In Person Business Ideas To Get Started:
Running an in person business will get you customers faster and immediately. I ran a successful in home Creative Memories business for several years. My first step was to have a giant open house. I invited everyone I knew and asked them to bring friends along. I invited people that I hadn’t seen in years…anyone and everyone got invited. I made the open house a two day weekend event. It was hugely successful. I got several party bookings that lead to other bookings and I was off!
This does not mean that you have to start with an Open House. I thought it was the easiest way to get started for me.
Other suggestions to get you started:
1. Hold a catalog party! Have friends over to go through the Stampin’ Up! catalog. You can have samples of projects that you’ve made, Stampin’ Up! tools and stamp sets and a calendar of events that you are planning on holding. You can introduce people to what Stampin’ Up! is and what they can do with it. You can also gauge interest in a Stamp Club, classes, home parties…what might they be interested in attending?
2. Get a friend or sibling to host a party for you. This takes the pressure off you inviting people. You will be introduced to some people that you do not know and you will get some new leads!
3. Teach a class or workshop! Start teaching people how to rubbers stamp and pretty soon they want to do it in their free time! This is a way to create customers and start with beginners or people who haven’t stamped in a long time.
Tips and ideas to make your events successful:
- You need to get yourself a good calendar to keep a schedule. I recommend getting a calendar that has a tagboard cover that you can decorate with Designer Series Paper and some fun stamping techniques! Show off your talent with your calendar cover!
- Have some hostess packets ready for people who sign up to host a party at your open house.
- Have easy snacks and just serve bottled water. You’re not providing dinner! ( I would not do this for classes and workshops!)
- Have at least one great project that they can make and take home. You want it to use several of the tools you hope to sell to them. You will want to have things precut and organized into sandwich or cello bags so you can just hand one to each person as they are ready to try the project. Have lots of snail or liquid glue on hand. (You can purchase the exact same Tombow liquid glue in craft stores, so if you are short on adhesive you can get that in a pinch.)
- Have a poster with the hostess benefits and rewards in a prominent place so people can see what they get for hosting a party.
- If you have a Big Shot…make sure they get to use that. Embossing and die cutting sell themselves!
- Have a display of some of your Stampin’ Up! goodies. Show them card stock colors, inks, any tools that you have.
- Make a list of must have supplies at different price points for beginners with catalog numbers.
- Have catalogs to give away. If they don’t seem all that serious, give them a Spring Mini Catalog. If they book a party, they get the annual catalog.
- Have some finished cards, scrapbook pages and a 3D project or two ready for your guests to see. Showcase some of the great techniques that you hope to teach them in future classes, workshops or home parties.
- Avoid the projects with too many embellishments, dry embossing and so forth. You have to purchase and supply all of the materials, so it is coming out of your pocket. However…that’s how we get started. We can’t expect them to become customers without trying the products and having a catalog to browse through.
Besides the open house, there are other things you can do:
- Right now, make a list of all the people that you know who might have a party to help you get started.
- Make a list of your crafty friends, acquaintances, family and coworkers who might be interested in a 6 month hostess club. If you can find 6 people (remember men craft too! My Uncle Wayne loves to sew and knit and his wife loves to hunt and fish…go figure…happiest couple I ever knew!)…If you can find 6 people to commit to a hostess club where they get together at one person’s house once a month (or every other month) to stamp a project or learn a new technique, they can rotate who gets the hostess benefits and who hosts the club. They each commit to purchasing a minimum of $25 in product and one person gets the hostess rewards for that month. This guarantees you a minimum of $150 in sales for each month the club meets!
- Create business cards on your computer or ATC cards with your information on them and give them to everyone you meet! Post them on bulletin boards around your community and get your business out there.
- Teach a stamping workshop at your local library, community center, church, and so forth. Charge for the classes to cover the cost of your supplies and your time. Make people register ahead of time and pay ahead of time as well, so you don’t lose money. If you have a website, you can have a registration page on your website with a paypal button! If you decide that supplies will cost you $5 per person, you can charge $15 or 20 for the class. Set the price $5 higher than you’d like to charge and offer an early bird special to anyone who registers by a certain date (one that gives you enough time to order your supplies and get them precut) and then charge full price to anyone who registers after that day (no exceptions!) or who comes as a guest and just walks in the door for the class. Be firm about this!
Those are just a few ideas to get you started.
