Selling Your Handmade Art Dolls | The Dollmaking Business Series
When you finally take the plunge and decide to start selling your handmade art dolls you might not be aware that there are more than a few boxes to tick off before you are well on your feet, with a thriving and successful business.
Today I want to walk you through the steps to take, some even before you start selling, as well as give you some tips and a guideline to follow so you are not overwhelmed by everything there is to do.
This post is part of The Dollmaking Business Series, where we will discuss how to start selling, go about pricing, marketing and finally some insights and tips regarding doll photography. I hope you enjoy the ride and learn something new.
How to Start Selling Your Handmade Art Dolls
First, I will talk about selling your very own doll design, and not about selling dolls made from someone else’s pattern (or “too inspired” by somebody elses’ dolls).
This, although you might not agree with me, makes a lot of sense because you will be working an incredible amount of time not just in the creation of the dolls per se, but in communicating with your customers, setting up shop, doing your accounting, purchasing materials, taking photographs, etc. and all to create a “product” that doesn’t even speak for you?
Or a doll that is not uniquely yours that she is lost in the jumble of other very similar dolls?
It is my experience that if you work hard at the beginning and create your own pattern, based on your ideas and all the things that make YOU excited, then that excitement will translate to others, they will be able to feel your passion more closely and therefore connect with your work more deeply.
That passion and connection, in due time, will turn into sales.
After all, we are talking about this because we want a viable, thriving business.
This series is not about how to make the best dolls, or how to make doll hair, it’s about what steps you need to take to turn your doll making passion into a business.
But before we get ahead of ourselves, if you much rather watch and listen than read to this, you can check out the video of the Live session I hosted with this theme back in October 2019 through my Instagram Live stories. Here it is:
Step 1. Your Doll Product
I advise you to design your own pattern, and to take into consideration the age appropriateness of the doll you are making [versus making a doll with fancy Suri Alpaca hair and then try to sell it as a doll for a 3-year-old to play with.
Just the amount of time and resources you will invest in creating the doll will be quite expensive and maybe not something a parent would like to give to their young child to play with, especially since the hair won’t stand up to play].
A few things to consider are:
Test your doll for durability and make sure it is of high quality.
Address any safety concerns (long strands or thread, buttons, snaps, etc).
Age appropriateness or who is your market?
What labelling requirements are you obliged to include with your doll product?
Certification concerns.
Permits or regulations you must follow before setting up shop.
I cannot give you a step by step of each one as it is highly dependant on the type of the doll you will be creating, the way you dress her/him, who you are trying to sell this doll to, where you live and the type of business you plan to run (home-based, out of a rented studio=higher costs, through a collective, etc).
I believe giving you these guidelines is food for thought and then you can use your friendly Google services to find out what exactly applies to you, what is doable with the amount of time you have to invest in this business and make more informed decisions based on your particular circumstances.
Once you have designed your “product”, you have ironed out any quality concerns and safety issues, you have ordered labels, you have any necessary permits (depending on where you live you might even need to certify your dolls), then you are ready to open a store.
Step 2. Open a Store and decide on Payment Processing
Now, there are myriads of ways and places you can sell your dolls. You can just sell them through Facebook or Instagram if you choose, though in my opinion that doesn’t scream “business” to your potential customers and more like “hobby dollmaker” (which is completely fine, but I am trying to focus in this post on how to actually do this as a business).
The best way, in my opinion, if you are entirely new and don’t have a very large following of people or already lots of customers behind you, is to open an Etsy shop.
Yes, I know you are going to look down on that, but hey! it’s how I started and got wonderful results.
I like Etsy for a few simple reasons:
It has a powerful search engine within the platform, someone who has no idea you exist can find you by a mere search.
You can have a very successful Pinterest/Etsy ads (we will get into that later) dynamic using these two platforms.
You have rating and previous customers can leave reviews, which means other people on the fence can read about your wonderful dolls and be more inclined to purchase from you.
Etsy handles all payments and collects all tax and then you have everything in one place, which will make life easier when you have to file your taxes.
People can message you and you can keep track of everything in one place.
This is of course, not the only platform available out there for you to use. I personally use Etsy only for my PDF patterns (digital products) and I use BigCartel for my dolls and online classes (because I pay less fees).
I only recommend opening a stand-alone store (like BigCartel, Shopify, etc) once you have the means of driving traffic to your new store (i.e. a website, a blog, a social media page, a newsletter), otherwise it will be much harder for people to find your store from the get go.
In the Live session and YouTube video I share and talk a lot about other places and how you can best use them.
You will also need to open up a way to receive payments online. Paypal, Stripe, Square, e-transfer. I mean, there are a lot of ways to do this and you have to decide on the one that will work the best for you, depending on the amount of payments you expect, your legal obligations to report your income (some platforms might sync with your bookeeping software, etc) and whether you need to open a business bank account to begin with.
I didn’t do this right from the beginning but it definitely made life much easier once I had everything separated, so I highly recommend you to open a business bank account as it will make book keeping matters way easier.
Listing your dolls for sale, a handy guide on how to start selling your natural fiber art dolls by fig and me.
Step 3. Listing your Dolls and Taking Product Photos
Now, you have a shiny new store, you are set to receive payments. Now what?
Well, now you have to list your dolls and this of course will vary depending on the place you choose to sell your dolls (whether it has internal search engine capabilities or not).
For example, if I am listing a dollmaking pdf tutorial on Etsy, this all highly applies to me then but not so much when I list one of my dolls for sale on my blog, as it’s just a different way and certainly a different platform. I still have to go through some of these to do it properly though.
You will have to think of all these:
Title, for your doll listing
Keyworks and tags for SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
A creative description (I go into this at length in the video)
List of ingredients used in the doll’s creation
Shipping quotes
Legal requirements
Pets/Allergens (present or used)
You will also have to take some photos to show off your doll, so you will need good lighting (I take photos with a Cannon 80D by a big window when inside, and many photos outside), try to capture different angles of your doll and display him or her at their best advantage. You can even try to use some of your branding colours or themes into the actual set up of the photo.
I have published a small guide with some insights into Doll Photography, you can check it out and see what you can learn from that.
Step 4. Setting Company Policies, or Boundaries as we like to call them
Having a business is a lot of work, it is a constant uphill journey of self-discovery, the human condition and life in general.
You are bombarded daily with advice, with new things to try or invest in, government throws you a couple hard-balls every now and then, your platforms decide to change how they work with you and for you constantly, your customers require a lot of information and it seems you now dream of marketing instead of dollmaking.
The best way I have found to not go mental (or well, let’s be honest, just to not entirely loose the plot) so that I can keep those doll dreams coming, is to have boundaries.
Boundaries not just on when I work, how I work, but also for my customers to know what I can and cannot do, when I can do it and how.
As you build your business and more stuff happens to you, you learn valuable lessons, so I am here to tell you all before you have to learn through the school of hard knocks.
Decide at the very least on these minimal policies:
Returns and refunds
Cancellations
Will you offer custom work and under what circumstances
Deposits
Lay-away system
Your shipping frequency
All the above set the tone for how you conduct your business and when asked you are not left trying to figure things out on the fly. It is also advisable that you stick to the same policy with everybody and that only works if you have a place where they can read it and you can refresh it as you go.
Step 5. Marketing
Making the dolls is one step of the process (actually, a lot of steps are involved in just one thing, but let’s keep going), taking photographs of the doll is another step (and then editing, resizing and adding a watermark another couple steps), listing the doll in your store and setting everything up for a successful sale is another step, now you have to market the doll.
There is absolutely no point in doing all the work, walking all these business adventure roads, ordering labels, and taking photos, if you are not going to market your business.
It’s like sifting flour, creaming sugar, whipping egg whites, baking and decorating a cake but then putting it under a cupboard and not letting anyone eat it.
It’s a disservice to the work you have done previously, to your doll and to your artistic soul.
If the word “marketing” makes you feel weird (I know it made me feel very uncomfortable at the beginning), then think of it as “creating awareness”.
You are basically trying to create more awareness for your work as a dollmaker, but sometimes this means you are trying to create specifc awareness for a doll or offering.
Now let’s be clear. You are not trying to scam people, you are not “pandering your wares”.
You are trying to sell a beautiful doll, made with mindfulness and ethics (right?), made slowly by you in your studio, in the hopes of bringing light into somebody else’s life and earning an honourable income through it.
Therefore, It is your job to make sure a lot of people are “aware” that this doll is for sale, and just telling everyone once doesn’t cut it for the most part; you have to do this several times, in a way that is not pushy or “salesy”. Just be truthful.
Hey, not to compare ourselves with the giants, but if Michael’s sends you three emails per day when they have a sale, why do you feel bad about trying to find a home for your precious handmade doll? Please don’t!
Luckily for you and me, the world is very connected nowadays so we have lots of different channels to use, to create more awareness for our dollmaking business.
You can do all the following, or do it like I did it: concentrate on one thing at a time, understand it well and use it properly and then add one more.
Different ways in which you can market your work or your specific doll listings are:
Through a blog, like this one.
via a YouTube channel
Pinterest
Your business social media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc)
Newsletter
Via your network of family and friends
Through Facebook groups
More details and insights in the YouTube video, as well as in the downloadable PDF file at the end of this post.
Step 6. Sales and Packaging
Of course we need to be prepared for when that first sale, and all successive ones, come through. There are some of the details you must think before the first one happens, such as:
Invoice details: your business name, website, social media info, etc.
Are you comfortable having your home address in all your invoices?
Customs declaration, if you are shipping this doll out of country
Shipping label information, what exactly do you need to ship this doll. Only recently I have to include my customers’ phone numbers for International shipping.
You will also have to devote some time to package your doll safely and hopefully in a cute way too, for her journey home.
Packaging can seriously take up a whole entire post but let’s just go over it briefly and perhaps I can expand later via my Stitchy Notes newsletter, into a few suppliers and ways to package your dolls (with care of the environment and the budget in mind, but without sacrificing aesthetics):
Care instructions
Labelling
Marketing materials (I send postcards with mine)
A thank you note is always nice
Goodies for your customer
Protective material
Branding
Please remember allergies and sensitivities, as well as some materials that are forbidden to be shipped to certain places.
Renata, a natural fiber art doll by fig and me.
Step 7. Accounting
Running a business, especially one online, means there is a lot to do all the time.
You will have to devote some monthly hours to keep your records straight, so that when you have to file your taxes you have everything somewhat ready.
I am never ready but every year I become better and more organized at this, so I do wish you the best of luck.
You will need to keep track of:
The cost of your materials
Any purchases of tools, equipment and office supplies
Business expenses, such as permits, licenses, accounting services, marketing materials, shipping materials, website, email marketing, packaging, etc.
Extremely good records of all your transactions, your store and payment processing fees, bank fees, etc.
Tax collected and tax paid
If you are under certification, you will need to keep batch numbers and a thorough list of your supplies and certificates for those, if needed
Inventory, at the end of the year you have to deduct your current inventory of materials from all the purchases you made from the year and start with that as beginning inventory for the following year.
My advice to you is to keep it simple, but also manageable. If it works best for you to do this every week because you have a lot of sales, then do it every week. If it’s best for you to tally and summarize everything once a month (my current unattainable wish) then do that.
I know that when I keep on top of it I feel better, knowledgeable of the financial health of my small business and I make better decisions when I show up at the yarn or fabric store with those big eyes.
It’s a hard thing to do, when as a dollmaker you are so driven by the beauty of the natural materials you use or nature around you, that you want to be in constant creative mode.
But let me tell you, as a business owner, the creative mode is certainly a very big part of your business but it’s only half of the equation.
The business part takes the other half of your time and I think most new dollmakers don’t realize how much more time will be invested in running thier business.
In my experience, most new dollmaking business owners allot some time to the creation of their doll, but never allow or schedule the other time, and in the end their business ends up being a side thing to their lives, they give up or they are never able to do it full time.
Any business takes time to grow. Creating natural fiber art dolls takes even more time, in my experience, as there is a crucial learning curve and a “market growth” massive curve. But I consider it a very beautiful way to make a living so if you are keen to give it your best shot, I hope these posts help you out to that end.
7 Steps to selling your natural handmade art dolls by fig and me.
So that’s it. Those are the 7 steps you would take when you start selling your handmade art dolls. This of course can apply to many other handmade crafty items, but I like to speak only for what I know and this is what I truly know: the handmade, natural fiber art, doll business.
Now, if you would like to have a handy PDF of the entire thing, where I added a few links and a bit more notes, you can download it over here:
Thank you so much for being there when the series was Live on Instagram and for all your questions.
Thank you for subscribing to my newsletter in order to download the guide and thank you so much for your intention of bringing more beautiful, mindful, natural fiber art dolls to the world.
I wholeheartedly believe that even though dolls might not be strictly-necessary items to life in general, they fulfill a very special place in our human life.
They are intrinsic to a child’s development and they are tools for healing in adults. Playing with dolls is nurturing and is fun.
If those two reasons don’t ring true for you then perhaps you landed in the wrong place. hehehe!
I will be publishing the next installment of this series, “How to Price your Handmade Dolls” next month. Keep your eyes peeled for that one (and or subscribe to the YouTube channel as there will also be a video).
If you have questions please pop them in the comments, I am happy to help.
