New Direction

After what has been a very busy start to this year, I'm having to reevaluate how I run my shop. I am certainly grateful for the recent success and flood of sales. However, I am just one person. One person, with three needy small children at home. I do want my shop to grow. For me, this is not just a hobby or something I do for fun. I want my business to succeed. I just need a more sustainable way to go about that. I can't sew fast enough to keep on top of the orders and having that backlog of 30+ dresses to make weighs on me greatly. The other issue with this backlog is that there is no time to create anything new. I thrive on design. The part of this that I enjoy, the part that gets me excited and truly fulfilled, is the design part.

After a couple of illnesses swept through my house, the backlog of orders really became an issue. Thankfully, most of my customers have been incredibly patient and understanding, but I hate to make them  wait even longer than they were expecting.

I put the shop on hiatus for what was supposed to be two weeks to get caught up. During that hiatus, the family got sick again. So, I extended it another week. This made me do a lot of thinking, trying  to come up with a way to stay on top of new orders and be able to design new things.

I have decided that I am going to transition the shop to primarily ready-to-ship items. I will have a small section of made to order dresses for my best sellers that are very time consuming to make, like this one:

I plan to start making the ready to ship as soon as I finish my last few orders. I sketched out several new designs that I'm really excited about! The plan is to make 4 of each design in sizes 2T, 3T, 4T, and 5T as those four sizes made up about 95% of my sales this year. Smaller or larger sizes can be made by special request if the fabric is still available. Each week I will debut a new dress in the shop, with 4 ready to ship! Woohoo! I'll be blogging throughout the week with sneak peaks of what's to come, so you can get a jump on the new designs. I can't wait to get started!! (But first I need to finish up the 14 other dresses on my "to-make" list)

Such a weight off my shoulders! Now I'll be able to create new things, spend more quality time with my precious children, and even take some time off without feeling guilty!