Episode #307: Renae Bradley of Benzie Design

0:00Today's episode is brought to you by Fire Mountain Gems and Beads. Fire Mountain Gems and Beads has supported jewelry-making artists for more than 50 years, offering a wide selection of beats, gemstones, findings, tools, and creative supplies. Known for quality, consistency, and inspiration, Fire Mountain serves designers at every stage, from first projects to establish creative businesses. Thank you so much Fire Mountain Gems and Beads, and now here's the show. Welcome to episode 307 of the Craft Industry Alliance Podcast. I'm Abby Glassenberg. Craft Industry Alliance is a community for craft professionals where you can strengthen your creative business, stay up to date on industry news, and build connections within our Supportive Trade Association. Check it out at CraftIndustryAlliance.org. Today on the show,

1:02we're talking about Felt with my guests, Renee Bradley. Renee is the owner and creative director of BenZe Design, a colorful, Felt, Stitchery, and Craft Shop founded as a creative outlet that gave her permission to rainbow-atize everything, especially woolfelt. In business for over 15 years, Renee values the community that has been formed both online and within BenZe's local brick and mortar. Renee Bradley, welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having me, Abby. I'm so excited to talk with you. I love BenZe, and I'm really excited to learn more about it. But to start, let's back up a little bit. I know your shop is based in Illinois, and does that where you grow up? Where you grew up? No, I actually grew up in Iowa. I grew up in Iowa, and then I went to college in Iowa. I met my husband in Iowa, and then he actually got a job in Illinois, and that's how we got here,

2:06and he we've been here ever since. But I am an Iowa girl at heart. I love Iowa. And were you creative as a kid? For sure. For sure. Like, I definitely had, I was always crafting or making something. I know I had several years of junior high, where I was really into like beaded loom crafts. So I had like seed beads, and I could all sorts of bracelets and hair clips with them. So I went through that, and I was really into it. This is in high school, where you don't really tell people that you're doing this in high school, but I was really into dollhouse miniatures. And I would spend like my Friday nights like working and decorating and making things for my dollhouse. So like, I definitely had some creative, more unique hobbies as a child. And what did your parents do for work? My parents own their own business. My dad was an immigrant

3:07from the Netherlands, and they met, I guess their love story was they just met my dad didn't know any English and barely knew my mom, and like almost immediately asked for her hand in marriage, and somehow she said yes, and they got married, and he was a milkman. He's passed away now, but he was a milkman. He bought a route from a local dairy and delivered milk like old school, first like door to door, and then eventually they were delivering to grocery stores and schools. So that's what they did. That's cool. And did your parents work together in that business? Yes, like my dad did a little delivering, and my mom did all the books, and kind of like the bids for like grocery stores and schools. So you grew up in an entrepreneurial household? Yeah, yeah, I did. Yeah, interesting. Okay, so did you want to pursue your love of crafting

4:12in college, or what did you want to do? Yeah, I really didn't know what I wanted to do in college. And I feel like this is kind of where parents are integral in knowing what their kid is good at, and my mom was actually the one that said, hey, I think you should go for graphic design. And at that point, I had not really heard of it or knew what that was. I went to a really small school, so I actually didn't take any art classes in high school. And I was like, well, graphic design sounds like a great degree to go into. So that's what I did. I went to Iowa State University, majored in graphic design, and that's really, even though I'm not necessarily doing graphic design right now, I think that's really helped me to understand the visual arts. So I think it was a good fit for me. Yeah, and was that like kind of a focus on commercial work, or what did you think you might want to do with that, you know? I really loved logo design, like loved logo design.

5:16And when I graduated, I really didn't want to work for anyone else. And so I started just freelancing. Oh, right, right from right away. I actually started being some of that in college, and then I did it right from college. So I did freelancing. So I didn't get to do a lot of corporate identity design then, but I did a lot of freelancing. And then I learned through that that I really did it like freelancing either. I had a hard time working for someone who's vision didn't necessarily align with mine, even though I know like I'm trying to communicate the customer's vision, like somehow they just the tweaks that they wanted. I just never fully agreed with. So I never felt like I was really doing my best work, even though like I felt like I could do better. So that that was not something that I was super skilled with was freelance, even though I did do it

6:16for several years. Okay. And then said, did you how what was your way out of freelancing? Like, what did you take a regular job or are they never did take a regular job? I think we had babies right away. Now I think we did. We got married. My husband and I got married. We had babies almost right away. And so then I went right into being stay at home mom. And then I was like, okay, I really need to supplement our family's income. And but yeah, I'm still being creative. So I had an Etsy shop. So this would have been maybe 2008. I had a hand made Etsy shop. I was making what were you what were you making? I was making a lot of hair clips. And then I was making a lot of felt based things. And when our clips like beaded like back in a high school. I stopped the beating. These were more like kid hair clips because I had a little girl. So I had a time. So like it was like, oh, so it was like kid hair clips. But then I started making a few more party themed things like a felt um garlands and felt buntings. And I made some felt stuffed animals. So I just

7:24kind of started playing around with felt. And this was actually really important because then I realized like, wait, what kind of felt are people using because they're clearly not using the big box store acrylic or polyester or recycled felt because I quickly discovered that pill and was not working well. And then I realized that the felt that I wanted was not highly accessible to others. And then from my handmade shop, which was not profitable, that was more just a hobby. I mean, it was profitable, but not enough to you make a living out of. Then I discovered felt through that process. And my goal was to make it more accessible for other people. And I was like, well, this will be fun. I can photograph it really pretty. I did almost minor in photography and college. So I had some photography skills from that. That was definitely more fine art photography,

8:25but still the the idea of how to work a camera and and take beautifully composed images. I learned that also in college. And to the stay, I take most of Benzies photos. So that's that's really impressive because they're beautiful. And so I'm I'm taking myself back to like 2008 2009. And I was using thought at that time too. And remember also discovering that like the big box store felt pills and is no good. And and that there was such a thing as wolf out or wool blend felt. And but can you talk about like where would you even go at that time to buy that? Yeah, like you really you really couldn't. I had to do like significant internet sleuthing to to go find it. And I feel like I've always been super good at the internet somehow as a kid, our family was the first family in our community who got the internet. And so I felt like I was

9:27always super good at internet sleuthing. So I just I just went to town searching and figuring things out. And to the stay have multiple different suppliers that we use for for our fell. And and I and that also speaks to how different the internet is now. The internet is so like it's so much more funded by sponsors and advertisements now. It's almost it's a lot harder to find that true information. It was easier to find stuff back then than I think it is now. Right. Okay. So you were originally sourcing the good stuff for yourself. So you could make better products on Etsy. When did it click for you that hey maybe I could just sell the raw material almost immediately almost immediately. I was like this is gorgeous. I have too much. I'm this is I'm this is what I want to do. So I actually started. So my original website was like benzie dot Etsy. And now I changed it to benzie design dot Etsy. So I kind of ran both shops

10:32simultaneously. And then let go of the handmade shop pretty quickly after I found that other Etsy shoppers really liked this product. And it made more sense like it's more fun for me to craft for myself and make the finished items for myself than to make them for other people in a more in a more like a larger quantity. I just want to make one or two. I don't want to have to make a dozen. So it became pretty quickly that it was going to be a smarter move just to sell the raw goods. And it was fun. It was fun. It was so pretty. You can make it so pretty and colorful. And I really loved being able to do that. I still love doing that. And where the margins pretty good. And I just wondered like who were the who were the customers for this wool blend and wool felt before you came along. And people like you came along. In other words, these manufacturers

11:35were making it. You were sourcing it. True. So people had it. I mean, there were definitely people out there that sold it. But I would say they just they weren't making it as visually appealing or as easy to shop for. Okay. As I had for the vision for Benzie. So and I didn't I didn't start a supply store with the idea that we were going to grow into what we are currently now. I really thought it was going to be just fulfilling a few orders a day in my basement. And it is definitely we've been open for 16 years now. So it's definitely expanded more than I thought the demand for that product. And the in the in the way that we sell it exceeded my expectations. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. So you are selling um felt on Etsy taking your own photos. I'm

12:38curious what the name Benzie refers to. Yeah. It was a childhood hood nickname from my brother in law. So I would spend a couple weeks with my sister over the summer and with my sister and her and my brother in law. And she was really great. She would always take me to a craft store because again, I love crafting and let me pick out any project I wanted to work on for the week that I stayed with her. And um I don't know one time I was doodling my name Renee and somehow probably in junior high with big bubbly letters and hearts. And my brother in law looked at it and for some reason the angle he was looking at it or my R maybe look like a B but he was like Benzie. And so he nicknamed me Benzie for like years after that. So it was a childhood good nickname. Right. Okay. That's really cute. I love it. All right. And so I know you were working out of your basement. You had too much felt. At some point it really became too much felt.

13:43So so what was the the step toward moving out of your home? Yeah. So it was a lot. We lived in a 700 square foot home with a 700 square foot basement. We had three kids in like a two bedroom one bathhouse. Like we were cramped and I had my whole basement full of felt plus I had like a kid bedroom down there. So it was just like oh my goodness. I cannot. We cannot do another holiday season out of here. This is we've got to go find something. So I was looking around but like real estate in Illinois is where we live is pretty pricey. So in the warehouses are like huge. Like it was just too much of a jump to go from a tiny house to this huge warehouse with that's what we were running into. And then a storefront in our historic downtown area opened up

14:46at a really good rent rate like shockingly good rent rate. It was vacant for a few years and she was really looking to rent it out. And I'm like I wasn't planning on opening a brick and mortar. I kind of just wanted to do this undercover you know quietly for forever. But I'm like this would be really fun to have a brick and mortar like that like again like I am super inspired by all the color. And I'm like we can have it all on shelves and decorate it really cute. And I'm like okay the price is right. The square footage is right. We're going to move into this brick and mortar. And then we ended up seeing there for nine years in the cute little brick and mortar. It was fun. It was a fun season. And so did you have to expand your inventory? Because I imagine like you're selling packs of sheets of felt at that time probably like hand pulled rainbow packs and things like or sorted by by color group. But but to fill a brick and mortar where

15:51someone's going to walk in and and not feel like the shelves are empty or there's no inventory. That seems like a big jump. Yeah it really wasn't like we had like the fun thing about that first brick and mortar shop. It was we had like this wall of acrylic candy bins. And we put all feltered palms in there. And it was and you could choose your own colors and choose them individually. And it was super fun. The amount of customers that would walk into our store and be like it's like a candy store in here. Because again those were these are like little feltered balls that you can sew through. You can make a garland. You can put them on things. Those were also really hard to find. Yes. And that at that time. I really I really love sourcing things. I really love a challenge. And I kind of know what I like to craft with. And if I know what I like to craft with. There's probably other people that also like to craft with

16:54it. So it is a challenge for me to kind of find these hard to source items and get them into my store. So it really was not hard to fill the shelves. We filled them pretty quick. And with AV in a couple years we had two offices upstairs for one was our production annex. And one was more of a storage annex where we could store all of our shipping material. So we filled it up pretty quickly. And it kind of filled it up as what our customers were wanting. Maybe a little bit of what I was wanting. We've also really focused on wool based items. So we'll blend felt 100% wool. We just added felted wool. And things like needle felting supplies. Those felt palms. So a lot of wool based two more natural based materials has been our focus.

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19:00trends and practical project ideas great for studio reference or creative planning. If you work with jewelry, mixed media or a small scale product design, this is a brand worth knowing about and a catalog worth requesting. So listeners to the craft industry alliance podcast can request a free fire mountain gems and beads catalog using the link provided in our show notes today. Thank you so much fire mountain gems and beads. And now back to my conversation with Renee. And you were e-commerce first then brick and mortar but it sounds like your upstairs office, one of them was for shipping. So the e-commerce was still I mean what was the ratio there? In other words like early on do you remember what that was like? Still the e-commerce, it was still 98% of our business was e-commerce and like 2% was brick and mortar and I would say

20:07now it's maybe 95% is e-commerce and just wow. So it is still huge. Now we just moved to a new location and I imagine that that local brick and mortar number will increase because we're going to put a little bit more priority on our local community in the coming years. Okay and so were you still on Etsy as the e-commerce platform? Yeah we are still on Etsy to this day we opened up our own Shopify website. I'm going to say maybe like year six. Okay so we opened up our own Shopify site mostly because I really like having full autonomy and control over my platform. I like to be able to make the decisions of how my website functions and I'm one of my goals is to make shopping as easy as possible and fun and so I really love being able to make those decisions for my own shop. So our own website is

21:13our biggest marketplace but we sell on a few other marketplaces as well. Etsy, Michaels, Amazon and Fair which is yeah a business to business website. An AOLidia designed your current website. I wonder if you can share a little bit about like the before and after and for folks who don't know what AOLidia is there are Shopify design firm. Yeah who work with a lot of small creative businesses but you can you know set up a Shopify site on your own and with your graphic design background. I'm sure you were able to do that and so what was it like before and then AOLidia is not cheap by the way so what was it like after? Yeah so I think a lot of entrepreneurs are like this where they just kind of are scrappy and they figure it out and they do it themselves and that's kind of how I got the business to where it's at. Now I've just figured out I'm a creative problem solver. I just figured things out and got it done

22:17and so when I did the Shopify website I was like oh I'll just figure this out. I actually part of my freelancing was designing websites. I forgot to mention that earlier so it's like oh I can do this however technology changes so quick like I started designing websites when you're coding with HTML and now it's like it's just so different and so I came to be where I spent hours designing it and it was still not functioning in a way that I wanted to and I was like you know what spending so much time on this I'm not working on the business I'm working in the business this is easily something that I can hire out and at that point I also had I contacted AOLidia I really like how they work with small creative businesses so I felt like I didn't need to explain who I was or or what my goals were I just felt like they understood and I had them redo my logo as well and that was as a designer and as someone who loves to do logos it's really hard to do your own logo

23:21and they did such a great job they just like I still it's like it's my logo like 10 years old now I love our logo like every time I look at I'm like oh it's just perfect it makes me so happy so I think it was really really important for me to hire a third party to go in and do that for me and yeah they did my website and they still do my website to this day we're doing some updates right now and I still have them do it I know that they are pricey but they're just they're full service they do everything that you need to have done and I just feel taken care of they will maybe even come up with things that I would not have otherwise known I feel that they if I have a question about you know what's the best way to optimize checkout for more conversions they will just be able to help figure that out either implement it for you or they'll be able to put you in the direction that you need to go into they have access and services like SEO or they have the

24:23integration with Clavio so I feel like they just they're just full service and it's just really nice that I don't have to be kind of the general contractor of my own website now I I don't have ongoing plan or work with them but every couple years I do some updates with them and that's been been really important to me because that's my number one platform and I want it to work really well I want the shopping experience to be as smooth as possible for my customers so it's it's been very very valuable for me it's my number one marketplace and I want to continue investing in that platform and did you see a sales increase from before to after? Yes Benzi actually has seen sale increases year after year so I can't say for sure like like like oh my goodness this they designed it and then my sales immediately went up forever our

25:26Etsy platform was the biggest platform and sure enough after a while it did take a couple years of me saying hey go to our dot com where then our sales eventually then our dot com sales eventually exceeded our Etsy sales which was kind of a fun celebration because that's what I was working towards but it wasn't it wasn't immediate because I had to work to promote our website now when for years I've been promoting Etsy but I think it's definitely paid off you have to if you're selling on Etsy you have to be on Etsy's platform you have to follow Etsy's rules Etsy is great Etsy does a lot of things for a beginner shop owner which I think is wonderful but at some point I need to have autonomy and how my listing looks and functions and what price I want to put on it so the dot com is definitely a better fit for us and how much of that promotion and

26:26success with moving people over to the dot com how to do with email marketing because one of the other disadvantages of selling exclusively on Etsy is that you don't have the customer email address added to your email right the way that you can yeah we we started out with MailChimp like most people do we eventually moved over to clavio maybe because of aolidias influence on that clavio I would say is also another pricey one but that is probably where I haven't pulled the stats recently but I would say that's number one where revenue is coming in from is from that email and I have a sole contractor that works on our newsletter for us and she's she actually has the information for all of our new products that come in she's the one that puts them on Shopify and then she immediately goes and makes the newsletter for it so that her role works pretty seamlessly and especially with how social media is changing I think it's even more important to have that newsletter

27:32so I do like that right so if you're saying that that email marketing is the number one way that business comes into your shop and 90 plus percent of your business is e-commerce then that right there is a huge a huge plus in having a Shopify website so just something for folks who are thinking about it to consider because that email blesses golden yeah yeah yeah it's been great it's it's been fun it's been fun and so when you're sourcing it sounds like you're really good at sourcing you enjoy it you're good at it I'm sure that there have been things where I guess my question is how do you know what to say yes to and what to say no to because I'm sure there have been things that you brought in that flopped and weren't the right thing or deviated from the essential mission of what thency design is because you thought it was cute or whatever and then you decided to get to sort of stop carrying that so how what are the rules you know what I'm saying when you're looking yeah so like

28:35you know a couple years ago macrame was really big on trend we're like oh well let's go get some macrame rope and that will be really really fun and yeah we got it but we didn't have a marketing plan to carry that out we didn't have crafters that were making tutorials with the macrame and there were so many other people at that point doing so well at their own macrame shops that we kind of got it and but we didn't have a plan to market it and when I say market it we didn't have makers or creators that were making new and constant products with that so we try to stick to what we see our customers are wanting or using so generally we are known as a felt store even though we have needle felting and embroidery the the general consumer still sees this as a felt store so one of our newer products is a felted wool and that is yes we don't have a lot of projects with that but that's a natural extension of what we already have so let's put a lot of emphasis in on

29:36that so that I did add without having a huge plan or marketing plan sometimes I do that I have a really great operations manager here so when she gets her hands into it she will work a little bit harder and making sure that we have more tutorials that are surrounding that product but I try to really make sure that it fits within like does it have wool in it does it have natural fibers in it to kind of still keep niche however in our new location this brick and mortar location we're having a lot of customers come in who want different products like because of Joanne's clothes they're asking for zippers or everybody loves yarn we only sell yarn I would say for like crafters not for knitters or crusher so it is definitely easy to get distracted by like oh we have this one customer come in and they want zippers now I want to get all the zippers and all the colors and then release Renee we're not going to sell all those zippers we do not projects for those

30:40so I just think of of does is this a product that really blends seamlessly with our main product of felt is it something that is timeless I really like a material because I feel like with macramane that was even though we sell our macramane I feel like that was a little bit more of an on trend craft so I like products that have more versatility like felt can be used all the time for anything regardless of the season or the decade so I have a couple of those things in mind I try not to get just too distracted with the small little products like I get really distracted with like sequence for example I really want to release like the sequin tens that have all different sorts of flower patterns in it and I was like Renee this is not really a good financial thing for me to be spending my time on right now I need to be focusing on sometimes we use the four dollar projects

31:41and not working on the one dollar projects we're working on the four dollars the ones that are going to be bringing in more revenue so sometimes I have to rein myself in I love to well I want to talk about your maker team in a minute but before we do that I'm thinking that right from the start customers must have come in and been like what kind of shop is this because I've never been into a felt store before I mean I'd love to come I'm hoping to come visit in person something but like if there was a felt store in Boston where I live and I went there I'd be like that's so weird like it's it's a it's a store but it's not a fabric store and it's not a yarn store and it's not a craft studio and so it's a felt store like that's so I'm just thinking of course now with Joanne closing and everybody like kind of trying to find you know new sources for their garment fabrics and all the other things but but did people from the start come in and be like what is this? Yeah I mean forever like forever like my parents and family are like what do you have like

32:42people just aren't getting it and then especially when I just ran it out of my house people didn't really get that this was like a real business and they couldn't understand felt and I didn't really realize like how unique it was until I started like visiting trade shows and I was like oh there's really just yarn shops and quilt shops there's no such thing as fabric or felt shops so I I realized like how niche we are in the market but that's what's so much fun to me as well that we have this like unique position and I feel like we do a really good job of celebrating felt fabric um yeah um so you have this wonderful maker team and um I know you're you're recruiting right now actually for that for the next group but um and you talked a little bit about the importance of DIY content to support the products so what was the origin of this because again I kind of think of ambassador teams as something that big business really big

33:46businesses have like Bernina has an ambassador team or you know the big fabric companies have ambassadors but I it's fairly unusual for a shop you know like a brick and mortar shop first of all to have an ambassador team I would consider you primarily e-commerce I guess but either way it's not super common but then again you're also super niche so maybe it would you know it wouldn't function otherwise but talk a little bit about the origin of it what you've learned also about about having a maker team over the time that you've had it I wish I remember how many years I'm I'm going to say maybe we've had a maker team for five years now I could be off with that it came from wanting to be a little more intentional with building community within Benzie and being able to reach out so our first maker team we we did the call for entries

34:50for it and it was fascinating to see all these entries come in because you even just seen the entries come in you realize like oh my goodness this craft world is so much bigger than what you realize like yeah everyone can scroll on their phone and look at all the makers out there but when they're reaching out to you directly you know and we're pulling up their their Instagram or their portfolio it's been it just kind of widened your world of makers and I didn't want Benzie to become just what the tutorials I make or the certain style that maybe Camille is the one who runs our maker team I didn't necessarily want to be her style or my style I kind of wanted it want Benzie to reflect a community style and bringing in makers allows just a different variety of people than if we were if I was just making it and so I just think it allows for more diversity um I think

35:50it kind of expands Benzie out and kind of opens our eyes to other people and other skills that are out there and I'm hoping it does that for the people who subscribed to our newsletter um so we just are constantly providing some new content but then again larger community as well and is it okay if I ask how are they compensated yeah we are compensated with gift cards and free products so this is not a paid position and that is made very clear um so we tend to get um smaller more new crafters but that's what I really really like and people have the opportunity to build their skill through through Benzie but yeah we do make it very clear they are not compensated financially um what has been fun is that some people that have come out from the maker team have collaborated with us later on for potentially paid sponsorship or paid posts so there's been

36:56some opportunities that have come out from them and some of the makers themselves have been able to develop and grow their own small businesses after being on our maker team so it's been I would say mutually beneficial for for the makers and for Benzie and so you mentioned you were selling unfair and fair is a wholesale marketplace is similar to a trade show but online um so it's what businesses come to source for their business so brick and mortar retailers come to buy inventory to put in their shops so what are you selling on fair are you selling felt are you selling kits that you've created or something else yeah we um have our own brand of needle felting kits we have worked with other partners like other creators that we have developed their kits under the Benzie brand name so we have several different felt clits needle felting kits and we do sell felt as well

37:56okay all right so folks can kind of buy wholesale that way I also mentioned you sell on Amazon how is that been going because that could be a tough road it is a tough road it is Ben so fascinating how on the seller and it's like impossible to sell on Amazon like it was like a road just to sell on Amazon if you can even pass that hurdle and then Amazon just just changes the rules like regularly and we don't know about it like for example we recently had an issue where um one of our colors of felt Amazon just took the initiative to change the name so our fulfillment team is saying like hey we don't know what brown felt is because maybe we don't have a color named brown felt um because they changed it from like chocolate to a more generic name that maybe made more sense to Amazon consumers but then on the fulfillment side we weren't knowing

38:58what to sell what what product to package for the customer so yeah that's so that's a whole thing I can see in the future needing to hire some sort of consultant for Amazon to help us we haven't done that yet so we don't put a lot of energy in Amazon however I still feel like it's valuable we've had several customers that have either visited us in store or have um became customers of our .com because we're like oh I saw you're in Amazon but you're local so now I'm just going to shop here so I do think it's valuable to kind of have several different marketplaces and you meant right even if Amazon's really rough yeah um and you mentioned that you did go to trade shows and that's where you realized that there were yarn shops and there were cold shops but there weren't felt shops um and you'd kind of invented your own uh your own niche but um you still go to trade shows is that still a valuable uh yeah we go we go to h and h every year since we're super close

39:58it's literally like an hour away so or 40 minutes away so we just drive so we go to h and h um mean crystal my operations manager we've been going ever since the beginning it's just too convenient not to go and this year for f and f we are actually having a whole booth which I I again crystal is totally in charge of that I don't know what's going on with that but we're gonna actually show there and then I went to a couple of quilt trade shows back in the day as well but it was kind of hard to figure out do I go to quilt trade shows or do I go to yarn trade shows what kind of trade shows do I actually start going to so and now we just go to h and h because it's so convenient for us yeah and f and f is the new fabric and fiber craft festival which is a consumer show prior to h and h if anyone's sort of like what is that because that's yeah that is something new for sure this year um and you know one of the things that strikes me as you're talking is that you sound like somebody who's very good at delegating like you have different people who are in charge of different things you have somebody who's creating the booth for f and f

41:01and you don't really even know what's going on with that um you have you know somebody who is doing inventory fulfillment with amazon and you know that person is the person encountering this brown felt issue and all of these different things that are that are happening and I think um you know you expressed earlier that you really like to be in control and know what's going on in control the brand and all of that so is it hard to delegate or how like how has that been for you and like how helpful is that too I would say I am not naturally good at delegating I think if I want to be in a business that's growing and excelling and we'll be here for the test of time the only way to keep that going is by delegating is hiring staff that are more skilled than I am in the areas that I need and I would say that's actually really really challenging for me and I think in the

42:02next even 18 months that has to be a huge focus of mine where I even get better at delegating and hiring people that can do the things that I can't I just don't have time to do everything that all the ideas that I have in my head that I want done so the only way for us to continue in this growth cycle is to delegate so I think I'm not naturally good at it I've just really have had to learn it and have you considered things like offering a subscription box or writing a book right like there's all these things one could do in life with a business but that doesn't necessarily mean one should do them and I wonder if you've weighed some of those options yeah the team here is like beguied for a subscription box they're constantly like can we do one please and I just it I think in if that's going to happen we would need to hire someone in

43:03charge of the subscription box because I feel like there's so much on my plate I can't add one more thing but we definitely we definitely have a lot of ideas in ways that we want to grow I think that goes back to me learning how to be a better delegator and also learning how to hire the skilled people that I need in order to get a subscription box or to you know make all my dreams come true right and so are there things coming up for Benzie that we should know about or new things that are on the horizon that might be fun to hear about we have our so we moved to a new location last year one of my personal girls was to buy a building for Benzie so last year I purchased a video store so you know all the video stores went out of business so I purchased the video store and we went through a huge renovation of this this past year and then we moved in June of this past

44:09summer and again we really worked hard to make sure that our online system was going well our e-commerce portion was going well and so now we're having a grand opening more for our local community coming up in March but we're going to have classes and making takes and give away so that that is kind of like what we're all working forward to here and then trying to make a little bit of a transition to focusing more on our local community which we have not even though we've been a working mortar for nine years it was tiny and crowded with inventory it was really hard to really reach out to the locals and now we have this big place that that's kind of our our new goal for this year but I for products because I love products we're seeing we are really working and getting our felt it will line up and I have been wanting to expand our needle felt line forever so I'm going

45:13to work really hard to do that this year and we also have we design deep edge dies that work really really well for our felt paper crafters are familiar with dies um we've made it more felt friendly we really want to expand that program with Benzie too but again going back to the delegating is um making sure that we have the right staff to do that so we have a lot of exciting things to do and I want to get to your list of recommendations so you wanted to recommend something called toyotens yeah are these they're colorful it's okay so I'm just going to back up to every craft project I'm working on I just love it with all the supplies color coordinate with whatever project I have so I like it when the scissors coordinates with the embroidery plus I'm using and so our shop just got a whole bunch of toyotens in and they're just colorful like super good quality made in Japan boxes and they're amazing for storing supplies in and

46:20I need to get some okay yeah so we just we actually just got a shipment in yesterday and today and I'm like oh I want this color and I want this color so again I'm huge on color I'm huge on color coordinated so I just love it when everything works together yeah yeah that sounds awesome okay and then you're using an app to sort of control the scroll and it's called freedom I've not heard of this one yeah and I'm gonna be really honest I did ask I my my son's really into social media as as well like as a as a content creator and so I was asking him like I'm spending way too much time in this what are some apps that I can use to manage my time better and he gave me a couple and then I ended up just landing on this one it is a paid app I do have to pay for it but I am able to manage what I would say is my most distracting apps I think again we were talking about how the internet has changed drastically social media has changed drastically I feel

47:23like I used to be more of the content creator and now I feel like it's just too easy to get sucked in and it I want to use my time well and efficiently so this app will block my usage of my most overused and time wasting apps so that has been a huge life saver I've been doing it for about a year so during certain hours of the day you just take it on yeah I have it blocked actually for most hours of the day now so it's it's great and I feel like even like I just have more mental clarity and then I feel like it used to be like I would look at these apps and be creatively inspired to make things and now I just feel like it just kind of sucks all of my creative inspiration so no more we're going to be done with that so that helps it kind of changed and its nature and impact on your life it sounds like over time as the app as the social media apps have

48:24changed themselves yeah okay and then the last recommendation are benzy felt swatch charts which coordinate with DMC floss that's so cool yeah so again I love color I love a good swatch chart that I love being able to like if we're getting a new product like oh that's a word of the swatch chart I love the swatch chart I love benzy swatch charts they have a lot of people don't know this when they get it not only do you get the real swatch of the felt on it but it also has the coordinating DMC number a lot of people don't know that and it's a huge time saver sort of like looking through all 600 skeins for what you need we just tell you what's the best match right so it all matched the the floss color matches the felt so if you're doing a project you yeah you have a perfect a perfect color match that's awesome yeah love it so good this has been really great Renee thank you so much for being a guest on the craft industry alliance podcast I love

49:27talking to you well thanks for having me Abby this has been fun and you've been listening to the craft industry alliance podcasts I'm Abby Glossenberg this episode was sponsored by fire mountain gems and beads fire mountain gems and beads is a go to resource for jewelry maker is seeking quality materials thoughtful curation and ongoing creative education they're extensive selection of beads gemstones chain findings and tools is supported by decades of industry experience and be sure to request that free catalog through the link in our show notes today thank you so much fire mountain gems and beads craft industry alliance is a community for craft professionals when you become a member of craft industry alliance you get in depth coverage of craft industry news the opportunity to connect with fellow professionals for advice and support and access to an educational library filled with ideas tools and resources to help you as you build your business join us at craft

50:31industry alliance.org thank you so much and I'll see you next time