Overview Contrary to what you've heard, crochet + knitting are summer sports. If you only start creating in the fall, you're actually capping your business growth. Between the cooler weather and the approaching holidays, the majority of your revenue will come in Q4, and the only way to capitalize on it is to plan ahead. Planning (weekly) There are only so few things you can get done in a single week, but as a creative there are likely a million ideas floating around in your mind. Both are equally important realities, best managed in separate places. To determine how to plan each week, we need to first determine how to store away the million ideas in a tidy, consumable space. Your Dumping Ground Let's start first with the dumping of all your ideas. You need a place to organize the ideas that come to you when... ...you're trying to sleep at night and that new stitch comes to mind. ...you're mid shower and your loofa inspires some new bath collection ...you're strolling through Zara and that sweater taper inspires a new scarf. ...you're binge watching your favorite show and the main character's home decor inspires a new wall hanging collection. You can create this "dumping ground" either digitally or on paper, however you best process information. (I personally setup spreadsheets in Airtable.) In either medium, the goal is to pre-establish categories to help organize, group, and visualize your ideas. Without categories, your ideas can easily overwhelm you and never leave the dumping ground as a result. Categories also help you see your general biases towards a certain category, as well as gaping holes in others. Once I set up my categories, I realized that I was channeling 80% of my brainstorming into the scarf category. This is already a highly saturated market, highly seasonal, and a difficult category to innovate in. Because I had pre-established categories for home decor and Christmas, I was able to see the gaping holes. As a result, I went on to develop this wall hanging bundle (home decor category: ✔️), which turned out to be one of my highest grossing pattern launches to date. A post shared by DeBrosse™ (@debrosse_nyc) on May 7, 2018 at 10:51am PDT Your categories can and should vary, but here are my go-to's: Home Blankets Pillows Sweaters Hats/Headbands Scarves/Cowls Holiday (Because I also offer seller resources, I have additional categories for downloads, kits, and Masterclass content. Review your own brand offerings, and create a dumping ground that corresponds respectively.) Addition tip: Create a Pinterest inspo board that corresponds to each category. For the categories that fill up the fastest, be extra careful when moving forward on these ideas. If you can think of these ideas quickly, they're likely not going to be your strongest products. Spend your time really trimming down to the best-of-the-best, often times merging multiple ideas into one (epic) design. A single, outstanding product can often outsell multiple "okay" products. It requires a little more up-front work, but has a better long-term payoff. Your Weekly Routine Now that you have a dumping ground for more ideas than you'll ever be able to realistically pull off, you'll need to implement a routine for executing on those ideas. You likely already have a system for planning out your week, so this application will simply integrate the dumping ground. Calendars, by nature, beg for time-sensitive content. It's easy to put your 2pm meeting on your calendar, but it becomes much more challenging to put the more abstract, longer-term goals on paper. As your own boss, it's critical that you cultivate a habit of moving content from your dumping ground onto your calendar each week. By keeping your weekly tasks and your multitude of ideas separate, you can properly prioritize when ideas should be executed, but also be sure that no ideas slip through the cracks just because you can't tackle them this week. This allows you to make time-sensitive decisions, rather than executing under the weight of an ever-growing idea list. I personally lay out my week in the Moleskin Weekly Planner. The left side of the page lays out the days of the week, and I'll assign any time specific tasks (this would include something as specific as a 2pm meeting, but would also include something more goal-oriented like a Friday product launch). On the right side is just lined paper which I'll use to jot down non-time sensitive tasks for the week (ie. a pattern update, a story announcement). After all the non-negotiables are in, I'll consult my "dumping ground" and pull out the project(s) that would be most fitting for that week. Most fitting might be defined by: Season (launching home decor in the summer) Time-sensitive (wanting to launch the Masterclass prior to busy season for sellers) Capacity-sensitive (I only have 3-4 spare hours, what could I reasonably pull off, or at least make a dent) Mood-sensitive (because I have these other mentally taxing activities this week, I might just work on inventory rather than executing on a new idea) Projecting (yearly) In addition to designing new products, you'll also need to produce inventory on both existing and new products. It is up to you how you divide your time between the two, and there is no right answer or magical formula. This is a great time to consider your shop goals, and be intentional to diversify your product offerings. One year, my goal was simply to sell more finished products, so I spent a great deal of my time on inventory, with new products getting developed only if/when an idea arrived. The year after, I actually wanted to sell fewer finished products and more downloadable resources, and thus dedicated more time on intentional research and development, and very minimal on inventory. Give yourself the freedom to reevaluate this structure at any time. Determining a Path Forward One of the best ways to figure out your next step, is to review your past steps and establish what worked and what didn't. Your shop data can tell you this, but it's also important to recall which parts of the business: are the most and least enjoyable make the most and least money utilize your strongest and weakest skills As your own boss, you get to adjust to your liking. Be honest with yourself and measure your products and offerings against a series of values that will help you determine what to keep and what to cut. As a general rule: keep your best sellers, cut slow movers, expand on categories that do well as a whole, and look for gaps in your offerings where customer needs/desires are possibly left on the table. Inventory A major point of contention for all knitwear sellers is the battle between inventory and made-to-order. The risk with inventory is of course that it could be leftover at the end of the year, but the risk with made-to-order is greater in my opinion. If you operate your business on made-to-order, you are capping your sales based on your physical hours during busy season. If you can only knit 100 hats during November and December, you won't be able to grow your business past those 100 sales. If however, you knit 200 hats by October, then in November and December you're sharing your work (via Instagram, collaborations, markets), and you've now opened yourself up to the possibility of selling 200 pieces. These numbers are small for the sake of example, but in years past I've gone into October with 1500+ pieces in stock. A post shared by DeBrosse™ (@debrosse_nyc) on Jun 2, 2017 at 11:49am PDT So how do you know what, and how much to make? Pre-determining inventory is not a perfect science, but I have developed a tool that serves as an incredibly helpful guide. It uses sales data from the previous year to make growth projections, uniquely tailored to your shop. download now How to organize the year Being ready for busy season takes an entire year's effort. The biggest mistake is to work on your shop during busy season. Here is my recommended progression of work: ... January is a perfect time to assess your busy season since it is still fresh on your mind. Did it go as planned? Did instant downloads exceed finished products? Did old stuff actually do better than new stuff? Make note of what moved quickest and slowest, and use these findings to set up your direction and goals for the year. (Note that direction and goals is referring to macro concepts like "build out a thorough collection of patterns" or "create inventory all year" or "expand into supplies" etc.) ... February often marks the tail end of the winter buying season, so now is a great time to offload any remaining inventory. Do a sale to specifically move the things that you do not want to sell again this year. Products that don't do well can bring down the overall quality and vibe of your shop. We often assume that to make our shop better we need to add stronger pieces, but a lot of times it's as simple and easy as pruning the weaker ones. ... March + April should begin to feel like the start of this year's shop. You've assessed what worked and didn't, offloaded the baggage, and are now pressing forward with your new direction. You're not done, and you don't have it all figured out yet, but you're getting your feet wet with the new plan. Additionally, the change of season offers the opportunity to launch a quick spring collection, and otherwise build out a few pieces that complement your winter collection. I don't put the same weight to these products because they don't quite have the same ROI as fall/winter, but they do provide the opportunity to generate year-round revenue. ... May is historically one of my slowest months, making it a great one for cleaning up the shop. This is a great time to revisit your branding, redo your photography, update your tone of voice within your listings, add to your about page, etc. ... June is a great time to take a break (not the whole month of course, but somewhere in here). Owning a small business comes with many joys, but it can always be improved upon, making it a mental weight year round. Business slows as people travel and enjoy the sunshine, making June a great time to take your own break. Log out of Instagram, put up a shop announcement that you're away, and spend some time recharging. ... July + August are hotter than ever, but fall is much closer than it feels. Many shoppers begin changing their wardrobe as early as September, so you'll want to be ready. Assess your progress towards the goals from this year: Have you made a great amount of inventory? Launched as many patterns as you had hoped? Updated your shop in the ways you planned? Use July to attend to overlooked tasks and tackle them. ... September and the beginning of fall usually inspire new ideas that don't as easily come to mind during the off-season. Give yourself a bit of freedom to deviate from the planned work, and invest some time in the ideas that are inspired by the change in season. Keep guardrails on these ideas knowing that they should be done by the start of October. For a new finished product launch, that does mean that the inventory will need to be built out as well. ... October marks the month that your goals should be largely met. All new products are launched, all rebranding work is in place, shipping costs/weights/packaging are accurate and tested, and you're transitioning from creation mode to seller mode. This means that instead of designing new products, you're now spending your time sharing those products on Instagram and elsewhere. ... In November, your primary focus is sharing your work, customer service, and shipping. If you've done your homework to date, you're actually doing the least amount of making at this time. November includes Black Friday and does not get cut short by Christmas, so it should actually mark your strongest revenue-generating month of the year. Note that if you are scrambling to make products to order at this time, you are not able to fully share and advertise your work. For example, if you are knitting a single scarf order, it is possible that in that same amount of time, you could have designed a well-crafted Instagram post that initiated the sale of six additional scarves. Oh snap 🎄 See what I did there? 👆🏻 ‘Tis the season. Lots of questions about Black Friday deals, so here’s the scoop: . ✖️ Entire shop goes on sale starting THURSDAY ✖️ FREE shipping on all US orders ✖️ 50% off ALL template downloads (whoa! 🙌🏻) ✖️ $2 patterns (stock uppp!) . All orders placed this weekend are guaranteed by Christmas 🎄❤️ Certain pieces/colors WILL sell out, so don’t get all turkey sleepy 😴 on me + roll in Monday night. . I can’t wait to see what you pick out (and then knit until my fingers fall off). xx A post shared by DeBrosse™ (@debrosse_nyc) on Nov 21, 2017 at 5:11pm PST ... December is a scramble, and largely reactionary in nature. Again, very little making should be taking place at this time. It's impossible to have perfectly anticipated your best and slowest sellers, the impromptu Etsy feature that was just blasted to millions, or a huge Instagram account regramming one of your posts. But you diligently planned ahead, and the time you've set aside for the surprises of December will now go towards managing these well-deserved successes. It's sunup to sundown, but you've worked all year for the returns that you'll earn this month. Make a mental note of the pain points as well as the surprise wins, and know that you'll sit down in January to pivot for an even stronger, more well-informed next year. Recommended reading: Big Dreams Daily Joys, Elise Blaha Cripe Pivoting (always) As important as it is to have a plan, it is also wise to recognize opportunities to pivot. My single greatest determination of when and where to pivot is as simple as this: What are people asking in comments and DMs? Whether people are asking how long it took you to learn to knit or which filter you use on Instagram, these are almost always opportunities to expand and diversify your business offerings. When someone is asking for information it indicates an unmet need and a waiting audience. Statistically speaking, selling new products to existing customers is a lesser challenge and more cost-effective, than acquiring new customers to purchase existing products. Stay vigilant, make note of common questions, and diligently look for ways to serve your following in a way that you are not currently doing. This Masterclass is quite literally a response to years of DMs requesting this type of content. What talents/skills/supplies are you being asked about that you're not currently offering to your audience?
