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Inspiration & Ideas, Growing Wholesale Emily Kerr-Finell Inspiration & Ideas, Growing Wholesale Emily Kerr-Finell

5 Easy (But High Impact) Fixes For How You Tell Your Story

So much of running a creative business boils down to words on a page. What you write in your outreach to stores, social media captions, wholesale marketplace listings, “about” page, and other materials are where the rubber meets the road. These are the places where your vision and dream and work touch the people who can support that work.

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Inspiration & Ideas Emily Kerr-Finell Inspiration & Ideas Emily Kerr-Finell

How 7 Business Owners Bucked the COVID Failure Fallacy

A few afternoons per week, I sit with a phone and a cup of tea and do coaching calls with folks across the country. And with each new person that comes on the line, there is a dramatically different experience. Some of the people I talk to are struggling financially, emotionally, and spiritually. Other makers are bright with their excitement and can’t believe how much they are thriving right now. The contrast is striking.

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Inspiration & Ideas, Wholesale In a Box HQ Emily Kerr-Finell Inspiration & Ideas, Wholesale In a Box HQ Emily Kerr-Finell

Announcing: One Mill School!

When I was a kid, I went to a really unusual school.

It was called The Susquehanna School and I loved it so much that sometimes I would get up early, get dressed, and then lie back down in my bed, waiting for my Dad to be ready to drive me to school.

There were no desks. No grades. No textbooks. Our days were spent pursuing projects we were deeply passionate about, with a vibrant community supporting us, and wise teachers guiding us. For instance, if you loved knitting, teachers would guide you to explore the history of wool production, how to knit a sweater, and the math required to mix dyes.

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Inspiration & Ideas, Growing Wholesale Emily Kerr-Finell Inspiration & Ideas, Growing Wholesale Emily Kerr-Finell

My Best Advice, Whether You’re Thriving or Completely Deflated

Whatever you are facing right now, you likely feel a large amount of stress and a lack of clarity. You feel pressure to reinvent what you are doing in your business but don’t have the support to make that happen. I believe that for most business owners, COVID-19 has created an unfamiliar and disorienting economy and landscape. It’s not a time when you can simply do what you’ve always done. But I also believe -- based on what I am seeing from the business owners we serve -- that this landscape is one you can succeed in with the right tools.

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Inspiration & Ideas, Growing Wholesale Emily Kerr-Finell Inspiration & Ideas, Growing Wholesale Emily Kerr-Finell

14 Parts of Your Story You're Probably Not Telling (But Should)

People are people. So whether you’re selling to a mom in Idaho, a 20-year-old in New York City, or a store owner in San Diego, they will buy from you because both of these conditions are met:

  1. Their head is sold. It is crystal-clear (with no effort on their part) what you are selling, for how much money, and under what terms; and those facts work for them.

  2. Their heart is sold. Your story, journey, or line makes them feel inspired, moved, or excited.

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Growing Wholesale, Inspiration & Ideas Emily Kerr-Finell Growing Wholesale, Inspiration & Ideas Emily Kerr-Finell

Some Tips if You're Deciding Whether to Pitch Stores Right Now

It’s kind of a hard time to be a human being right now… and it’s definitely a hard time to run a business. As we wrote about last week, many of our makers have seen 60-90% of their income disappear, almost overnight. Some well-respected stores have closed and others are struggling on a day-to-day basis. Even if you’re seeing sales, you’re likely struggling to plan, or source materials, or run your business in a time of uncertainty.

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5 Observations about Makers, Product Businesses, and Wholesale in a COVID World

As a country, we’ll be experiencing the effects (and after-effects) of COVID for a long time to come. Most of us have faced severe upheaval to our lives, businesses, and income and that isn’t changing anytime soon. Further, many of us are engaged in a reckoning around race, police, and our vision for our communities in the US. If you are struggling to balance a reinvention of your work alongside caregiving or 24-hour-a-day parenting or attending to the deep hurt in the world and in yourself, you are not alone.

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Inspiration & Ideas, Wholesale In a Box HQ Emily Kerr-Finell Inspiration & Ideas, Wholesale In a Box HQ Emily Kerr-Finell

The Questions We’re Asking Around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

As a team and as a company, we say again (and will keep saying): Black lives matter. Black makers matter. Black store owners matter. Black communities matter. Black stories matter. ⁠ ⁠

The issues, dynamics, and histories being spotlighted right now are of deep importance to each of us on the Wholesale In a Box team. Structural violence and racism touch every person and institution in our country -- and so it is appropriate that recent weeks have been marked by deep emotion and turmoil. It’s also Pride Month -- a time that is both a celebration of our LGBTQIA+ community and also demands greater reflection and engagement and energy from all of us.

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Inspiration & Ideas, Wholesale In a Box HQ Emily Kerr-Finell Inspiration & Ideas, Wholesale In a Box HQ Emily Kerr-Finell

The Books On My Nightstand During Self-Isolation

In the first few weeks of COVID self-isolation, I couldn’t concentrate on reading even the fluffiest of novels. That worked fine because our library was closed, I’m not into reading books on a device, and I couldn’t bring myself to spend money ordering books from Amazon that wouldn’t arrive for several weeks.

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Inspiration & Ideas, Wholesale In a Box HQ Emily Kerr-Finell Inspiration & Ideas, Wholesale In a Box HQ Emily Kerr-Finell

We're.... starting a podcast!

We’re big podcast fans over here — they are such a beautiful medium to connect to others in a personal, deep way. And so, at a moment when we all might need a little more inspiration and a little more company, we’re bringing you our new podcast! It's called Making Do and it’s creative inspiration for makers growing businesses in lean times.

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