This really impacted my motivation to carry it on, it became more expensive to run at the quality I was producing at and over time the company slowly faded out and suffered a loss.
After I decided to call it a day, I became very frustrated because I was so used to having a lot of work to do outside of university as well as the work I did. I almost felt like I had too much free time and so I decided I was going to plan a new business venture, but this time, create something that no one else has done yet, and also, something that will be beneficial, fun, creative and hard work.
Whilst in the studio, I overheard a couple of people discussing how they had made some prints recreationally and wanted to sell them, but had no idea how to go about it. It got me thinking that it would be so much easier to sell work if there was a place dedicated to us as students to do so, without there being masses of people involved and work being lost within it. And that got me thinking further, why didn't I make that possible.
I already had a huge online audience on social networking sites for my previous business, over 6000 people on Facebook, over 4000 on Tumblr, almost 1000 on Instagram and Twitter, it just made sense to make use of that audience to my own and others' benefit rather than let them fade into the distance.
This is when the planning started.
From branching on ideas I came to decisions on what I wanted it to be about, why I was doing what I was doing, how it was going to work, how it would earn enough to keep going, etc.
The name ‘The Growing Bones Collection’ arose from a variety of things. The idea of self-development was a key element tied in with the ideology of metaphoric bones growing like our skills, portfolios and confidence. It is finished with the word collection to represent the unity between everyone involved as well as being more on a personal level with our customers.
This will be a student-only based business so the buyers remain certain that they are supporting emerging creatives and helping them afford to continue their development.
The money would be made by charging a small £3.00 a month membership fee to have work for sale on the website as well as a personal profile to inform audiences about who they are and how they can keep up to date with the creative's work and get in touch with them. This would be complemented with a 20% commission of each sale to keep funds up for packaging costs, promotion, development and of course the time I spend managing it.
After publicising the idea to students on my course, a lot told me it was a great idea and it would certainly motivate them to create more self directed work as well as get their name out.
This was definitely going ahead, now it was plan development and design time.
I already had a huge online audience on social networking sites for my previous business, over 6000 people on Facebook, over 4000 on Tumblr, almost 1000 on Instagram and Twitter, it just made sense to make use of that audience to my own and others' benefit rather than let them fade into the distance.
This is when the planning started.
From branching on ideas I came to decisions on what I wanted it to be about, why I was doing what I was doing, how it was going to work, how it would earn enough to keep going, etc.
The name ‘The Growing Bones Collection’ arose from a variety of things. The idea of self-development was a key element tied in with the ideology of metaphoric bones growing like our skills, portfolios and confidence. It is finished with the word collection to represent the unity between everyone involved as well as being more on a personal level with our customers.
This will be a student-only based business so the buyers remain certain that they are supporting emerging creatives and helping them afford to continue their development.
The money would be made by charging a small £3.00 a month membership fee to have work for sale on the website as well as a personal profile to inform audiences about who they are and how they can keep up to date with the creative's work and get in touch with them. This would be complemented with a 20% commission of each sale to keep funds up for packaging costs, promotion, development and of course the time I spend managing it.
After publicising the idea to students on my course, a lot told me it was a great idea and it would certainly motivate them to create more self directed work as well as get their name out.
This was definitely going ahead, now it was plan development and design time.
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