BusinessHABSewing Kit
Sewing Kit: Running your own business is a stressful but good career and life choice. It demands your patience and passion. Start by expecting to live your work until it is established, so it can get off the ground. There are many different opinions about how to start a business. Below are some basic ideas and guidelines to get you started. A sewing kit is a small package containing items, such as needles and thread, that you need to sew something. Needles and thread are included in the sewing kit.
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1. Come up with an idea. You will need an idea for a business before you do anything else. You can conduct market research to have a clear image. This should be something you are passionate about, since your new business will consume a great deal of your time and money.
- Come up with business ideas by identifying things people need and are willing to pay for, that isn’t provided in your area, or online, or which you can provide better than anyone else.
Sewing Kit
3. Be sure it’s unique. Whatever your idea is, be sure it’s as unique as possible. This will help you eliminate or significantly combat competition, which will make your business more successful. Simply putting a small spin on a currently existing product (making blue Red vines or something like that) is not usually enough to build a business on, so push the envelope! However, if you are serious about sewing, you’ll need a sewing kit that’s much more substantial. Why? Well, a good sewing kit can be like a great carpenter’s toolbox. With the right tools (sewing supplies) there’s almost no limit to what you can do, even sewing by hand.
Sewing Kit
4. Determine your cost of operation. You will need a solid business plan to present to any investors and the best place to start would be with determining your basic cost of operations. This will outline and help you determine how much money is needed to produce the product or offer the service you intend to offer or produce. It includes production costs, shipping, taxes, worker’s wages, rent for workspace, etc.
- Knowing your cost of operations will be vital to determining if your business will be profitable, since you will need to make more than this baseline in order to remain in business.
6. Determine impediments. You will need to plan ahead for all of the problems which can get in the way of running a business.
- Evaluate your competition; if their market share or product offering is too strong and stable, then you will have a very hard time breaking into the market. No one will want to buy an equally priced or more expensive version of a perfectly good product or service which already exists.
- You will also need to explore the associated regulations and laws, especially regarding taxes. You should ask your local state authorities, as well getting information from the IRS.
- Make sure there are no prohibitive costs, such as equipment which is too expensive to make the business profitable. For example, cars didn’t take off until Ford figured out how to make them cheap by building more efficient equipment.
Sewing Kit
7. Write up a budget. Once you have a general idea of how much money you have to work with, write up a budget for marketing which indicates how much money you have available to spend on advertising.
8. Create ideas fitting your budget. Once you know how much money you have, research the costs of different types of marketing and come up with ideas which fit those methods and are effective for the price range. If you have a lot of money to spend on marketing, for example, you can consider shooting a commercial. If you have almost none, you’ll want to think about ways to use social media effectively, which is very effective for requiring little money.
9. Plan timing and location of marketing. Once you know what kind of marketing you intend to do, think about the most effective places to advertise and what time of day, month or year are going to work best to reach your target market.
- You will want to be sure that you are using marketing which is appropriate to the type of people you expect to be interested in your product or services. There is little point in using social media to, for example, advertise a 55+ only cruise line. Meanwhile, if you’re advertising for your new dance club, a printed newspaper is probably not going to be your best bet. There is also no point in advertising a business only available in Chicago to people in Seattle, so consider physical location as well.
- If your services are seasonal you will want to consider what the best time of year would be to advertise. Also, television advertisements will need to be timed so that the right demographics will be watching when they air.
Sewing Kit
11. Make use of marketing and PR. You will want to reach out to potential customers in ways that make them want to use your business. This is especially important when you are first starting before you have an established, regular customer base.
- Advertise in a way that catches customers attention at a minimum and hopefully goes beyond to capture their imagination. Be creative and appeal to the right aspects of the customers you want to use your business.
- Offer free samples of what you do to the right people, in order to get people saying good things about what you have to offer. Word of mouth (i.e. good PR) is the best way to attract new customers. If you get bad reviews or negative feedback, respond positively and fix the problem. People will be much less judgmental about mistakes if you’re willing to fix them.
Sewing Kit
13. Have great customer service skills. Be good at interacting with people. Practice reading between the lines of what people say. Learn how to meet needs they didn’t know they had. Figure out how to make people happy. Be charming. Most importantly, be humble. The customer may not always be right but you need to be able to let them think they are.
14. Have a website. The world has moved online. Any business that wants to survive the next ten years is going to have a website. People will use it to contact you, find your location, learn your operating hours, ask you questions, make suggestions, and maybe even buy your products or services. In having a website and services which are available over the internet, you will be able to expand your service area out across your region or even the world.
15. Require payment. Don’t let people take advantage of you. Require payment within a specific window of time (whatever is appropriate for what you do). Invoice people as soon as you possibly can. If someone is late in a payment, talk to them. If you ignore these problems hoping that they go away, you will find yourself working for free and your business in the tank.
Sewing Kit
16. Set up an online system. If you plan to have products for sale online you will need to make sure to set up an accord online payment system. Services like PayPal make this incredibly easy. Research to find out which method is best for you. However, make sure that whatever system you use is secure. You don’t want either your information or your customer’s information to be hacked or taken advantage of.
17. The Basic Hand Sewing Kit
- Buttons and Other Fasteners. Having buttons, snaps, and zippers in your sewing kit will come in handy for making quick repairs.
- Fabric Marking Pens. These make it easy to measure and mark fabrics accurately. And the marking will come out in the wash.
- Hand-Sewing Needles. You’ll need needles in every length and size. You don’t want to try hand sewing heavy fabrics like denim or corduroy with a needle that’s too small.
- Measuring Tape. No matter what you sew, measuring will probably be involved. So measuring tape is a must-have.
Sewing Kit
- A Needle Threader. Instead of suffering the frustration of trying to get a tiny piece of thread to go through the tiny eye of a needle, use a needle threader instead.
- A Pincushion or Magnetic Pin Holder. Good, old fashioned pincushions help to keep straight pins under control. But if you want a more “modern” and “high tech” solution, use a magnetic pin holder instead.
- Sewing Scissors or Fabric Shears. Don’t settle for a standard pair of scissors. You’ll just be making things harder on yourself than they have to be. Sewing scissors and fabric shears are specially designed to make cutting fabric easier.
- A Seam Ripper. Seams can be surprisingly stubborn. While wrestling to remove a seam can give you a good workout, use a seam ripper if you want the job to be a little easier.
- Straight Pins. Choose straight pins with round heads. They tend to be easier to work with than flat-headed straight pins.
Sewing Kit
- Thimbles. Thimbles help to protect your fingers from the pointy ends of needles. They can also help you to get a needle through thick, heavy fabric.
- Thread. You can buy thread in just about any color you can imagine. You should also invest in a spool of invisible thread. If you have to sew something that’s white or yellow, but don’t have any white or yellow thread, invisible thread is the answer.
- A Container to Hold It All. You can use anything from a basket, to a diaper bag, to a container specially made to hold sewing supplies.
Sewing Kit
18. More tips
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Recognize that getting your business off the ground will take time. Most businesses don’t become either profitable right away or plan for that in your personal life too. You will be making sacrifices to be your own boss.
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Use free resources. Your local library contains numerous useful references regarding incorporation, writing business plans, marketing, as well as information specific to your industry. The Small Business Association, Chambers of Commerce, AMEX Small Business website, associations for your industry, associations by ethnicity…all of these offer training, materials, networking and sometimes financing. Another good option is SCORE, a group of retired executives who provide business start-up advice.
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When hiring, make sure you have an in-depth review and interview of the worker. Make sure you get their real information, passports, ID, former work, license and many others that they are truly honest and they are dependable.
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Make paying convenient and affordable. Accept credit cards, offer monthly payment plans, promote product with buy one get one free offers or sale prices.
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Ask your parents for help.
Sewing Kit
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Make sure your product/service is appealing for the public area and community not just in your perspective if not how can you make it more appealing? Be sensible.
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Ask people you know that run a home based business. They could help you get started.
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Make sure your business looks professional and is attractive to the eye. Have a professional logo, branding that is consistent and a professional website to support it. There are several groups that will help you with all this, for example. Startyourownbusiness.net.au and vistaprint.com.au.
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Ask your friends, relatives, and colleagues and plan something with help of your good wishers and supporters.
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Have original ideas. If you are doing something software related the key is simplicity, originality, and function. You will want to have all the features a normal software has, along with more things for a user’s convenience.
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Make sure to give new employees hands-on training to make sure they are comfortable with the job.
Sewing Kit
Conclusion
Eventually, you might need to split your ever-growing sewing kit in two. Leave the bulk of your supplies in a “stationary sewing kit” that you’ll leave in your sewing room. The portable sewing kit can be the one you take on long trips so you’ll have something to do.
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