Posts in Latest Posts
Ultimate 2-Step Pricing Strategy for Your Leatherwork

One of the biggest challenges that new leather business owners have is pricing their work.

It’s a challenge for good reason. There are many different ways that you can price your leatherwork and determining which of these strategies you will use depends on your business model, who your audience and ideal customer is and who you are serving.

There are more than a handful of people on youtube and other blogs all over the internet telling you that their way to price is the best way to price. But who should you believe? Which pricing method is actually right for your leather business?

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The Quickest Way to a Profitable Leathergoods Business

A lot of leathersmiths make the mistake of trying to build a leather business by making leathergoods that they like to make and then trying to sell said leathergoods to anyone and everyone that will listen.

But the problem with this is that your focus is on what YOU like to make and NOT what your customer needs or wants.

Your focus is on you when it needs to be on your customer.

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Monthly Planning: Take Charge of Your Month and Get Stuff Done in Your Leather Business

Have you ever started to get a panicked feeling from looking at your to-do list, realizing that you haven’t accomplished anything yet this month? So then you start going through it frantically, looking for the EASIEST tasks that you can complete just so you can make yourself feel productive and like you’ve accomplished something this month?

Instead of doing this, what we need is a plan to get your small leathergoods business tasks prioritized so that you’re working on the most important and impactful tasks (the ones that are going to actually move the needle) done first.

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Building Your Dream Leather Business in Three Steps

Have you ever heard that saying, “throw it at the wall until something sticks?” Meaning lets try ALL OF THE THINGS until we finally find a thing that seems to work. Yea, that’s basically how I started my online handmade business ten years ago. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, let alone how to make a business strategy so I just figured this is how you do it, right? You do ALL OF THE THINGS until something works. Well that’s ONE WAY you can choose to run a business, sure (I hope you like frustration!) but there’s a better way…

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Are You Falling into the Trap of Turning Your Hobby into a Hustle?

I came across an article a few weeks ago in one of the many handmade business and marketing focused Facebook groups that I belong to. The article was titled, The Modern Trap of Turning Hobbies Into Hustles.

Two things immediately got my attention.

The first thing that caught my attention was the title of this article. The Modern Trap of… Trap??

Starting a small business to help support me financially as well as provide the freedom from the 9-5 has been anything but a trap for me!

Are you falling into this modern trap?

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The 3 Types of People You Must Be Following On Instagram

Does who you follow on Instagram really matter?

Should you be following your friends, family and those awesome people who post photos of their lunch and their pets?

OR

could you be using a more strategic follow strategy?

The answer is yes, it does matter and there is absolutely a strategy behind who you follow on Instagram and it’s quite simple.

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3 Strategies to Boost your Leather Business in 2019

Have you ever looked at your competition and thought to yourself, “I make the same kind of leathergoods as they do and yet I can’t seem to make one sale!”

That’s because you’re missing one of the 3 keystones of running a successful handmade business. Once I started focusing on these 3 key elements of my business I saw more sales and I saw my business grow month after month.

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How to close out one year and make room for the next year - (New Years resolutions that actually stick.)

When you reflect on the past year you can see not only what worked but also what you liked doing. Building a business is hard work but it doesn’t have to be painful to be successful, right? Otherwise you might as well go and work for someone else. Reflecting on our business allows you to pivot and change course so that you’re always creating a business that you love as well as being successful.

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How To Price Your Leatherwork for Profit

Whether you’re  currently selling your work or you have plans to start selling your work, the fear and frustration behind product pricing is real.

A lot of leatherworkers don’t know where to start when pricing their products so they guess or they ask people in a Facebook group what they would pay for a certain product.

These are BIG mistakes for a few reasons.

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Things to Know Before Buying Leather Hides

It can be really overwhelming for the beginner leather worker to know where they should purchase leather from for a number of reasons. Budget is usually the biggest concern.

I reached out to a few of my favorite leather suppliers and asked them all the same question...

What do you think is the most important thing that a beginner leatherworker should keep in mind when purchasing leather?

Check out their responses in no specific order in the post.

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5 Steps to Creating a Custom Zipper for LeatherWork

Have you ever wanted to create a custom sized zipper for a leatherworking project that you've been working on?
Maybe you were making your own leather zipper pouch or dopp kit or a leather purse or handbag with a zipper closure. 

Creating your own custom sized zipper can save you a lot of time that would otherwise be spent hunting for the right sized zipper. 

Using a custom zipper can also save you money because purchasing a roll of zipper tape instead of individual zippers is cheaper if you’re going to be using zippers in a lot of your leatherwork.

Using zippers in your leatherwork doesn’t have to be intimidating.

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How To Get Started With Traditional Leatherwork

This is one of the most frequently asked questions and luckily the answer is pretty easy.

You need to know what type of leatherwork that you're interested in and then we can talk about tools and materials that you'll need.

So if you're not sure what tools you need, what the different types are of leatherwork are or how best to choose your leather as a beginner, then keep reading.

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Leather Beast's 1st Year - How Did It Go?

It's December 12th and we are about 2 weeks away from closing out the year.

Everyone is super busy getting ready for the holidays.

You might be trying to wrap up some projects that you have going on at work, and doing last minute holiday gift shopping AND trying to bake all of those cookies for that silly cookie exchange meetup that you're kicking yourself for agreeing to. (hopefully this isn't you)

Or maybe you're not stressing at all, and instead starting to reflect back on 2017, on everything that happened and on everything that was supposed to happen that didn't happen.

The end of the year is the perfect time for this kind of self reflection and I wanted to share the exciting details of this past year and the 1st year of Leather Beast with you.

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What Does My Ideal Customer Want or Need?

Now that you know who your ideal customer is and what they're like, you can begin to answer the next question which is, “What is it that my ideal audience needs or wants”?

By developing something with the needs and desires of your audience in mind, you will set yourself up to be able to create something that you know your audience will respond to and ultimate be interested in purchasing.

If you really want to set yourself up for the best chance of selling your products, try and solve a problem or satisfy a desire that they have.

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