Oh My! Handmade Goodness Ultimate Entrepreneur entry
A New Business for the New Year!
My business was born out of uncertainty. For what would become of it, where it would go, if it would survive. I have often read that those born with artisanal tendencies often pick up and work with more than one medium and I am not the exception to that rule. It started with my mother's insistance that I learn the piano when I was seven all the way to twenty-seven when I have dabbled in everything from charcoal, to gold and silver wire, to gemstones, to satin ribbon, and now to ingredients like mica, titanium dioxide and allantoin. I would like to think my business was planned and that I wrote my mission statement, organized a business plan and set aside my financials. But of course, I'm an artist. And I am versed in butterflies and rainbows, not numbers.
Muse Minerals is the first endeavor that I could actually call a success. So as not to jinx myself, I had the first 500 business cards printed without my name and with only my Etsy shop. (Let's just say I have stacks of business cards from the various other attempts I've made to market my creativity.) My husband has always been supportive – though not necessarily encouraging – of my previous bursts of creativity despite our extremely limited resources. Of the five years we've been married, we've never spent Christmas in the same place twice, been homeless twice, and must subsist on his limited income while trying to raise our two boys (aged 5 and 3) in San Diego, CA. I have worked jobs here and there, spent some time in school, but coming out of the housing industry, post-bubble burst has been difficult to say the least. But there was something different about Muse Minerals. Maybe it was because I myself loved my product. A lot of the thought and care I put into it is “what would I like to see” in a product.
It was that love that has brought me to now. Only around since last summer, Muse Minerals has gone from being yet-another-mineral-makeup shop on Etsy, to something unique and alive. This next year I have resolved to be more prominent in my own local market because I found that there were actually no vegan-friendly mineral makeup companies in the entire county let alone a mineral makeup company that wasn't vegan-friendly. I began contacting stores who could carry my line and participated in my first trunk show in December. There I met other women who were entrepreneurs like myself and it gave me the confidence to get in touch with a major vegan-friendly co-op store that has decided to start carrying my line in January. The uniqueness of my product in San Diego has made it a generally positive experience in terms of getting in touch with farmers' markets which is constitutes a decent market share in the county and I believe will allow me to really tap into the local economy to further grow my business.
Unfortunately, while my husband sees the potential of Muse Minerals and that this may actually be the key to getting us out of poverty, my parents only see my company as something better pursued as a side hobby to a “real” job that you learn from going to university. But my belief is that timing is everything and if I don't take advantage of the momentum that my company has made now, in two, three, four years, it may be gone and I'll have nothing but regret that I didn't try harder to fight for something I really loved. I think that my experiences with Muse Minerals thus far has been an outlier compared to my experiences with other crafts I've explored and it is what makes the potential for success that much greater.
I believe that this giveaway would only take my company to the next level that I'm hoping to take it to. One of the comments I have received from customers is that my packaging is so professional that they can't believe its handmade. I want that to reflect in all of my business image, not just the packaging of my product. Oh My! Handmade's prize would help me achieve that goal. It would help me project the professional image and really turn my craft into a viable business poised for growth in 2012 and the future.
Check out Oh My! Handmade Goodness here: http://www.ohmyhandmade.com/
