| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| n/a |
Posted - 02 Jul 2005 : 20:34:52
I hope folks don't think this is a cheeky question - but I just wondered if anyone had made the transition from hobby upholstery into a small business. I would be interested to hear how that transition was made - i.e. did you work part time for a while or just 'go for it'.
I work full-time at the moment and am quite well paid but would like to investigate the possibility of working for myself (it's got to be better than working in education at the moment!)
Any pointers would be more than appreciated.
I know David & Ruth - you sort of 'went for it' - just how scary was it though?
Thanks
Sue |
| 11 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Lorre |
Posted - 08 Jul 2005 : 23:43:22
Sue . . . you are absolutely right! THANK YOU, DAVID (ZENA) for such a lovely, wonderful, expert, detailed, incredibly helpful, gracious, and so very, very generous reply!! Parts of it made me chuckle --especially the "finishing off disease" because I suffer from the same thing. But I think it's really perfectionism and I think it is better to have it than not.
Having done as much research as I have on upholstered pieces, I now look at furniture through different eyes. I don't know the bones of a piece, but I think I can begin to tell when work is done well. Now I look at the chairs and sofas that we had done a year or so ago and realize what a bad job it was. And I won't tell you how much was spent on the fabric and labour. A day does not go by when I don't want to strip and redo those pieces!! Alas, now I am digressing!!
In answer to Sue's question, I have decided to go into this as a business. Scary as all crap, but I am almost 48 years old and let's face it -- better late than never. As David suggested, I have begun writing down notes on what I like doing, in hopes of figuring out my specialized area because I think it is important to be focused -- better to do one thing well, even if it is only chairs. I am also studying wood restoration, so as to do some of the work myself; and talking to as many people as I know in the furniture / design areas. (Thank goodness for friends who have interesting jobs!) So hopefully, I will figure it all out.
Then, also as David suggests, I will put together a business plan, if not to help raise some funds, but perhaps more to give me a defined sense of direction -- a goal, if you will.
I currently live in a studio apartment, and plan to initially do some of the work there, which is why I will begin with chairs. My space won't be pretty, but you know -- life on a budget. I have also invested in a silent air compressor and pneumatic stapler (so my neighbors will still love me).
In the end, I know I won't make a ton of money. But at this point in my life, I feel it is important to do something I enjoy. I also wanted a new profession that was mobile. So that no matter where I lived, I could always earn a living.
Hope this helps,
Lorre |
| oldsofas |
Posted - 08 Jul 2005 : 06:48:01
Sue, you're very welcome - ask away, I have no problem talking ad infinitum about me, Ruth and oldsofas - but then you've probabaly gathered that already.
Just ask. Good luck. D |
| n/a |
Posted - 07 Jul 2005 : 19:11:39
You are so lovely to take all this time and trouble to answer in me in such detail - I really appreciate it.
I am going to take your very sensible advice - work on more and increasingly 'difficult' projects to build my confidence further and continue to research the market.
It is the older pieces that interest me - taking something from discarded, faded and unwanted and restoring to former glory has been the motivation so far - so I would want to continue that side of things I think.
Watch this space - and a huge thank you once again.
I think, judging by the number of people that have viewed this 'conversation' you wil have helped quite a large number of others as well.
Bless you!!
And love to Wilma
Sue
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| oldsofas |
Posted - 06 Jul 2005 : 13:53:27
The worst sort of stress comes from having no control. When you are self employed you get stress, loads of stress, but it's more born of excitement than the sort of depressing stress you have when you have no control over your life. Neither Ruth or I would ever go back to being employed - whatever happened - you must commit 100% to your business and sacrifice all that undermines your ability to commit. This is a general rule, but it's inviolable in your first few years when setting up. Failure cannot be contemplated and to that end you need to have a plan, a direction that you are going to go in, a vision of how your business will evolve from an idea into something with it's own momentum that will generate enough income for you to live. Rewards flow from the life enhancement - the relief that comes from shaking off the shackles of wage slavery. Being in control of your own life, and building something that didn't exist before using only your wit and gall. Being beholden to nobody - refer back to my tip on not relying on one source for too big a percentage of you income. Ruth and I have had some tempting offers to work exclusively for business men with ideas of making exclusive furniture for rich foreign clients - really. Difficult to turn down, but that's only because it's flattering to be made such offers and you don't want to hurt the offeror's feelings, but I always feel a sigh of relief when I stop thinking about the money and start thinking about our business freedom and say "thanks but no thanks".
Sue, I really think you ought to take the plunge, but only once you've done your ground work.
To assure yourself you have the necessary skills keep doing what you're doing on the upholstery front, but be your own worst critic. Take on some scary projects, actively seek out projects that you don't think you're capable of and get on with it. If you have the confidence to know that your work is good enough and that you can deal with anything that turns up then you're ready to go self employed, but only once you reach that point - if you jump too soon, before you've built up the necessary self belief you'll panic when things get tough.
While you're building your skills confidence start mapping out your business plan. Where will you work, where will your work come from, what sort of core work are you going to aim for. Are you going to be a jack of all trades, loose covers, curtains, cushions the whole lot or are you going to aim to build a reputation for antique furimture and trawl the house clearance auctions for bargains to offer your customers.
To answer your question, and to illustrate what I mean. Ruth used to do anything and everything when she first started, and in so doing gained invaluable knowledge. But she leant more and more towards traditional upholstery - all the stuff that a lot of upholsterers won't touch - last week we went to see a local lady who had a beautiful walnut nursing chair dating from around 1840, Ruth and I had one the same six or seven years ago that we bought as a stripped frame and sold to a ship broker completely reupholstered and deep buttoned - the lady had ahd the chair for 20 years and every now and again she'd call an upholsterer and investigate the possibility of having it reupholstered. In 20 years we were the first people to turn up and say "Yeah fine we'll do that" - all the others had shaken their heads and ummed and ahhed before eventually saying that it was a bit of a specialist job. The poor lady thought she could never afford to have it done and if she could she'd have to find a restoration expert form the V & A or something - when I old her we'd charge her £250 she thought I was joking.
As always i'm digressing, Ruth wanted to do traditional upholstery, but more than that we loved going to house clearnace auctions and buying up all the old tot that noone else wanted. Art deco three piece suites for £20, victorian chesterfields for £30- it's not quite like that any more - we used to put adverts in the local paper saying that we'd pay cash for old sofas and chairs in need of restoration. £10 here £20 there, we soon had a house full, and I mean piled up three high wall to wall - the only problem was that sometimes we'd be summoned to a bedsit somewhere and be offered furniture that obviously didn't belong to the very skinny roll-up smoking tenant in desperate need of £20 for a pick me up!
So we wanted to concentrate on old stuff and eventually we hit on the idea to offer our furniture for sale reupholstered to the customer's spec. Using the internet to do it was the final piece of the jigsaw and we've been doing it ever since. Because we started with no budget whatsoever we needed to keep our overheads to an absolute minimum, working from home and using the internet as our shop front did that for us. Now, the banks take us seriously and we have a workshop the size of an aircraft hanger, but we're still doing the same work we did from our rented flat in Hastings.
What I'm trying to say is that, even if you have access to a little bit of start up money, start off by keeping your overheads to an absolute minimum. Businesses always go bust if they buy all the flash directors desks and reception before they've built the basics of what's going to pay the bills. Also if you grow slowly you'll learn as you go, all those vital lessons and mistakes that give you the confidence a few years down the line that comes with knowing your own business inside out - a big mistake when you're small is only a small mistake, when you're big it might be too big for your business to bare.
One final thought - for now. Finishing off disease. Ruth, as i have said on many occasions, is absolutely fearless when it comes to upholstery. Right from the start she used to scare me to death with the things she agreed to do. "But are you sure you can do the deep buttoning, and what about those curved arms with the show wood?" I'd say "It'll be fine, I know what I'm doing" - "yeah, but we're charging this lady money, and her husband had something to do with the brinks Matt thing didn't he?" -"Don't worry I can do it" - you get the picture. But she was right, she'd always do it and it would always be fine. Now even Ruth with the ice water running through her upholstery veins suffered with finishing off disease. Once we went out on a limb and both became employed by oldsofas she found it really hard to finish things. She'd get off to a great start and with one day's work left I'd arrange delivery a few days hence, and then it would start. She would take forever to finish, there was always something she didn't like that she had to re-do, she was always fiddling and turning an hour's work into a day, so what seemed like three hours work left to do would inexplicably turn into three days and there'd still be something left to do. It used to drive me mad I was forever phoning customers and appologetically postponing delivery. We had no money in the bank, the debts were piling up, if we could just deliver the bloody sofa and collect the cheque we'd be able to breathe again for another couple of weeks and she just couldn't seem to get on with it and finish.
It's entirely understandable, you'll do anything to avoid standing back and saying it's done lets deliver it. Doubts, nerves, perfectionism - it's all very well when you're doing a hobby, but when you're roof and food relies on it and you've labelled yourself a professional you've got to deal with it and it's not easy having the confidence to hand a finished project over to the customer.
On comparing your work with professionals; go out and about and look at upholstery- seek out professional upholsterers work, antique shops are great. Ask yourself "is this workmanship better than mine" if the answer is no - don't waste any more time thinking about other upholsterers, what they charge or how they do things. Believe in your own abiltiy, do what you think is best, and charge what you think is a fair price. |
| n/a |
Posted - 06 Jul 2005 : 08:56:50
Sorry - didn't mean to just post one word - hit the wrong button!
Thanks you so much for taking all this trouble - it is very interesting and honest, which is exactly what I need to hear.
I do realise all the pitfalls and that's why I'm so hesitant.
However - it's not the money necessarily that I'm persuing - enough to live on would be fine.
I think working part-time and building something alongside might be the way forward. I need to think some more of course. It's just on a bad day at work (which seem to be more frustratingly frequent) it all seems like the grass would be greener - and I know that's not the case. Could be just swapping one set of stresses for another.
Would you now say that the bulk of your work comes via the internet? Or do you still 'fill the void' of insufficient upholsterers in your area?
I haven't gone into great depth - but talking to a local upholsterer it would seem the case here too - he's got far more work than he can cope with.
I might just be cheeky and ask to do one of his 'rejects'! And see what happens from there.
That's a bit scary though - I do have faith in my skills but they are still quite 'young' - to come up against a guy with years behind him is a bit daunting.
Also - how often do you check the prices that you charge for your work - how many comparisons with others?
Oh well - I'll keep thinking - and going to work!!
Thanks again
Sue Dixon |
| n/a |
Posted - 06 Jul 2005 : 08:47:07
WOW!!! |
| oldsofas |
Posted - 05 Jul 2005 : 16:36:44
Sorry to drone on - just a few more practical, things to consider in no particular order.
If you're going to take the leap do so with a partner. You will need confidence building back up and support - if you do it on your own you'll be very low when the hard times come and it's vital to have a second pair of hands every once in a while - you'll need to be able to collect and deliver customer's furniture/ auction purchases - this inevitably will mean having a van.
It's really difficult to expand if you get lots of work - in other words there is a fairly low ceiling to your earnings. You can only go as fast as you can and when you've got loads of work piling up and you think about employing another upholsterer you'll find that you'll have lots of applicants who want to learn upholstery, but there's no guarantee that they'll be any good at it, and you'll probably go bust while you're finding out. If you find a skilled upholsterer they'll want to be paid so much money that it would be pointless employing them.
A lot of people who want upholstery done, for some reason that eludes me, want it done in white or near white fabric. Prick your finger and you'll have to have the rest of the day off so it takes twice as long to do the work for the same amount of money.
There is also a disproportionate number of upholstery customers who have white or near white carpets and immaculate houses - look behind you and you'll see muddy footsteps - nightmare.
If you get a big cheque in it's a very disciplined character that doesn't skive the rest of the week - which, of course, is one of the joys of being self employed!
There are loads of others and if you like I'll jot them down as and when they come to me. |
| oldsofas |
Posted - 05 Jul 2005 : 13:59:15
We bought the computer with Ruth's upholstery in mind - accounts, letter heads, business cards etc. The business man friend said - you've got a computer, you're a bright bloke why don't you sell your upholstery on the internet? I said - you can't run an upholstery company on the internet.
Ruth and I went back to PC World and bought a book on how to build your own website, I read it and built our first website - it was dreadful. Then I built a better one and so on. The plan was to buy old bits and pieces at auction - something we'd been doing for a while with no plan as to how to sell them - the flat had been reduced to a workshop in the conservatory, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom doubling as an office, the other bedrooms and living room were floor to ceiling festering old sofas and chairs.
We went to the House and Garden show at Earls Court with two objectives 1. To see if anyone else was doing what we planned to (buying old sofas and chairs at auction and offering them for sale on the internet including reupholstery to the customer's spec) 2. To blag our way into opening some accounts with fabric manufacturers so that we could buy at trade prices and make a little when customers buy the fabric from us.
We came away with the belief that what we planned to do had little, if any, competition - in those days the big companies were very slow to grasp the internet - when i opened our first oldsofas account at NatWest in Hastings they didn't even have an internet connection in the branch (the main one in that not insignificant town) to look at my website and see what our business was all about!! We had contact information with several fabric companies with a view to opening accounts - which we did. And we also came away with the conviction that Ruth's upholstery skills were as good if not better than any we had seen demonstrated on the show pieces at the UKs premier show arena.
This little bit of market research resulted in us borrowing £1,000 from my grand mother - bless her - NatWest allowed me to open an oldsofas account so that we could pay in cheques made out to our business name, but they wouldn't touch our business with a barge poll let alone an overdraft - and we registered www.oldsofas.com, bought a couple of fabric sample books so that we could open accounts with the companies we'd buttonholed and paid a small fortune for an advert in the back of a glossy homes magazine. The advert brought us some enquiries, but because next to nobody had the internet in those days we had to supplement the info on our website with printed catalogues of the furniture we had for sale - cost a fortune in postage and ink.
Bless the trusting nature of some wonderful people who became our first and most vital customers. Our first two customers travelled substantial distances to visit our flat and view the furniture - I would have turned straight around and gone home convinced I'd blundered into some very scuzzy people and headed straight for the shower with some insecticidal body wash. They didn't, they bought - if they hadn't we wouldn't have a business now. They gave us the confidence for me to give up the pub job and dive in full time to our business. Life got a lot tougher, rental payments were missed, cashflow was dire, the stress was huge, but the Earls Court experience gave us rock solid confidence that we could carve a little niche upholstery business using our website. After Christmas it became apparent that a lot more people were buying computers and going on-line because we had our first exclusively internet customer - i.e they looked at our website and agreed to buy from us, the first time of metting was when we delivered their furniture and walked away with a cheque.
We needed an injection of capital to place more ads and buy more stock. I wrote a 10 page business plan and submitted it to every high street bank. At the time there was a government loan guarantee scheme that would protect the bank if they loaned money to a small business that didn't themselves have sufficient collateral - a scheme designed with Ruth and I in mind you'd think. No chance, we got interviews with business managers, but only because they couldn't believe that our business plan was serious. We were told that because we didn't own anything we had nothing to lose should we default on the loan. They wouldn't loan under the government loan guarantee - despite our apllicatiuon being four square within it's remit - because if the bank had to enforce the guarantee the Govenment would want to know why the bank made such a stupid decision to loan to us in the first place - WHAT!!!
Deflated we decided that if the banks wouldn't lend us £9,000 we'd ask a mortgage company to lend us £50,000. It took some doing, but without resort to fraud or deception we found a mortgage company that agreed to do it. Convinced that we would default and go bust the mortgage company charged us huge amounts of interest and had us pay substantial insurance policies to ensure their loan was safe should they have to reposses and sell our house at a forced sale price. The mortgage repayments were twice the amount they would have been to an employed borrower with a regular income. I've got some buttons to make so this is where I'll end.
We moved to Wales - because we delivered our furniture all over the country and didn't need to live in any particular location, and because it was were we could buy a house with a garage for £50,000. We filled the house with our old mouldering furniture and Ruth worked from the garage - in winter she huddled under a heating light bulb that you buy if you're hatching chicks - I went to work at the local Co-op petrol station for £4.05/hr so that we had enough each month to pay the mortgage. A year later we had enough consistent work for me to give up and work exclusively for oldsofas.
The rest is history.
PS we're still broke.
Sue, the moral of the story is: do it. But only if you have the rock solid determination and confidence in your skills to get yourself through some very tough times. |
| oldsofas |
Posted - 05 Jul 2005 : 09:36:38
Apologies for writing the last message as Zena - she was a user I invented when the forum first started so that it didn't look like a ghost town with tumble weed blowing through - I must have used her password by mistake.
Back to Sue's question. The crunch came for Ruth and i when we started doing work for an Interior design shop. We did a couple of bits and pieces for next to nothing just to prove that Ruth's work was good enough and cheap enough for them and then whenever a customer came into the shop and asked about getting chairs re-covered or cushions made the shop owners would act as middle men between the customer and us. One day they asked us to go to a flat a couple of miles away and look at an old sofa. They wanted to know whether it was worth reupholstering and how much we'd charge to collect reupholster and deliver it to the shop. We took a look, the flat was empty save for the sofa, it was very grotty, but a nice little Victorian thing and we said £200. They gave us the fabric and we duly collected the sofa and completely stripped and reupholstered it from the frame up - £200 after we'd paid for materials left us with around £100 for maybe 10 days work - we delivered it to the shop and the owners put it in their window with a £795 price tag. The next day they phoned us and asked if we could deliver the sofa to it's new owners. Stupidly, and this is a lesson worth learning, because we had started relying on the design shop work, they had us over a barrel and so we did as we were told and delivered the sofa. We even had to lift it through a window and we recieved not a penny more for our labours - They made the best part of £600 for doing nothing just because they had a shop. And we had to bite our tongues because we needed the work and didn't want to up set them - don't ever be beholden to one source for a large proportion of your work - if you're self employed make sure you can always refuse work if you're not happy about the customer it will save a lot of hassle in the long run. I've ignored bad vibes from customers who seemed as nice as pie initially and then have ended up being far more trouble than their cheques were worth - trust your instincts, it's better to avoid problems than have to deal with them.
Anyway, I went to work that evening and started winging about the shop owners to a business man who used to come in the pub. I said to him if only we had a shop we'd start making money, but never in a million years could we afford to rent, let alone buy, a shop. A few months earlier Ruth and i had given up smoking and in order to do so we had also given up alcohol giving us a saving of around £600/month - yes really! The upshot was that we walked into PC World and bought a computer.
Customer's just come in be back soon.......
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| Zena |
Posted - 05 Jul 2005 : 07:08:08
I should think it's really scary if you have a good job/career that you're contemplating giving up - especially if you have commitments that rely on you earning well and regularly.
It was easy for Ruth and me because we had nothing to lose. When we got togther we were both around 30 Ruth was working in a wine bar and I was a barrister. Within six months of getting together I had given up the Bar and spent the next year doing very little eventually ending up working in a local pub - the landlord offered me a job because i spent so much time in there!!
So I'd done the back to basics thing before we ever contemplated upholstery. We lived in a rented flat and earnt enough from our pub/wine bar work to get by and then Ruth decided to have a go at upholstery - out of boredom really. A friend who had an antiques shop gave us a couple of old chairs he was going to throw out and we stripped them, got some tools and upholstery materials from a friend who knew where to get them and, with alittle help from Desmond Gaston's book and a lot of trial and error Ruth did a pretty good job on them. We gave them back to our friend and he put them in the shop and when they sold he split the money with us. And that's how it all started. Ruth kept working in the wine bar to start with until she got more confident and then reduced her hours to part time. Because of our jobs and the cosiness of the area we lived in we knew lots of people and by word of mouth the upholstery work came in. There seemed to be a serious lack of upholsterers in the area and Ruth stepped into the void.
We got a bigger flat with a conservatory on the back which Ruth used as a workshop, she gave up work completely to be a full time upholsterer and i kept working in the pub so at least we had a minimal income. If we ran out of upholstery work we tended to wander around interior design or antique shops and offer to do things for next to nothing - shop owners in those two areas of business find it very difficult to resist a an offer like that, and, eventhough we didn't make much out of it we gained valuable experience and built up the frustration necessary to push us into making a few difficult decisions.....
I've just got to go an deal with the horse I'll jot a bit more down later if anyone's still awake after reading the tale so far. |
| Jess |
Posted - 04 Jul 2005 : 20:33:07
Sue,
I'm having the same thought. WOuld love to hear what others have done to make the leap. I've done a few jobs for friends who have all been happy with the results, but is that enough?
-Jess |
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