Find Handmade Advice

Handmade Marketing Strategies for Artisans

Handmade Small Business

Finding the right business advice can be a real challenge when you are starting out with your own handmade creations. 

Motivation, Inspiration and Real Life Action
to Build Your Creative Enterprise

Are you living the creative life - as a maker, creator, designer or artisan - and have you decided to step up your own production, your creation and your brand so that you can really make a go of it and grow?

Hi - I'm Brendan Murphy and I have been working with my own handmade creations since 2007.  Admittedly - I'll tell you straight up - my handmade creations are Gourmet Hampers and Fruit Baskets - and I've been making them and selling them online since2007. 

And I have made coming up to $2million in sales - so I have experienced the whole spectrum of what can happen in small business and the highs and lows of selling online.

My own start in business was not very auspicious - I was working shifts and not really liking it -I actually HATED it everyday - BUT I told myself this is what people do when they become grown ups - they do something they hate everyday for the rest of their lives....  Then I thought to myself - that can't be right!  So I went out and did some research and instead of renovating the house or getting a new kitchen (I have to thank my wife for her patience on this one) we bought a business.

Content Marketing for Find Handmade

Back then the business was completely different - it was a wholesale promtions supplier to clubs and hotels up and down the coast.  So I was driving around delivering to  clubs and meeting with marketing managers and doing accounts and stuff...  And then the GFC hit and it was pretty much over.  The whole segment of the industry virtually closed down - smoking bans and responsible gaming meant the clubs and hotels shrunk and my orders dried up.

So I had to think fast and reinvent the business.  That's when we went online and so began my wonderful journey learning the real world of internet marketing, online shopping and e-commerce. It has been an amazing journey - I've gone from months where I barely made  single sale to months where we do over $200k - in a single month!  Being online also gives me the freedom to work from home - as I write this my 18 month old is bumbling around under my desk - my four year old is out on the deck and my seven year old is reading (I hope not on minecraft?) in her room. Working from home, selling products online and knowing I have the freedom and flexibility to pretty much work my own schedule.

That is what you can achieve - whether you want more freedom or more flexibility - it's there for you.

But le's get back to what this is all about.  I've met many people through my years in business, and the most passionate and creative individuals all tend to have a brilliant start up concept and product just that they stall at the stage of going to the next step.

 And too often the main reason they say they can't go any further is because they don't have any money.  "I'll do it when I get some cash behind me" they all say, and resign themselves to struggling to with zero cashflow or near enough to zero.  It doesn't have to be this way.