Want To Start A Sewing Business, I Live In The Country. Any Ideas How I Can Get Customers?
4 January 2010
I sew very well and have a lot of experience, but since I live 20 miles from closest town I am not sure how I can get customers. I have thought about advertising that I will come to them or do I sew a product and then try to market it? I love heirloom sewing like christening gowns and infants clothes. I also do embellishing like embroidery.
what about selling online on sites like
http://www.etsy.com
http://www.artfire.com
custom work is hard to find and quite costly…
maybe put up flyers or pics in local churches bulliten boards?
I sale here there and everywhere…. local art sales, galleries, boutiques, consignment stores willing to sell new items, craft fairs, farmers markets, etc.
Might want to join the quiltropolis group, “sew biz” — it’s an email group of people who do all sorts of professional sewing. http://www.quiltropolis.net/maillists/ma…
If you’re in the US, you probably do NOT want to get involved in sewing for children 12 and under until the CPSIA stuff gets ironed out. That law has big, scary teeth and was not particularly well thought out for sewn products. See some of the posts here: http://www.fashion-incubator.com/?s=cpsi…
Making a product and marketing it is also a good idea — but do read at the fashion-incubator.com site — there is excellent information there, and the book is even better.
Have you considered teaching? Not being able to find a teacher seems to be one of the more common questions here.
Good luck!
Some of the ways you can advertise your business are:
1. Post an article about your business on related blogs and get free visitors and back links
2. Submitting to directories
3. Free classifieds
4. Forums
Send an email with more information about your business to e@culx.net for free help on finding new customers and increasing sales.
Hi Carol,
I used to make dog coats, now I know that this is a little different to what you do, but these were specialized dog coats, I had the same problem like you, where do I find customers, so what I did was I put up a whole lot of pictures of the dogs coats I was making on ebay.. and guess what, I was selling more dog coats that you can poke a stick at…
You are making a VERY SPECIALIZED ITEM…that people are wanting, so take some pictures of the patterns (picture of the finish item), of the dresses and christening gowns, baby clothes etc, and put them up on ebay.. and believe me you will get so many customers you wont be able to keep up..
If you dont want to go that route, then maybe a website to sell your items… but you would need some help (dont worry it wont cost you anything) go and have a look at mack’s site, he will teach you how to get this business off the ground so to speak… He did mine… click on each video, its free… You never know
Go and check it out here
http://www.MaverickMoneyMakersAu.com
I think that you going to them is a great idea. If your work is the quality I think it is, word of mouth will get around quick. Make yourself up some nice fliers and leave them everywhere. Also ask some of the local merchants if you could leave samples or something like that. good luck!