By Jess Chamberlain, Sunset home writer
Have you, like me, always secretly dreamed of turning your home-spun crafts into a full-time—even lucrative—business?
Okay, now put down your coffee cup, minimize this blog page, click open your google search engine, find phone number listings of your nearest bookstore and call to reserve a copy of hot-off-the-press Craft, Inc.: Turn Your Creative Hobby Into a Business. Then tell your boss you have a personal emergency and flee to your salvation. (Don’t turn in your resignation just yet; it’ll take a little time to jump-start your start-up).
Details: "Craft, Inc. is the hipster business primer for entrepreneurial crafters to turn what they do for fun into what they do for money. Pro crafter Meg Mateo Ilasco offers a step-by-step guide to everything from developing products and naming the company to writing a business plan, applying for licenses, and paying taxes. Chapters on sales, marketing, trade shows, and publicity round out the mix. Plus, in-depth interviews with such craft luminaries as Jonathan Adler, Lotta Jansdotter, Denyse Schmidt, and Jill Bliss provide inspiration and practical advice. Accessible, informative, and more than a little spunky, Craft, Inc. paves the way for today's creative minds to become tomorrow's trendsetters."
Author Meg Mateo Ilasco is a sharp, creative, and talented designer, writer, and illustrator who’s also published The Space Planner: A Home Decorating Design Workbook and You Can Wear it Again: A Celebration of Bridesmaid Dresses. She started designing wedding invitations for extra money while in grad school and demand for her distinctive designs took her craft full-time. I adore her line of pillows, linens and paper goods.
A couple weeks ago, I met Meg at San Francisco’s Modern Economy sale—an exclusive home & lifestyle sample sale event that Meg hosts twice annually (in SF and LA). With prices up to 70% off retail, it was nothing short of a can’t-typically-afford-it design enthusiast’s pipe-dream-realized: modern, independent designers’ samples, overstock, and last-season goods. It’s like Meg read my mind: What if there were an event that stripped designers’ warehouses of excess stock AND provided us salivating wanna-bes with affordable supplies for décor makeovers? And she made it happen.
You could say she’s kind of my hero.
Participating designers included: Rae Dunn, Deadly Squire, Dwell, Dwellbaby, Sophie & Lili, Nurseryworks, thomaspaul, Three Sheets 2 the Wind, Spaltana, Plush Living, Balanced Design, Boodalee, Sara Paloma, Octate, Salvor, inhabit, Good on Paper, Relish at Home, Henry Road, Everyday Studio, Holden Designs, Perch, Variegated Inc, Mateo Ilasco, Emma Gardner, Eieio Studio, Studio Dinor, Kiosk, and Baby Star.
LA locals: Do NOT miss the next event this fall. Date and time TBA. Stay tuned for details.
