Starting a story.. part 1

Hi there. Today we decided that we would use our blog to share the lessons we are learning through this journey to business. Not only is journaling therapeutic, but maybe our story will be of use to some of our readers.

A bit of background. Where did imagination doors come from? Well the first idea was for a little fairy garden party. Steve set up some small pieces of wood to look like a picnic table and chairs. When our daughters came home that day they were thrilled to hear that fairies were living in our garden. Steve then came up with the idea to make a wee door and our daughters loved it. We made one for a friend and then another and then another. Based on the feedback and requests for doors, we decided to just give it a go and see if we could start a small home business.
We started this blog, then the facebook group, contacted a local paper and the interest in the doors has been steadily growing. We have 66 followers on facebook. We are actively learning what it takes to get a business off the ground and we thought we could use this blog to share what we are learning. So armed with a book or two, the internet and some very generous and helpful friends we are fumbling our way towards a proper little business.

Today's lesson: Pricing.
The hardest thing to work out is what to price the doors for. Sure we can project the overheads and other costs, add in labour but then there is also the question of what people will pay. It might not be what we'll need to charge. I've tried a facebook marketing survey but it didn't work very well. I'll be trying again once I've identified a better programme to use. But the lesson today was thanks to Jake who suggested we do a quick internet search for pricing formulas. (I love the internet). Within minutes I found some formulas which will help us with setting costs. We still need to go back over our total projected costs (overhead, administration time, etc) but this will definitely be helpful a bit later down the road. In a nutshell the way you price is (labour + materials) x2 for wholesale. wholesalex2 for retail. This sounds like a lot, but clearly there is a danger that crafty people will undersell their products. I would like to avoid that for obvious reasons. There is still so much to think about and make decisions about. How best to market the doors, where to sell them, how to sell them....

So stay tuned for more lessons learned by Karin and Steve, fumbling towards business....