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Career change: how to turn a hobby into a business

Career change: turn a hobby into a business

Many women nurture a lifelong dream to turn a hobby into a business. I attended Country Living magazine’s Spring Fair to hear tips from women who’ve done just that. I had my eye on two seminars: ‘get your jam into John Lewis’ and ‘start your own business on a shoe string’. These 5 top tips are what I gleaned from both seminars.

The fair is crammed to the rafters with designer-makers selling artisan crafts, home furnishings, food and fashion. The newcomer section included thirty traders exhibiting for the very first time, hopefully this post will let you decide if you have what it takes to join them.

Candy coloured sheds at the entrance to The Country Living Fair by The Posh Shed Company.

1. Work out pricing

First and foremost if you want to turn a hobby into a business you need to be able to make a profit on every item you sell. That sounds may sound pretty obvious but when you do something as a hobby it’s done for pleasure. If you add up the hours it takes you make something and the cost of materials it may never prove profitable. So where to start?

Don’t worry about things like a business plan at this stage. All you really need to do is calculate out how much it costs you to produce something and how much you can sell it for.

Cost of production

  • Cost of materials including packaging, deliveries and couriers, transaction fees, electricity etc.
  • Hourly rate for your time (or someone else’s)
  • 15% wastage (time, materials etc that are naturally wasted in the process)
  • Cost to achieve sales including marketing (such as branding, website and time spent on social media), cost of stalls/stands for trading at fairs or markets, advertising, credit card transaction fees etc.

Cost of selling

If you sell this item directly to your customer (at a market stall, retail fair, online or to friends etc) you can choose a price which you think is appropriate, deduct the unit cost and there you have your profit margin.

If you are selling through a third party such as ‘Etsy’ you will need to account for their sales and transaction fees too. Etsy and online stores like Not on the High Street or All by Mama are a great way to get your products in front of customers already looking to buy from independent makers like you.

If you are selling to retail (shops and online shops) you will need to work out a recommended retail price (which will include VAT at 20% in the UK). Different retail sectors have their own margins (mark-up on your trade price) so you will need to do some research on the margins in your sector. For example my design company Broadbase have designed and sold greetings cards into shops and museums where the pricing formula has been something like this:

Retailing selling price = £2.50, VAT is 48p of this, so retailer gets £2.08, they want a margin of at least 60% (approx £1.25). This means they will pay 83p per card to us of which approx half of that is the cost of production.

Once you’ve looked carefully at the pricing you can be realistic about planning for growth and profit. The numbers have to add up in order to turn a hobby into a business.

How much will your customers pay?

When deciding on a retail price remember that if something is beautifully crafted and handmade it may also have a value far beyond what you or your friends would (or could) pay for it. Many designer-makers undersell themselves and it is much harder to put your prices up than it is to offer a discount to bring them down. Research the market thoroughly and find out what people are willing to pay for a luxury version before you try to compete with the mass-produced market.

Lauren Aston, one of the panel and founder of Lauren Aston Designs, makes the oversized chunky interiors knits (shown below) and she found selling through Not on the High Street helped her to find customers willing to pay for hand-made items. The selling site allowed her to establish her name which then directed traffic back to her own site where people now buy direct.

Images from Lauren Aston‘s blog

2. Stay lean and slim

If you decide to turn a hobby into a business it might be some time before it returns any profit. You need to think about how you will survive in the meantime. Some people use savings or work part-time to finance the early stages. Whatever the circumstances you will want to minimise costs wherever possible.

Branding and marketing are two areas where creative people can take advantage of technology to do-it-yourself. Drag-and-drop website templates can easily help you build an online presence (though I would recommend a self-hosted wordpress site if you’re a little more computer savvy) and social media is a great way of getting your message out there on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

‘Beg, borrow and barter’.

The advice on getting started without much capital from Emma Jones, the founder of start-up membership scheme Enterprise Nation, is simply – beg, borrow and barter!

3. Tell your story – build your brand

Even if you start by making jam in your kitchen you can still tell you’re story in an engaging way and this will connect with customers and the press. Catherine Piddington, founder of Piddington Jam stressed the importance of building a brand with distinct personality. She used a clever strapline, ‘jam with a bit of mischief’  which immediately sets it apart from the everyday and engages customers.

Branding is not just your logo but about who you are, what your product is, where it is made, how it is made and even how much you enjoy making it. The Design Trust is a very useful resource for designer makers and I wrote a guest post for them on creating a brand strategy which might help you start thinking about the branding process.

4. Research, listen and learn

All the speakers at the Country Living seminars admitted to making mistakes (usually with their pricing). The point is to be flexible and learn from your mistakes so that you can more accurately respond to what your customers want. You’re idea is just that and it’s only when you go out and test it that you can really see how the market responds. Do pop-up shops, market stalls, christmas fairs and listen, listen, listen. It’s often by eavesdropping on what people say that makes you understand what you’ve got wrong.

Being confident isn’t about sticking to your guns no matter what – its about knowing when to make changes to improve your product or service to make it better. Start with small batches so that you are not left with stock you cannot sell and this will allow you to tweak and change as you learn. Don’t worry about getting everything right at the beginning. It won’t be!

5. Plan ahead

Scalability is something that you need to consider when you turn a hobby into a business. What happens if you suddenly need to fill a big order? Catherine Piddington found a manufacturer who could take over her jam production on a one-off basis if a big order came in.

Catherine can make a staggering 200 jars of Jam a day in her kitchen.

Which means she can make 1000 jars a week in her kitchen but what about an order for 22,000 jars? Luckily Catherine already had her back-up production in place when she received a massive order from an online gourmet shop. Work out how to upscale well before you need to, that way when you finally get that big order you’ve waited for you can actually enjoy it.

Avril x


I would love to hear from any gals who have managed to turn a hobby into a business and have advice to share. If you’ve enjoyed reading this please consider pinning it or checking out my Pinterest board: Midlife Career Change. You might also enjoy reading about Teri who did turn a hobby into a business: Canine-to-five; the wonderful life of a dog walker.