… I create products ahead of the orders, I have some more patch ideas waiting to be made, I will work on them soon.I don’t offer custom patches anymore, it was not profitable for my shop, large expenses if it’s needed to make 1 or 2 as it was mostly always. I am not very friendly with technique, so I draw with a real pencil on the paper first and my friend – a graphic designer, makes a technical drawing

… My main audience is women looking for gift ideas for family or friends. I actually do very little in the way of social media marketing and most of my traffic is driven directly through Etsy’s search engine. Admittedly this is a dangerous strategy and I have set up a separate Shopify store in the meantime, however, I am currently running at capacity in terms of the number of orders I’m able to do on my own.

… Diversity is the plan for growing our business, get different products but that requires large upfront costs for inventory, the biggest impact is when that inventory doesn’t sell, then you have $500/2000 sitting. Best way to go about it is to buy in small quantities to start and see how it does if it does good, invest in larger quantities.

… I think what I enjoy the most about being an entrepreneur is my freedom of time. I can choose my schedule and make time for my family when I need it. On the flip side, that is the most difficult part. I always need to be vigilant about not letting my work stack up on me and overwhelm me.

… I never thought I’d have as many sales, or customers within a year. This shop has not made me tons of money, but it has made me have tons more confidence in myself and has given me the opportunity to show my creativity and meet awesome customers, some which have become friends.

… I’ve been at the art academy for 4 years. I struggled for a long time. Trying many different forms and materials. Eventually, I returned to drawing and realized I had been looking for alienation and a surreal, fantastical world all this time.

… I get inspired by everything, good ideas happen in all kinds of places and situations. I try to keep updated on what is going on, I like to launch products that are current or make sense or make people laugh about a specific occurrence or something from the news for instance. I browse competition very rarely but I do check Pinterest to keep up with trends and sometimes to make sure my ideas have not been other people’s ideas yet!

… I am a self-taught artist that began drawing and painting as a child. Eventually, I would start airbrushing, mostly fantasy art. However that ultimately led to custom graphics for cars, trucks, and bikes. There came a point where I was asked to airbrush portraits on vehicles and for one reason or another, this opened the door for me to get into the restoration of classic vehicles as a whole.

… I have an artsy background and I was pretty confident in my basic skills. When I needed help I recruited a graphic designer! She’s taught me a lot of the skill set in illustrator that I needed and we’re a pretty good team! When we buy new machinery there is always new learning curve as we start to figure out what it’s capable of!

… Social media marketing is something I’ve just started and as someone who’s not that tech-savvy its been a challenge, I believe social media is extremely important for an Etsy shop or any online shop as a matter of fact as it helps to drive customers to your shop and the more eyes you get to your shop the more sales you will make.