Today I want to share a few things to consider if you feel like the retail price for your handmade line ends up too high, once you make “room” for both your costs and the wholesale price/margin.

Right before the holiday season, many of you are receiving or shipping final orders before you start to hunker down for a well-deserved hibernation for a few weeks. And let me be the first to say: PRIORITIZE HIBERNATION. Sink into it with all the cookies and family and naps you couldn’t possibly make time for over recent months.

Today we’re sharing tips for staying healthy and productive from two more powerful makers who know their stuff.

Regular people don’t realize how insane the pre-Christmas months are for makers. But: it’s true, they’re insane.

The sheer quantity of work -- in combination with the uncertainty and pressure of making the most of holiday sales -- adds up to quite the exhausting scenario.

The other day, I was coaching one of our newer makers by phone. To get to know her line, I flipped through her product listings to get a sense for what the jewelry was all about. Most of the pieces were ornate, creative, asymmetrical confections that were both vintage and fresh. But part of the line was simple brass jewelry. In our conversation, I asked how she felt about the brass pieces -- is that a direction she was planning to go in?

Mostly, growing your handmade wholesale business is not a place for cheats or tips or tricks. 

Mostly, growing wholesale is a long-term game where “boring” things like consistency, follow-up, respect, thoughtfulness, and gradual improvement of your product line are what work.

Since we spend all day everyday working with makers who are doing wholesale outreach, sometimes we’ll come across a fun tip that just is so simple and works so well that we think, “Gosh, I wish everyone knew about that.” 

SugarSky is one a maker brand that has found the elusive balance of being very well-respected by peers and customers alike — but also scaling pretty quickly in smart ways.

So we decided to hop on the phone to hear how her business has evolved. What she shared was really inspiring, very actionable, and sometimes surprising.

This year, I was invited to speak about growing your handmade wholesale business at Makers Summit (by Makers Collective, in Greenville, South Carolina.) It was exciting, since I really admire the Makers Collective folks and the authentic, thoughtful way they do things. But I had some reservations, because it's hard to take time away from work and life to do something that may be awesome or may be meh.

In 2006, I was living in New York City and going to yoga a lot. I was going through a hard time, so yoga class served as a refuge, exercise, and social connection.

One day, as I walked out of class, I saw a stack of books for sale by the cash register. The handwritten sign next to the stack said the book was a memoir by one of the yoga studio’s attendees. I figured the book was terrible, obviously just displayed because the author went to yoga at the studio. But I bought it anyway because my life doldrums were such that going to an actual bookstore or library wasn’t happening. As the cashier ran my credit card, she mentioned that the next day, the author was doing a reading and Q&A at the studio. Since I’d be at yoga anyway, I decided to go.

We asked some of the makers that we work with for their advice. They thought about the early days of growing their handmade wholesale business and sifted through their experiences for the single piece of advice they think is most crucial.

Here’s what they said…