Grow Your Handmade Business: How to Envision, Develop, and Sustain a Successful Creative Business - Softcover

If you've decided to make 2013 the year you turn your crafting passion into a moneymaking venture, be sure to add Kari Chapin's Grow Your Handmade Business to your required-reading list. --Jay McCarroll, fashion designer, fabric designer, Project Runway season 1 winner Whether you sell your art out of a swanky studio, populate your Etsy shop with stuff you make at your kitchen table, or just dream about doing something along those lines, Kari Chapin has a word of advice: plan. As is a business plan! In Grow Your Handmade Business, you'll learn what creative people like yourself need to plan for in turning a hobby into a business. The book is readable, approachable, and supplemented by tips, tricks, and confessions from 24 other entrepreneurially minded folks. --Lisa Congdon, artist, illustrator, author of A Collection a Day It's an essential addition to an indie biz owner's bookshelf! --Hobby Farm Home This book will help take your business from the kitchen table to fulfilling your individualized dream of a fulfilling, meaningful, and lucrative creative business. --Bead & Button Thiswonderful book cheers you on and coaches you on how to make a livelihood from your passion, including stories from other creative people, their struggles, successes, and advice. That's not all, she also covers the business side, including developing budgets, strategies, and also funding. If you've always dreamed of having your own craft business, or already have one and are looking into the next step, this is definitely worth checking out. --Miss Modish The style of this book is crisp and refreshing. Chapin's thoughts are invitingly readable and each chapter includes sound, practical advice from the Creative Collective as well. If you have ever wondered if you could actually make a living at your creative craft, Chapin has a wealth of answers for you. --San Francisco/ Sacramento Book Review Kari Chapin covers a variety of essential business areas such as mapping out a business plan, expanding production and distribution, finding funding, and addressing legal matters. Ms Chapin's marketing background and her "can do" attitude provides craftsmen the tools to grow their hobby into a successful business. Easy to read and well organized, this book provides practical advice for getting started or how to grow an established business. If your goal is move your creative business out of your dining room, then let this be your guide. --Living Crafts Kari has cut through the puffed up, polysyllabic language and posturing that most business books spin that makes it all seem like some secret society. She makes the big stuff all seem doable. Plus if you are still stuck, she introduces you to a whole bunch of people who can help. --Northshore Women's Lifestyle Crafters and artists or those thinking about turning a hobby into a career will find sound, practical advice here. --Handweaver's Guild of America Carefully defining such differences as "goals" versus "intentions" and "business" versus "personal," Chapin draws the reader up through successive layers of consciousness, moving steadily toward that crucial juncture where what you do and how you think are absolutely in harmony. It is right at this point where you can "grow your business," just as if you were tending a garden. There's no mystery to the process, just a vigilant management of many tasks, all of which work together toward simple sustainability.

This is a complete guide for the creative hobbyist who wants to take the next step and quit his or her day job to make a living from a creative passion. Part coaching handbook, part practical nuts-and-bolts guidebook to developing a business plan that will work and be sustainable. Kari Chapin has spent the past 15 years working in marketing, publicity, and community relations and as a buyer, crafter, and stylist. She is the author of "The Handmade Marketplace" and offers a popular line of e-courses.