Selling Your Handmade Goods During Coronavirus

Hi, I'm Cheyenne. I am a handmade creator. I do everything from masks to baby blankets and everything in between. I began my journey in the beginning of April, when there was a huge demand for masks. I started dishing them out left and right. Then people started asking me if I made anything else besides masks. I got to thinking, what a wonderful time to start a mediocre small business. I couldn't have been more wrong. However, I will say I have made my fair share of money on the products I've produced but I was not prepared for the demand of certain items just to have several people back out on orders last minute. The demand was there and the supply became available, then the demand disappeared. I started making children's hoodies in the spring, it was a lot of trial and error but I mastered in less then a week! I sold a handful of them out of the large amount of people interested. I was so excited to see myself growing and learning new things especially with never touching a sewing machine before April.

I then began making headbands. The simplest yet most demanding of them all. I love how each one comes out and was so excited to share this with the world. I understood the fact that my headbands priced at $10 were maybe a little steep on the cost spectrum but these weren't your average headband that you could get from the store. Also I spent hours upon hours growing my inventory of them that I wanted the buy-out to be worth the money and time I put into them. I will say I can't count how many I've sold on my fingers! Those were my hottest selling item and that dwindled down just as fast as the toilet paper stampede at the beginning of the year. With the left over materials I had from the headbands I decided to make matching scrunchies to go along with them. Those sold like hotcakes right along with the headbands. Although yet again, sales diminished. I needed to find something new to do to liven my shop. I couldn't thing of anything. I had a creators block if you will.

The next thing I know my 3 year old son was asking me to make him a teddy bear. I thought to myself, "I don't know if I could pull that off but it couldn't hurt to try, right?". There I was setting off to find a decent pattern for a teddy bear. Luckily I was able to find one and make my own twist to the bear itself. I had no intent of selling them because I didn't think they would sell at all. I was wrong. I sold over 11 of them and they are all over the states! All because of my 3 year old I was able to revamp my shop again.

My youngest son is the inspiration for one of my newest creations, minky baby blankets. They are absolutely perfect for the babies with sensory issues. I couldn't believe how easy and fast the blankets were to make, although I didn't know if they would sell I was willing to take the chance. Sadly I haven't been able to sell one, yet.

The moral of sharing my journey is that its a journey, it has its ups and downs. The unfortunate events of this year has caused so many to become more sparing because they don't know if their jobs are going to close or if they are going to get laid off. They have no room to treat themselves or their families. Because of Coronavirus small businesses and creators are struggling with not being able to sell their products. Granted we are trying our best to push our products and our brands but we understand the circumstances and we are right there with everyone else.

I see the panic in the little community of creators I'm in, I see that they are worried that they may not make it out of this year. This coming holiday season, help out some small or local shops. Support their business instead of going to your local supermarket or chain stores. Put your money back into the community and get back to where we were before this virus broke us!