Good morning! It's time to rise and grind! Let's talk about this. You know why we started, how we started, where we started, and who we are. Let's talk about what is coming next. To do that, we must first look at what we have done so far.
We have come up with some products that we like, are fun to create, and think you will enjoy. Items that could be purchased for yourself or gifts. Some things that Emily could help make, some things I mostly made alone. There were some hits and a lot of misses.
What I am good at, best at, is graphic design. It's just what I have always done. When we opened our family business many years ago, a sports bar and restaurant, I made all of the advertisements, flyers, menus, etc. This family business closed a few years after Emily had her strokes. We just could not maintain it with the level of in-home care we had to provide plus doctor and therapy appointments. Butt, I still do this kind of graphic design work from home for a couple of local spots.
So, it should have been no surprise that our recent big Father's Day sellers were related to works that I created with Photoshop. That is definitely something we are working on expanding a line of. More gift options of Shadowboxes and Framed Photo Collages will be coming soon.
We are also working on a small wood square trio of stenciled graphics that Emily paints. This is a good amount of work that she does with her hands, and it works as OT home therapy for her. OT is occupational therapy - it helps people use their hands to do everyday tasks, such as dressing, hygiene, and eating. Emily still needs a lot of work with these things. Partly due to her vision impairment and somewhat because her hands don't work "normally." For instance, right now, she cannot open a can of soup, pour it into a bowl, put it in the microwave, and carry it to the table. Doing small tasks like painting these squares helps her long-term goals of hopefully cooking that can of soup one day.
The third thing we are going to take on is a heat press. WIth our boost of Father's Day sales, I ordered a heat press! A heat press will allow us to transfer vinyl to material items. T-shirts, Koozies, and Kitchen Towels, oh my! Honestly, I have a lot to learn about using this new machine, though. It's not going to be a wham, bam, open the package, here you go ma'am kind of thing, But it is the thing that will take us to the next level of growth.
Then, behind the scenes.. well, who am I kidding? This is all "behind the scenes". Ha. But another thing we are working on is our photos. We need to improve them. I made some new photo backdrops to help with this. Now I just need several hours of perfect lighting without shadows.
So, as you can see, we have a lot on our current agenda. We are proud that every month has been an improvement in sales and we know that growing small means we will be able to sustain. Our overall goal for the next few months is to grind. Get ourselves set up for the holiday gifting season. Give you a great variety of gifts to choose from. We've got our work cut out for us! Be sure to watch our social media (especially Facebook, Instagram, & TikTok), to see the play-by-play of our journey!
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