Mid-winter reflections
It has been five months now since I launched “www.cassiecallard.com”, so it seems like a good time for a mid-year review & reflection of starting a business. The whole process has been a steep learning curve, as you can imagine! One of the hardest things for me has been to not do “all the ideas” at once, but build momentum through a few things at a time so that I can ensure I have good structure behind everything (looking at you, book-keeping). For that reason I have really focused the initial time on my monthly postcard club & building up a pottery collection that has been aimed testing techniques. I will share my learnings on the postcard subscription for this blog post.
If you haven’t seen this print club yet, the theme is “letters from a marine biologist”. In this, I create illustrated postcards with ocean themes, that are delivered monthly as part of art subscription mail to mailboxes world-wide. I am so pleased to shared that these currently go to print pals in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, France, the UK, and the USA. These postcards come with real letters from me that are shaped by my personal inspiration for the topic, along with some fun things about the theme.
Me and a stack of happy mail!
Now that the first four editions have gone out (with fifth waiting it’s turn), my reflections are:
The top 3 things that I would do differently:
To start off I invested in a second-hand, archival grade, fine art printer. Even second-hand these cost a pretty penny and then the ink & paper on top! It has also taken a bit to get the hang of & even though it’s specs allow for postcard sized prints, they more often get jammed. If I had a do-over, I would wait until I was producing much more, and stick with some of the amazing local print shops – which is where I get the postcards and stickers printed.
International cut off dates – because I want the contents of the mail to be a surprise, I try to hold off sharing too much info until I am confident that they have all arrived. The first batch took over 3 weeks to get to both Australia and to France. This can make it hard to get people excited and aware of what is included to grow the club to a sustainable number – so if I was starting again I would put international cut-off’s a week earlier (now I split into two packing sessions, and will send a first batch of any international orders that have come in a week earlier).
Understanding the supply of all elements before launching. In the first month I had everything ready to go & just needed to pick up envelopes – easy right? Would you believe that I could not find one store in Petone that sold coloured envelopes? I had part of the vision for what makes this special is that every order is packed with love and care- plain white envelopes did not fit that goal! One stationary shop offered to order some in, but I ended up having to get them online & hope that they arrived in time! Thankfully it all worked out, but next time I would not launch a product until I had everything in place.
The top three things I think have worked out really well:
I have mapped the topic for the first 12 months out, so while I don’t have all the art completed, there is much less pressure on the creative side so I can just enjoy it.
Preparing a small number of additional sets from the club, so when I get new subscribers they are able to “catch up” on the volumes they missed out on.
Being open to members that they are able to share feedback on what they like and don’t like. I have been able to make small, easy improvements this way, that I know are what people want. An example is that I thought printing on thicker paper was more luxurious, but a member told me that it doesn’t feel like a letter and they don’t like the way the ink looks on the folds – I now use a lighter paper which is great as it’s cheaper & I am not wasting money on something people actually don’t want!
My personal wins:
I have really focused in on understanding what makes me unique & am starting to get a handle on the imposter syndrome that creeps in whenever I turn my back!
I am officially turning up in google searches – they emailed yesterday to say they have now sent 10 people my way!
And last but far from least; Every. Single. Customer. I do not exaggerate when I say I JUMP FOR JOY with each new order. I half expected my Mum to be my only customer, but I have strangers on the other side of the planet reading my letters. Each one of you means the world to me, and I am so glad to have you as my Pals – thank you for being here!
That’s all for this update, but I will endeavour to make this a regular thing!
xoxo,
Cassie
