The Handprint Carving Co. recently became #SBS winners and the increase in interest in our brand new company has been wonderful. However, I now look at other #SBS winners’ profiles and feel quite overwhelmed; I am no longer a #Small Business Sunday winner but a #Tiny Business Sunday winner!
There are companies who have many employees, run business initiatives, ship all over the world and have impressive business biographies. This is a stark contrast to The Handprint Carving Co. which is me and Pete and is run from a small workshop in Warwickshire. It’s only six months ago that I knew the difference between SBS and SEO but I take heart that everyone needs to start somewhere and we have successfully walked the troublesome path from concept to market.
Theo says ‘If you can’t bore your friends to death about your own small business then there is something seriously wrong.’ Well we have certainly done that! We even have to make a coded hand gesture for when one of us gets slightly over enthusiastic about our products and are in danger of us never being invited for dinner again!
It took a year to be happy with our prototypes and often had a mantelpiece full of friends’ hand and footprints. So much so that some days I had to hide them as I started having nightmares about solid oak handprints chasing after me. I spent a whole day trying to find the perfect gift bag and started to laugh hysterically in the afternoon as my brain could take no more of the difficult choices of matt laminated, luxury, recycled and rope handles. (I chose matt black with a ribbon tie just so you know)
It still makes me chuckle when I receive emails from marketing companies and magazines asking if I would forward the email on to our marketing manager. Who will it be today? Me or Pete? It does really depend which one of us has got a small toddler wrapped around our legs at the time. CBeebies is certainly essential when we have our business meetings at our headquarters – the kitchen table!
On a serious note, we are constantly learning and, despite the mistakes and frustrating delays, we may have experienced when launching our product, we have finally done it. We are here and we can only grow bigger as a business and I hope we will graduate from a tiny to a small business soon. Being part of the #SBS club is invaluable to us and I do hope that some of you reading this also began with a white board leaning precariously on your kitchen table with ideas scrawled on it and that your friends are once again inviting you round for dinner.
So if you have a spare minute from your busy schedules please do have a look at our website www.handprintcarving.com. We are proud of what we create and are excited about what may be in store for us in the future.
Good luck!
Holly xx
