Last year we saw lots of new artists and crafters getting into the world of epoxy resin. Some of these people took advantage of all the learning tools we’ve created including the information in our weekly blogs, from our weekly YouTube tutorials and our online courses, meaning that we saw a rapid growth in many peoples resin skills in a relatively short time.
With all the information available and how easy Craft Resin can be to use, this means that you can go from complete novice, to a resin artist creating incredible projects in a matter of days/weeks/months!
This means that many of the people who started creating with resin last year, or the year before will now be creating resin art/projects that are of a quality and a level where they could easily start to sell them, essentially starting your own resin businesses.
And let’s face it, with the increase of costs of most things in the world right now and heading into a recession, then an additional income would be very handy for many people right now. Could you do with earning a little bit more right now?
When we start talking about starting a resin “business” we know that many people look at the word business and instantly get put off. They think of a business as something that will take up a lot of time, financial input and resources, that how could they start a business with no previous business background or education.
Generally we as humans also don’t have a massive belief in our own abilities, and lots of us are actually suffering with quite low self worth. So thinking about becoming a business owner can be a very scary concept.
This is the first hurdle you will have to overcome, your mindset and your beliefs about what YOU can and could ever achieve!
If you can push past this part, and yes we say push because it won’t be easy getting past your self limiting beliefs, then the rest, the business skills you’ll need to learn to start a resin business are actually pretty simple.
And if you take away the pressure of having to go from where you are today creating resin, to earning a large resin business where you solely rely on that to pay your mortgage, then every single one of you reading this can easily start a small resin business that can be worked in your spare time till you do grow it gradually to a level where you can use it to pay all the bills.
So if the previous few paragraphs have caught your attention, and a little thought has started to grow in your mind about wanting to start your own resin business, read on. In this blog we’ll share how you can start a small resin business that you can then scale up as you go along.
1 - Why would you like to start a resin business?
It’s important to get clear on why you’d like to start a resin business before you do. Starting a business can be simple, but there will be difficult times as with anything in life. When times do get harder, then your why for starting your business will help you through, it will help you get up each day and work extra around your busy life and help you stay focused.
So grab a piece of paper (old school), or a laptop, and get writing your why. Some examples could be:
I’m so stressed with my current career, I really want to use my creative skills to start my own business so eventually I can quit my job and work on my passion.
The costs of all our bills have gone up and now myself and my husband barely have any money to survive, let alone have any fun. I want to start a resin business so I can build up some extra money and treat us to date nights.
My child wants to go to swimming lessons, but I’m struggling as a single parent to afford the bills let alone anything else. I want to start my resin business so that I can pay for their swimming lessons, but then also show my child that there are always more options to create additional incomes if you’re willing to put in some extra work in the evenings.
I absolutely love creating, creative ideas flow to me throughout the day and I sometimes find it hard to concentrate on my computer at work! I want to start a resin business so that I can get some of this creativity out of me, and who knows one day I might even be able to work creatively with resin full time, so then I won’t have to sit at a computer for 8 hours a day.
By all means use some of the examples above, but put your own spin on them, really connect to the reason you’d like to start a resin business. And be as selfish as you’d like. It doesn’t have to be for anyone else, but for your own reasons.
2 - What sort of resin business would you like to start?
At this planning stage it’s really great to also add in some vision for what sort of business you’d like to create. Vision will help you get excited about the possibilities and for what you can create with this. It will help you focus on what business you’d like to create too. The clearer we get on what we want, the more we attract to help us get what we want.
Try not to play too small here, give yourself permission to go crazy!
Yes you might need to start small and create a business that you can run alongside your other commitments, but 5 years, 10 years down the line, what business would you like to create then?
Some questions to help:
What size business would you like?
What would you like to sell?
What customers would you like to attract?
What experience would you like to give your customers?
What branding would you like to create?
What will a typical day look like for you in your business now?
What will a typical day look like in your business 5 years form now?
What would you like to earn from your resin business in the next year?
What would you like to earn in your resin business in the next 5 years?
What time have you got currently to commit to your business?
How could you create more time to give to your business in your day?
Think of cutting back on the time you spend scrolling social media, or the time you spend watching Netflix, not just one episode but you know when you binge three or four in an evening. These are easy to create more time from, if you watch one series instead you’ll have so much more time, or if you set a timer of 30 mins scrolling, then put your phone down and get back to business.
Can you create your social media business content while you’re at your kids swimming lessons etc. There are always ways to create more time for business in your life, you’ll be surprised how much time you do have.
3 - What budget do you have to start your business?
Again we’re not going to be conquering the resin world in a day, so start with the budget you currently have, and know that as you grow this can be increased. But write down how much money you currently have that you could invest into:
Supplies
Sales Platforms
Marketing
You might have £20, you might have £200. The amount is irrelevant, because you’ll be starting the business that is right for you at the stage that you are currently at, so work with what you’ve got.
You do not need to go into debt to start a resin business, there are ways to market and sell your products for free, so if you currently don’t have any money for these don’t worry, we’ll cover these shortly. Spend the money you do have on a few supplies.
Chances are that if you have already been creating with resin to practice your resin skills and get better then you’ll probably also already have a lot of supplies, you might just need some more resin to create some inventory, you might need some money to purchase some different colourants so you can offer your customers some options.
Keep a record of everything you do purchase for your business, keep the receipts, keep track of it on a spreadsheet etc. This will make it easier for accounting reasons later down the line.
We won’t be giving any accounting advice as a brand because we are not experts, but there is lots of information you can research online which will help you learn what you have to keep track of as a business for tax reasons and what you can claim for. It might be a good idea to factor in the cost of an accountant at the start of your business journey if you can afford one as a business expense, as they will give you the very best advice and guidance.
4 - Sourcing your supplies:
As your business grows and you become more of a regular user of resin and other supplies, you may want to look into what different brands offer when it comes to the supplies you need.
At Craft Resin we offer a Subscription Service when you go to purchase our resin or Mica Powders. If you order regularly through this then you save 15% on each order that goes through automatically for you. You can set these to deliver the exact amount of resin you need, and you can up it if your demand grows. You can set the frequency for 1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks or 4 weeks, and change this if needed. And you can cancel at anytime, giving some notice if you need to.
Read more about our Subscription Service
Do your research on other items that you need and find the best deals out there, it’s worth setting aside some time at the start to do this as it can save you a lot of money in the long run.
5 - Create your inventory:
It can be a good idea to have some stock ready to go, but you need to be careful that you don’t make too much of an item that hasn’t got much demand for.
If you have been practising creating resin art then you will already have an idea what your supporters are liking, it’s the only way to test your market out by practising. The more you practise the better your work will be, the better your work is the more customers you’ll draw in. So keep practising till you have a high enough inventory to start selling.
If you are stuck on what you think would sell, use your social media to create polls on your products! This is a great interactive way to reach out to your potential customers and this gets them involved before you even start selling!
At this stage get snapping with your camera or phone while you are creating your inventory so you have lots of media to use later on. Having content to use on your social media channels makes sharing your work so much easier and makes people who are short on time more present online as you don’t have to spend time creating the resin creations first before posting.
6 - Set your prices:
Pricing your creations doesn’t have to be hard, all you really need to factor in is the cost of supplies you use for each piece and the time it’s taken you to create the items. You need to make sure you make a profit!
If you can’t soak up the shipping costs in the prices you offer, thats ok, people generally don’t mind these being added on at the checkout.
We do have another blog available about pricing your resin creations, so take a look at that if you need more help on this section:
7 - Choose your selling platform:
So far you’ve planned what you’d like for your business, you’ve got a budget set, and you’ve sourced your supplies. You have inventory ready to go and you have your work priced up. Now you need to choose a platform to sell your creations on.
At the very start this could be as simple as choosing to sell on your resin Instagram Page/Facebook Page. People could message you to purchase creations you share on there, and then they could bank transfer you the money to purchase them. You then create them, send them to them, done.
This can be a super simple way when starting out, but this will only really work for small amounts of orders. The more orders you get the more time will be taken up creating those orders, so you’ll need to think about a selling platform when you scale up. You could even do this from the start if you have the budget available to invest into a selling platform.
If you choose a platform like Etsy to sell your creations through, this can cost as little as £0.16 to publish a listing for a product and then no other money will be taken till an order is placed by a customer and then you’re looking at about a 6.5% transaction fee on the sale price. These figures might differ at the time you are reading this blog. This is a relatively cheap way to sell your creations at first, however factor in these transaction fees when thinking about the pricing of your projects.
As you go along you might want to get your own website created, this will cost a bit more money for the creation and the hosting of the website, so we wouldn’t recommend doing this at the start. But instead this is an option for future growth of your business.
Our advice would be to start selling on the platform that you’d feel most comfortable on, or at least you could learn how to use after a bit of research easily.
When considering what to use take some pressure off thinking that you have to get everything perfect. Starting a business is a constant learning curve, if something works well great, keep doing it, if you try something and it doesn’t then learn from that and try something else.
Just know you will need to give sales time. Just because you’ve shared one post on instagram about what you’re selling and your whole family has been invited to your page, doesn’t mean anyone will buy straight away. In order for people to buy your creations they have to have a need for them.
8 - Marketing:
Just like chasing your selling platform you’ll want to think about which marketing platforms you’d like to use too. At the start you won’t have the funds to start advertising your creations in big ways and so your marketing platforms will act as your advertising channels.
Marketing platforms can be:
Facebook Page/Groups
TikTok
Pintrest
YouTube
Word of mouth
Some of the above are completely free, others might cost slightly. Some are easier to set up than others and some will be the channels you’re more comfortable using because you already have a personal account on these.
To start with we’d suggest picking one or two, learning how to maximise your advertising through these channels, then adding more later on. Remember you are a one man band, you are the creator, business person, logistics, customer support, marketing team - You will have a lot of tasks to complete, keep them streamlined and simple at first.
Head to the Blog section on our website and click the #Business under the search bar for lots of marketing information when you are ready to sell your creations.
Consistently building and marketing your business slowly over time will be a lot better than going crazy at the start, then feeling overwhelmed and burned out. Slow but steady progress will be the difference between creating a successful resin business, and not.
9 - Align with a bigger brand & collaborate with other artists:
Just because you’re starting your own resin business does not mean that you have to do everything alone. Neither does it mean that every other resin business and artist is a threat to your own businesses success. There are enough people in the world who can purchase resin creations to make everyones resin business a success - And there are still people in this world who haven’t even heard of epoxy resin creations!
By aligning with brands that are bigger than your own and collaborating with other artists you spread the reach of your own brand and you get your business seen by more people. The more people who see your business the more potential customers you attract.
So find brands to align with, like us! At Craft Resin you can become a brand ambassador and not only earn commissions when you share the resin brand you use with your audience, as well as sharing your resin creations with them, but you can also add us as collaborators on your Instagram posts. By doing this your posts will also get shared to our audience of over 60,000 people.
You could also earn discounts that other customers may not as a brand ambassador. Check out our blog sharing the information about our referral code/links for more information:
We’ve also recently noticed several of our brand ambassadors joining forces and becoming cheerleaders for each others brands, which we’ve noticed is helping to grow their own whilst creating other awesome connections with resin artists. When you hit a bad day, or an issue, guess who’s going to be there online to help you solve the issue or lift you up and inspire you to keep going? These artists you’ve collaborated with!
So make friends with brands who sell your supplies, with artists who will cheer you along, and with your customers and your audiences. Collaborations, working together even in the online space is the future of getting ahead in small business.
10 - Move out of your own way!
Now you’ve read all you need to do and consider to get started with your resin business the chances are your mind is going crazy with either excitement or dread!
If it’s dread, you’re overthinking it, you’re thinking there’s too much to do, where do I start, do I have enough time etc again - Stop it!
Release all doubts and just start with step one - write down your why.
Moving out of your own way is going to be the catalyst to starting your resin business and creating the business that you want to create. You are more powerful, successful, and a more incredible resin artist than you think you are You CAN do this!
If reading the above has made you excited then yes! This is awesome, we can’t wait to see you flourish with your own resin business in 2023. Keep in touch with us and let us know how you get on, you never know we might be able to help you along the way.
Topic Of The Week Giveaway:
We have attached a giveaway to these Topic Of The Week announcements on our Instagram platform, this is helping us to spread the knowledge of how to use epoxy resin further, but also enabling anyone who helps us share this information to win free resin and mica powders.
To enter the weekly giveaway please see the latest post #CRWEEK3 on our Instagram feed/highlights and follow the instructions to enter:
When you start an epoxy resin business you might start small, but you never know where it will take you! We can't wait to see so many of you starting your own businesses and feel empowered in 2023 by doing so!
Team Craft Resin
