DSF

I was sitiing in my office earlier waiting for my cutter to cut some shirt vinyl and started thinking about how my business has changed since its original conception a couple of years ago.

I started buying a vinyl cutter and computer to make some stickers for friends , family and thoughts were with selling them at car shows ...... along with everyone else!! I was working from home out of my spare
room and just playing about really . Slowly I got started to get asked for specific stickers by friends and friends of friends, then it was vehicle signwriting and site boards etc .

Two years on and Ive got an office in Bexhill , still do vehicle signwriting , stickers and site boards ( still no car shows!! ) but my main business is clothing , mainly cut vinyl and sublimation , but also have to get printed
vinyl transfers locally , as well as all the usual mugs , phone cases , general signage , shops etc. On top of this I have to get banners , flags , flyers , business cards , large vinyl stickers , car stickers all printed for me
then sold on to my customers. I still have the same Mimaki cutter , but also ricoh sublimation printer, Oki laser , Epson inkjet , 2 heat presses , mug press , cap press and looking into purchasing a versacamm or similiar
in the not to distant future.

I dont think I ever thought I would be working for myself , let alone doing all these different things , but I'm glad I made the decision to do it and love working for myself .

So how has your business changed since the early days?

I moved it North by 800 or so miles for a start Biggest thing I remember is starting up and thinking mugs weren't worth looking at. Now, as will be the case with many folk, I find that they're probably the biggest seller...so I got that one wrong eh?!

Started out with a couple of Epson A4 D88 printers, went through many other printers and I'm now just installing my new Epson 7890....damn site harder carrying that up the stairs I can tell you!

I bought a Europa press first off for transfer work but had nothing but problems, moved on to the Adkins Maxi which was great but recently bought the Pressmech bag press which is also superb and quite different to the Adkins.

Work wise, I generally do less clothing and move gift type items...and plenty of mugs!

We started as a market stall at Greenwich Market in London for my wife to sell her art works in the summer of 2011.

We're now up north and sell products with her designs on them to approx 60 stockists in the UK, and starting to get international ones too, and a house full of equipment, stock, and 3 employees... we've started negotiations with a landlord to take on a two floor high street shop, ground floor mainly to be a shop, and upstairs production.

There was no business plan, or ambition for it to be more than an outlet for my wife's artistry initially, until people started buying and asking for more... now it's a bit of a monster that keeps growing and growing!

Decided to do something after retirement..started on mugs ... locally, now sell mainly to the USA ...certainly didn't see that one coming! That is the numbers side.
Profit side is work for photographers....fell into that one and they are fussy, a pain in the arse, but great images.

So it's now a full time business.

JMugs;94259 wrote:Profit side is work for photographers....fell into that one and they are fussy, a pain in the arse, but great images.

Same with most artists/designers ... we've had a few fairly big jobs we couldn't get the colours good/close enough for them to go ahead with the jobs, for brands which would have been repeat orders over long term!