Simply Sublime Co

Our mission is to create, manufacture, and market unique, high quality personalized gifts that our customers will be proud to give and we can take pride in offering.

What you sell / services you offer (brief description of your company):

We create and manufacture a unique line of personalized gifts using a unique full color printing process. We make gifts such as cake pans, welcome mats, clocks and address signs, bar signs, beer steins and so much more. There’s something for everyone and every occasion.

Have you always wanted to run your own business? What were some of your previous jobs / companies?

No! I worked as a decorative painter for a wholesale company for several years. They were a successful company, but the stress associated with being the owner didn’t look very appealing to me at the time. Before that, I ran a small daycare out of my home.

Have you got any qualifications? Please tell us about yourself academically?

High school diploma! I was a stay at home mom and I loved being at home with my kids. I’m a fairly creative person but I lack the gene to be a good housekeeper or cook, so when they were in school full time I decided to get a job decorative painting for a local company. I was very happy doing that for several years until they decided to switch directions with the business. I was at a crossroads in my life. I needed to choose between getting a “real” (re: not as much fun) job or starting my own business.

Everything I know about running a business, I’ve taught myself. I don’t have the same educational background as most other business owners; I’m a true believer that anyone can accomplish their dreams if you’re willing to work hard enough for them.

How / when did the idea of your website / company come about?

After several years of wholesaling, the company I worked for decided to change the focus of their business because of personal reasons. I had been doing custom painting on the side for several years as well as some creative computer work designing invitations and photo retouching for people.

I enjoyed the work and really took to the computer but didn’t make very much money and didn’t know how to market myself. I started doing research on the internet looking for a way to make a living using my decorative painting and computer skills.

During this research I came upon a fairly new printing process that allows me to put just about any image onto specially coated products ranging from mugs to T-shirts. I fell in love! I developed a unique line of personalized products using this same process, came up with some unique custom designs for them and created a product line that is truly unique to us. I knew there was a market for these products but didn’t know how to go about getting my name out there. I’m a fairly cautious person, so I decided to test market my new products to women like me.

Shortly before Christmas that first year, I demonstrated my gift line at home based parties in friends’ homes. I set the shows up like a Tupperware or home interior type party. I sent out invitations, gave away door prizes, took orders and watched for any feedback about what I had to offer and what people where looking for when purchasing a personalized gift. The women loved the products, but I sometimes had a hard time convincing strangers to have a party in their home so I developed “basket parties”. I made up attractive baskets full of my products. I included order forms and homemade catalogs and plenty of business cards in them. Friends and relatives would take them to work, church and school, collect orders and occasionally book a home party for me. They made a commission off of each sale. The commissions could only be used toward purchasing products for themselves.

Christmas sales were good that year, but after the holidays were over, there was a lull in orders and shows. There weren’t enough people in my small town that needed to purchase a gift in January and February so I decided to use that slow time to put up a website to help with sales. I started out working in my garage. Within the first year, I moved into a larger building and hired my first full time help. I no longer had time to do the home based shows. Now my sales are about 98% internet based and have 4 full time employees.

If you could give readers of this book one piece of advice when starting up a business, what would it be?

Research, research, research! Before I invested my time and money into starting a business, I found out as much as I possible could about what I would need in supplies, machinery and money to get started and looked on message boards and business forums for any problems that others, who are in a similar line of business, may have encountered. I had lists of costs and had an idea of the products and how much inventory I needed to have on hand. I also knew how much money, based on this research that I needed to borrow to get started.

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