This weekend the businesspersons involved in Seedorff Family Farms got together to determine what exactly we are trying to do, and how we're going to go about doing it. My mother, my friend, and myself got together and discussed our goals for the business, how we're going to split up costs and profits, and where we need to go from here.
A festive Halloween/Birthday party got the three of us together this weekend for some fun. Outside of the festivities, we spent some time yesterday looking up cages online and stumbled across something that sounds very interesting. We found a book titled "Basic Angora Wool Farming" by C. Nagle. We went ahead and ordered it, so it should arrive sometime this week. We all need to be keeping up with our reading! We also looked at rabbit cages on eBay with the hopes of finding something inspiring, and stumbled across some cages that look like what we're hoping to get that are much cheaper than what we've been finding elsewhere. We're going to look into how much shipping costs, and if it doesn't sound too bad we'll go ahead and order a couple to use for our first rabbits. We'll also be able to use the cages as patterns to build our own cages. We are definitely moving forward on the cage front. We hope to have at least one cage by Thanksgiving.
Also, we decided to open a checking account this week. We're going to get all three of our names put on the account and keep careful track of how much starter money each of us puts into the account. Once we have an official account, we can move forward on other things we discussed this weekend, such as purchasing our own domain name for a website and having business cards printed.
As for the professional contacts that I was having problems with last week, we've had a response!! A fiber farm about an hour away from where I live finally emailed me back early last week, and we've set up a time to go check out their operation and possibly purchase some rabbits. We can't make it to their farm until Thanksgiving, which is why we're trying to get cages here and ready by then. As for the other contact that I talked about last week, we haven't heard anything, so I'm going to email them from a different account this week and see if I have better luck.
The reading is progressing. I'm still working my way through "Crafty Superstar" and my mother has finished "Rabbits: The Key to Understanding Your Rabbit" by Virginia Parker Guidry, so I need to catch up with my reading, especially as I have another book headed towards me now. The immediate next steps for me are to open a checking account on behalf of the business and get all of this reading done. Then we can move on to the cages!
Tip of the Week: Be sure that you have a detailed conversation with your business partners. Be sure that they are completely on the same page as you, including how much work will be involved, what they are hoping to get out of it, and how profits will be divided. Also agree to continue having open discussions so that as things change in your business, no one starts to feel that they are getting cheated.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Reading Up
I spent this week researching rabbits, rabbit farming, and crafting for a profit, as well as trying to make some professional connections.
I've stumbled across many websites this week by Googling "Angora Rabbits" that have a lot of helpful information about raising the rabbits and how to market their fleece. One website was particularly interesting because it talked about the "dark side" of rabbit breeding. They shared some tragic stories of finding that their bunnies had been attacked by predators in the night. This particular breeder had actually gotten out of angora farming because of the hardships they had endured. It's good (or at least wise) to hear the bad side, even though it's a little scary.
I've also been reading the book "Crafty Superstar" by Grace Dobush that has TONS of valuable information about starting a small, craft-based business. I'm really enjoying it! The section on starting up a business was particularly helpful so far. It includes a questionnaire to help the budding businessperson think critically about what they are trying to do and how they need to go about getting it accomplished. I've also read information about how to make your business "legit" and how to go about hiring a lawyer if you need legal guidance. The section on pricing made me think the most. More on that later in the tip of the week!
As for professional connections, I've been coming across some roadblocks. I've e-mailed two different breeders that are within a "reasonable" driving distance (less than three hours) of where I live, and I've come away empty-handed so far. One breeder, who is particularly close to where I live, has a great website with lots of information, but when I tried to contact them via e-mail, the message was bounced back to me. I've tried again, but I still haven't heard anything. I checked tonight to see if they had a phone number listed, but they only had their e-mail address. The other breeder I contacted hasn't gotten back to me yet, despite the fact that I e-mailed them much earlier this week. Lesson learned: if you want to sell something, be sure people can contact you!!
On a happier note, I contacted a friend that I've been hoping would get involved in the business with me, at least marginally, and she seemed to be interested. I'm hoping that having her involved in this endeavor will make it a little less labor-intensive and a little less scary. I'm planning on talking to her again this week, so I will hopefully have more information about that in next week's installment of information.
Tip of the Week: (Idea taken from "Crafty Superstar") Be sure you consider your own hourly wage when setting prices. Besides considering materials for your project, think about how many hours you spent crafting it, or in my case, how many hours were spent working with the rabbits. Do you really deserve to be paid $1 an hour for that beautiful shawl you knitted? Do you want to be paid less than minimum wage for the beautiful 4-ply yarn you spun? If you spent 18 hours crocheting an afghan and your labor is worth $10 an hour, than your afghan needs to cost at least $180 plus the cost of materials. If your work is quality, people will be willing to pay for it.
I've stumbled across many websites this week by Googling "Angora Rabbits" that have a lot of helpful information about raising the rabbits and how to market their fleece. One website was particularly interesting because it talked about the "dark side" of rabbit breeding. They shared some tragic stories of finding that their bunnies had been attacked by predators in the night. This particular breeder had actually gotten out of angora farming because of the hardships they had endured. It's good (or at least wise) to hear the bad side, even though it's a little scary.
I've also been reading the book "Crafty Superstar" by Grace Dobush that has TONS of valuable information about starting a small, craft-based business. I'm really enjoying it! The section on starting up a business was particularly helpful so far. It includes a questionnaire to help the budding businessperson think critically about what they are trying to do and how they need to go about getting it accomplished. I've also read information about how to make your business "legit" and how to go about hiring a lawyer if you need legal guidance. The section on pricing made me think the most. More on that later in the tip of the week!
As for professional connections, I've been coming across some roadblocks. I've e-mailed two different breeders that are within a "reasonable" driving distance (less than three hours) of where I live, and I've come away empty-handed so far. One breeder, who is particularly close to where I live, has a great website with lots of information, but when I tried to contact them via e-mail, the message was bounced back to me. I've tried again, but I still haven't heard anything. I checked tonight to see if they had a phone number listed, but they only had their e-mail address. The other breeder I contacted hasn't gotten back to me yet, despite the fact that I e-mailed them much earlier this week. Lesson learned: if you want to sell something, be sure people can contact you!!
On a happier note, I contacted a friend that I've been hoping would get involved in the business with me, at least marginally, and she seemed to be interested. I'm hoping that having her involved in this endeavor will make it a little less labor-intensive and a little less scary. I'm planning on talking to her again this week, so I will hopefully have more information about that in next week's installment of information.
Tip of the Week: (Idea taken from "Crafty Superstar") Be sure you consider your own hourly wage when setting prices. Besides considering materials for your project, think about how many hours you spent crafting it, or in my case, how many hours were spent working with the rabbits. Do you really deserve to be paid $1 an hour for that beautiful shawl you knitted? Do you want to be paid less than minimum wage for the beautiful 4-ply yarn you spun? If you spent 18 hours crocheting an afghan and your labor is worth $10 an hour, than your afghan needs to cost at least $180 plus the cost of materials. If your work is quality, people will be willing to pay for it.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Fiber Farmers? Why Not!
Two weeks ago after a particularly difficult week at work for the both of us, my mother said, "You have to figure out something else for us, some way that we can make money doing what we love." Thus began the journey.
When I was growing up my family raised Lincoln sheep, a curly longwool breed with beautiful luster. We showed this sheep at many shows and attempted to market the fiber, but with limited success. I was too young to really get into the business side of the operation, and my parents weren't computer savvy. We made a few brief connections, but nothing that lasted, and we were essentially raising a large flock of pets. When my brother and I went off to college my parents sold the sheep, as we weren't making any money and my parents had lost their help. The journey into fiber farming was seemingly over.
Two summers ago I started crocheting, completely by chance. I was going to grad school and needed something to keep me busy after I was done with my homework at night. My mother handed me a "teach yourself crochet" book that she'd picked up somewhere, and I've been crocheting ever since. Shortly after this she began knitting, and we both began to immerse ourselves in the fiber arts.
After our conversation about finding something to do that we loved, I thought hard about how we could make money from our crafting obsessions, and I thought about the past experience we had. An idea popped into my head, let's try to fiber farm again!! I have the interest and the computer savvy to market our product, and my mother and I both love animals and wouldn't mind farming again. We debated what to get; our past experience was with sheep, but we could also raise cashmere or angora goats, alpacas, anything. Then I thought about angora rabbits. They're much smaller in size than the other livestock we were considering, and would have less of a start-up cost.
Fast forward to today. There was a rabbit show in my town today that an angora rabbit breeder I'd been emailing was showing at, so my mom and I went to check it out. We had a chance to discuss rabbits with the breeder, plus we checked out some rabbit equipment that was for sale and took some pictures. The breeder didn't have the information we were really hoping to get, but investigating the rabbit equipment paid off. There were some fantastic looking cages there, but we're hoping to make the cages ourselves. After examining the cages carefully we went to the local farm store and found some reels of cage wire for $20 as well as the clamps that hold the bars together and some "urine guards", or metal pieces that attach to the inside of the cage to keep the bunny from accidentally spraying outside the cage. I think we can make several cages out of the materials we found for much less than the purchase price of the options we found today. We didn't purchase cage materials, as we're still in the research phase of our budding business, but we did purchase a book on rabbits and a book about starting a small, craft-based business.
We're hoping to market raw fleece, spun yarn, and knit or crochet crafts made out of our angora fiber, with the idea that we may someday expand to include other fiber-growing livestock. This blog will be a way to record our journey from dabblers to owners of a (hopefully!) successful fiber farming and crafting business.
Valuable lesson of the week: If your first contact doesn't turn out to be what you were looking for, don't give up! Go find other contacts that may prove helpful. You have to slog through a lot of information before you find what you're looking for.
When I was growing up my family raised Lincoln sheep, a curly longwool breed with beautiful luster. We showed this sheep at many shows and attempted to market the fiber, but with limited success. I was too young to really get into the business side of the operation, and my parents weren't computer savvy. We made a few brief connections, but nothing that lasted, and we were essentially raising a large flock of pets. When my brother and I went off to college my parents sold the sheep, as we weren't making any money and my parents had lost their help. The journey into fiber farming was seemingly over.
Two summers ago I started crocheting, completely by chance. I was going to grad school and needed something to keep me busy after I was done with my homework at night. My mother handed me a "teach yourself crochet" book that she'd picked up somewhere, and I've been crocheting ever since. Shortly after this she began knitting, and we both began to immerse ourselves in the fiber arts.
After our conversation about finding something to do that we loved, I thought hard about how we could make money from our crafting obsessions, and I thought about the past experience we had. An idea popped into my head, let's try to fiber farm again!! I have the interest and the computer savvy to market our product, and my mother and I both love animals and wouldn't mind farming again. We debated what to get; our past experience was with sheep, but we could also raise cashmere or angora goats, alpacas, anything. Then I thought about angora rabbits. They're much smaller in size than the other livestock we were considering, and would have less of a start-up cost.
Fast forward to today. There was a rabbit show in my town today that an angora rabbit breeder I'd been emailing was showing at, so my mom and I went to check it out. We had a chance to discuss rabbits with the breeder, plus we checked out some rabbit equipment that was for sale and took some pictures. The breeder didn't have the information we were really hoping to get, but investigating the rabbit equipment paid off. There were some fantastic looking cages there, but we're hoping to make the cages ourselves. After examining the cages carefully we went to the local farm store and found some reels of cage wire for $20 as well as the clamps that hold the bars together and some "urine guards", or metal pieces that attach to the inside of the cage to keep the bunny from accidentally spraying outside the cage. I think we can make several cages out of the materials we found for much less than the purchase price of the options we found today. We didn't purchase cage materials, as we're still in the research phase of our budding business, but we did purchase a book on rabbits and a book about starting a small, craft-based business.
We're hoping to market raw fleece, spun yarn, and knit or crochet crafts made out of our angora fiber, with the idea that we may someday expand to include other fiber-growing livestock. This blog will be a way to record our journey from dabblers to owners of a (hopefully!) successful fiber farming and crafting business.
Valuable lesson of the week: If your first contact doesn't turn out to be what you were looking for, don't give up! Go find other contacts that may prove helpful. You have to slog through a lot of information before you find what you're looking for.
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