Hard Decisions

I have been thinking long and hard about what I want to do about Pink Punk Boutique this year.  I have come to the decision that I am going to keep my custom store closed.  I had planned to take a couple orders here and there, but for now I am enjoying my time off.  I will be honest and say that it's been nice not having that pressure weighing on me day and night.  I like knowing that I can go to work all day and come home and sit with a cup of coffee and my kindle and not have to worry about needing to get something done.  I like knowing that when I get my sewing machine out, since I don't have to keep it out all the time, I am going to make something because I want to not because I have to.

I think that I made the final decision when I started going through all my fabric and started getting it all put away.  I think deep down I knew that I wasn't going to be getting it out again, not for a long time.

Here is what most people don't realize about what I have been doing for the past 3 years.  It's a labor of love, really, to do this for so long and when you don't love it anymore it's just work.  And when it's just work and you aren't really making any money doing it then it's not worth the time.  Don't get me wrong, I love to sew and hopefully I always will.  Here is what I don't love

• countless time answering e-mail questions from people who never end up ordering anything
• countless time looking up fabric for people who don't order anything, or have no clue what they want

People don't understand the time that goes into custom work.  People say, "oh it's such a shame to let that business go, why not hire someone to help?".  Here is the answer to that...if I was making anywhere near enough money to hire someone I wouldn't need to get a job outside the home to make money!!  People see that I charge $90 for a camera bag and can't imagine why it's so much.  Here is a quick rundown of how much of that money I actually see.

• fabric - $16 - $30 (depending on what fabric picked)
• interfacing - $14
• hardware and zippers- $7

So right there alone, I have $37 - $51 just in supplies and that's not counting thread, needles, wear and tear to my machine.  Just say that I have average of $44 into each DSLR 2.0 bag, that leaves me $46 left over to count toward labor.  It takes me about 6 hours start to finish on a bag this size so I am making roughly $7.50 an hour.  That's not even minimum wage and I am being generous with my totals, I probably have more money into each bag truth be told.  If I add embroidery to the bag I lose even more money since I have to make 2 trips to town to have it done and they always end up charging me more than I charge the customer.  I always come out behind on the embroidery jobs.  And don't even get me started on factoring in time looking for fabric and going back and forth on email to nail down the fabric choices.  I think it's pretty safe to say that my profit from each bag is much less than 1/2 of what I charged.

That's why the decision was easy for me to make.  I don't love it enough anymore to have it take up all the free time that I have now that I am working.  The tiny bit of money I end up making just isn't worth the stress of it.  This past year was really stressful for me with the site hacking and moving my shop around to try to find a good fit.  I had one customer who didn't finalize the fabric for her order for OVER a year.  Yes, OVER a year!  All these little things add up and make big stress and for me it's just not worth it.  I want to be able to say that I still love to sew and will for a long time, but I can only do that if it's fun again.  I don't want it to feel like a job anymore.

I guess that's a really long way to say that I am not going to take any more custom work, but there you have it!  I am going to keep my Etsy store, but honestly, I don't know if I will make anything new for it, at least for awhile.  I haven't sold one single thing since I re-opened so why bother to make new stuff at this point?  It's been kind of a let down really.  I just want to get back to a place where I love what I am doing again.  I will get there at some point, right now I am just tired!