saw that I was getting a lot of fabric orders and very evasively came up with some vague excuses why I couldn't buy directly from her supplier, despite my business licence entitling me to purchase wholesale In other words, she wanted to keep getting her cut in the deal and she was screwing me over

Now, I could understand (but still disagree with) not wanting to share her source if my business was in competition with hers, but it was not She retailed commercial printed fabrics I was a one-of-a-kind hand-dye fabric artist with a rinky dink online shop It's two very different things I thought that since I had already purchased a large volume of fabric through her, that she might want to celebrate my success and give me a boost Naive! Today I would have a much easier time because I could probably get the information online within minutes without relying on anyone's generosity of spirit, but back then, people coveted their secret societies Because they could I realized Mrs Flag's first name was Red

I encountered this closed-off attitude over and over again It reeked of insecurity and a lack of vision because truly, when you help others, you often end up really helping yourself If I need your help today, you may very well need my help in the future If your business is so dependent

on keeping secrets and dissing any real or imagined competition, is it really going to survive and thrive through tougher times? We all know cut-throat people When you're building a brand on art, quirkiness, and creativity, a machete and a bad attitude aren't really going to help build the business I thought Mrs Flag would see it the same way But she did not And apparently they didn't break the mold when they made her: I would encounter lots of sneakier people later on

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Here Comes The Man

When you formally become a business, there are some perks, such as not having to pay

provincial sales tax, but a lot of leeches and sharks also come out of the woodwork to disrupt things Suddenly, the bank declares they can charge you huge monthly fees for putting your money there, simply because you are a business When I ordered my first set of cheques, this elaborate package arrived with 50 cheques and this ridiculous “executive” leather bound cheque ledger I looked at my account and saw they had charged me $80 for it I drove right over to see the bank manager and gave him back his stupid cheque binder and demanded a refund Who the hell wants to spend money on that? Do you know how much work I have done to earn $80 in revenue? I know it was laughable to him, but seriously, most small businesses are small

businesses I had no use for shenanigans like that

The phone and internet service providers hear the word 'business' and immediately lobby to change your account to the business category at twice the cost for the same services The

municipal tax office wants you to pay business taxes on top of residential ones and questions the zoning of the your home On and on it goes Local charities and fundraisers start knocking on the door for prizes and donations, as if, by becoming a business, there is instant and extra wealth available I will happily do my part to contribute to my community, but honestly guys, first I have to actually be able to make some money And maybe even pay myself something

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What Do You Mean I Have To Be The Secretary?

The costs of becoming a business put a painful headlock on my efforts to develop a profitable business and seriously gobbled up my time

I now had to keep an immaculate set of books tracking every single transaction, which again was not so straightforward because I was doing business online, by mail, and in-person

Mrs Flag told me about an national craft business organization I could join for $75 a year that had negotiated a deal for its small business members to get them a very reasonable rate as a vendor with a credit card company (Don't worry: Mrs Flag hadn't switched to the soft and fuzzy side of life—she got a kickback for referring me.) The bank (with the stupid cheque ledgers) wanted to charge me 5% on every purchase through their credit card system With this craft business group membership, I qualified for under 2%

The ability to accept credit cards opened up a lot more business but it also created a lot more work Every transaction had to be phoned in with all of the details communicated through the touch tone phone That's a lot of beeping When I started selling at craft shows, I might have a few hundred transactions to phone in when I returned home Oy! Today I'm sure I'd have a WiFi connection at the shows to transmit the information on the spot, but back then we pioneers had to really work for our supper (Yes, I know there's always hardships in any era, but I can't help soliciting for a wee bit of pity.)

You can see the slippery slope forming: I started out dyeing fabric for fun in the wee hours of the night when I could have time alone I did a lot more because I loved it I made way more fabric than I could ever use I started selling it because I loved the idea of running an art-based business and I needed the money But gradually the rules and regulations and timelines (a.k.a The Man) forced more and more of the work into my office during daytime hours, bumping up against my time as a stay-at-home mom Uh-o I was becoming a bureaucracy

Although the business was web-based, along with attending some local craft shows, I also started getting orders by telephone Time stealer! Yes, I was delighted to have sales, but, when someone

is tracking down your unpublished phone number to personally order your products, they don't just want the goods: they also want to experience YOU What should have been brief phone calls taking orders could turn into 15 or 20 minute conversations And the problem was, these are all very kind people People I would love to know better and many I would like to have as friends But boundaries have to be set if you're going to have a home life separate from a bustling small business and the telephone is nobody's friend And don't forget that telephones were designed to torture shy people like me

When you don't know how successful business will be on an ongoing basis, it's really hard to know when to ignore the phone or the knocks at the door and trust that you'll generate enough business otherwise

Yes, I said knocks at the door I only ever published my post box address yet some people would

get my home address and show up at the door unannounced asking if they could just quick come

in and browse the fabric As if my online store was an actual store at my home Ah, the delusions

of the world wide web

Help!

It still makes me squirm to think of this Even if I wanted this, my home was in no condition for

guests And it's not as if I kept everything set up like a store display for browsing I actually had

a bin system with codes on labels and everything was stacked up in various rooms throughout the house I've seen episodes of Hoarders that looked better than my place

Come in and browse? I think not Grateful for your interest, but no Thank you Please go now Seriously Bye!

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Wrap It Up, I'll Take It

Another big dilemma was packaging As I said, when someone is buying from a art-based small business, they're not just buying the stuff but the experience They want contact with the

interesting and quirky artist They want your DNA They want something really unique and not mass produced So, while it would have been environmentally-awesome to be able to use re purposed materials for bundling and packaging the fabrics, at that time I could not find anything that looked good enough to use that would give my customers the complete Ode to Claude experience

While not much of shopper myself, ok, well really, not a shopper at all, I would watch and listen

to people at craft shows and see what they responded positively to I ended up buying rolls of brown craft paper for wrapping, gold ribbon, printing out cool little business cards, and writing personal notes on them to include in each mail order This seemed to tickle people And bring repeat business

Even these few years later, people seem so much more receptive to the reuse and re purposing of materials that I bet there are many more acceptable options that would be greener, cost less, and still please the customers But back then, the problems of over-consuming and excess packaging were not yet making the headlines and recycled craft paper cost about four times more than the cutting-down-fresh-trees stuff did It's just too easy to be consumed by The Man

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