If you're thinking about starting a business selling polymer clay products stay on to watch this
video because that's my very first business that I started called Tiny Hands Jewelry.
And in this video, I'll share with you some unique things that I've
learned over the years that you should consider before.
You start your own shop. Hi,
my name is Mei Pak and I help makers artists
and designers make a living from selling their handmade products online.
So let's talk about the pros of starting a polymer clay based business.
The first is what really attracted me,
which is that the possibilities for what to make are endless because of the nature of polymer clay,
you can make in sculpt anything you can think
of and once you bake it in an oven it turns hard
and into a usable item whether it's a piece of jewelry.
Accessory a sculpture figurine art dolls
or wall decor a lot of polymer clay products tend to be decorative like that too.
It is so much fun to play with Clay.
If you're a creative person. It is very satisfying
and fulfilling to make something completely from scratch with your hands.
It's the best feeling ever three the materials
and supplies are relatively cheap and easy to find and buy most craft stores and online shops.
Sell polymer clay products
and like a 2 ounce bar of clay costs under three dollars
for you can do so many things with Clay you can mix it with other
materials to get different colors textures.
You can even turn it from like a pliable play dough consistency,
which its is its natural form to like a more creamy frosting type of consistency.
You can do mixed media art with it
and use it with other mediums to make something truly unique
and just really You can chop it roll it shape it free-form with your hands.
It's really quite a fun craft number five polymer clay is generally pretty light to ship.
So when it comes to charging
for shipping, you don't have a problem here in dealing with sky-high shipping prices.
Now, let's talk about the cons. One of the things I found to be challenging with polymer clay is
because it's such a versatile medium.
You will be tempted to make anything and everything out of it,
but it's important when you're starting a business. Enos to narrow down your Niche
and make something very specific
for a type of customer so it can be tricky to think about what that specific product is,
especially when you have so many options another challenges
while it's not the most time-consuming craft compared to something like
crocheting or knitting it can still be time consuming
and because it's just clay
and not something more valuable like
gold or silver jewelry the perceived value of it is never going
to be Super crazy high there's a fine line.
You have to walk between making a product that is priced appropriately for what it is.
So for example, you don't necessarily want to spend hours
and hours making a clay necklace that doesn't
have as high of a perceived value compared to say a similarly styled gold necklace
because then you can't price it appropriately and get paid for the time.
You spent making product Challenge number 3 durability can be an issue.
Shoe for a long time. I made the mistake of using the brand the Sculpey III
for clay mostly because it's so easy to use it's soft but not too soft.
But unfortunately, it's more brittle and not as durable as a brand like Primo.
There are different brands of clay
and new ones are being made every now
and then so do your due diligence to research and test out which one's work best for you next up.
I want it to share with you some of my favorite resources to learn more about polymer
clay from These are websites that really helped me out
when I was learning about different techniques.
Check out the Blue Bottle Tree by Ginger Davis almond.
She sure some really amazing in-depth blog post on how to use polymer clay polymer clay
Central also has a ton of community submitted free tutorials.
Some of my favorite YouTube channels are sugar charm shop.
Stephanie kill guest who used to have her own miniature food jewelry shop,
like tiny hands hers was called Petit flat polymer clay tutor and Polina.
Uh Creations, I love her miniature food work.
She's so talented. There are
so many other great channels to check out
and there definitely was in this many options when I first started out in terms of books.
I have almost every miniature food making polymer clay book out there.
My favorite RNG scars books which in my opinion are some of the best for making Miniatures,
but of course, there are also a ton of new books
for making other types of polymer clay items like beads jewelry
making foe Gemstones making fantasy creatures
and sculptures or learning caning methods.
So it really just depends on what your focus is now.
I wanted to share with you some tips specific to a business selling polymer clay products.
Number one really take your time to learn how the different materials react to each other.
For example, not every glue works.
Well with polymer clay if you're thinking about turning it into jewelry
because there really is no limit to
what you can do is Clay it can be a lot to learn at least that's how I I felt in
the beginning number to document everything
as much as possible specifically with color mixing the
challenge with working with Clay is that the cured
clay once you've baked it is not the same color as the raw clay.
So if you mix different colors together, it can be difficult to keep track
and reproduce it in the future.
So my recommendation and for my jewelry business is I jot down every
measurement of how much of each color I mixed together
so I don't have to He ran out from scratch every time which can be a super time-consuming process
when it comes to starting and promoting your shop all the same rules.
I heart on about all the time apply here have a strong brand great photos of your product.
Make sure you are strategic about your pricing set of a way for people to join your email list.
Once they come to your site
so you can continue to build a relationship with them
and to get traffic onto your site in the first place.
I'm a huge proponent of doing media outreach consistently
and at scale that means reaching out to other people who have large audiences
and then just ask them to feature you in exchange for free product.
So they can experience your work first hand.
The Trap here is that you get featured ones
and you think that's all you need to do know like with any other form of marketing you
need to get featured multiple times in a lot of places
for you to really get momentum,
but the kicker here is that all it takes is one really really great
feature to turn your business into an My success
for example,
if you've never made a sale
yet because you're just starting
out but you got your products to appear in Good Housekeeping like the very next day.
I can bet you you're going to get thousands of dollars in sales from all the orders in a week.
If not a day if you have the budget
for it Facebook ads is possibly the fastest way to start getting traffic and making sales.
But only if you do it, right? Okay,
I usually hesitate to talk about Facebook ads
because it does cost money to do
but also so because it's a lot more technical
so you definitely need to get training on how to do it,
right?