#18: Black Friday Alternatives For Makers - Celebrate Your Creativity and Uniqueness Rather Than Discounting

As a small creative business the holiday season can be the time you make most of your sales - but how do you compete with large retailers offering all sorts of Black Friday discounts.
Instead celebrate your creativity, unique designs, your skills and personal touch and look for alternative Christmas shopping events such as Colour Friday the campaign run by Holly Tucker MBE of Holly & Co to celebrate brilliant small  businesses and bring joy to meaningful gift giving and uplift the thousands of  female led small business this holiday season.   

You can follow follow Holly Tucker @HollyTucker and the hashtag #ColourFriday

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Transcript

Sarah: 0:01

Hello, welcome to the Thriving Maker podcast. In today's episode, I'm talking all about holiday sales and encouraging your customers and your audience to shop small this festive season. So, wherever you're listening and however you're listening, I hope you enjoy. Welcome to the Thriving Maker podcast. My name is Sarah Kavanagh, your host and I started the Thriving Maker to support makers, crafters and artists just like you to grow your creative passions into flourishing businesses on your terms and give you the life that you want. I'm a jewellery designer maker and started my own handmade fine jewellery business over 15 years ago. I now also help other artisans and makers build their own craft and handmade businesses through marketing and branding and techniques and strategies I've studied, learned and put into practice along my journey. Right now, I want to help you to establish and grow your own design business so it can help support the lifestyle that you want. Think of this as your go-to resource and check in for all things strategy and marketing for your business, along with stories and anecdotes from my life as a handmade entrepreneur. Thank you for tuning in and welcome to the Thriving. So this episode is all about shopping small and making the most of the festive selling period at this time of year. So we are currently in mid-November and you've probably noticed that every man and his dog especially big retailers, are doing Black Friday sales. Now, as a small business, this isn't to our advantage whatsoever. As solopreneurs, and especially as handmade artists and makers and crafters. We cannot compete with the big retailers. You can't offer the same kind of discounts that the big retailers are doing. So we need to think differently about how we can maximize sales this festive season without discounting our work to a point where it's no longer profitable and it can be really difficult for solo makers to try and compete. So so my advice is don't try and compete. Make your own promotions over Christmas if you want to make promotions. So this holiday season is probably the peak selling period for many crafters and makers. This is where you're going to make the bulk of your income, and so if you start slashing prices now just to compete with giant retailers, then you are not doing your business or your work any favours and you're not crediting yourself with the expertise and the skills that you have developed and you're putting into your work.

Sarah: 2:58

There is no obligation to follow the herd and discount left, right and centre, and here in the UK and if you're in the UK. You probably have already heard of this and if you're not, I will tell you about it now. But here in the UK there is a thing called colour friday, which is on the 29th of November, and this is a campaign that was initiated by Holly Tucker of Holly and Co four years ago, and it's to spread the creativity, colour and craftsmanship that small businesses bring. So Holly is a fantastic ambassador of small businesses here in the UK and has put this initiative, this campaign, together to really support small businesses at Christmas. So money that's spent over this Christmas period supports the many rather than the few, and when we say the many, it's supporting family-run businesses and independents who, as we know, just can't compete with big retail Black Friday events. So Holly Co and Holly Tucker have created this campaign called Colour Friday to really encourage people to shop small this Christmas and to take advantage really of the amazing creativity and the amazing handmade products that are out there and are unique and one of a kind and are available for people to buy if they are willing to look and find the sellers. And it's a real opportunity for makers and crafters to show their work and have an event at this time of year. That isn't all about massive discounts, but it is about celebrating the creativity and craft that goes into handmade designs. So you can find out more about Colour Friday and get involved in it you can use the hashtag Colour Friday, which is the UK spelling of colour, so C-O-L-O-U-R Friday on Instagram, or you can follow Holly Tucker, who is this incredible, amazing ambassador for small businesses and, in particular, female-led small businesses.

Sarah: 5:20

So I would love for you, as a maker, to really embrace this opportunity to shout about your craft and to not hold back about why your work is different and why it's different from mass-produced work, and how you offer something unique and meaningful and share the story behind your designs so your customers can really appreciate you as the maker, but also have that amazing story when they give their gifts to their recipients, and I think that's what we all look for when we're gifting. We all want to give something that means something special to somebody else. Whether you spend 10 pounds or you're spending 100 pounds, it's you want to, where you can, to buy something that's going to mean something special. I encourage you, as makers and crafters, to support fellow makers and crafters and other small businesses, especially at this time of year, and share the love and joy of handmade work. So go and visit the Christmas fairs and the Christmas markets, which I'm sure you already do as makers, and you're really supporting fellow small businesses. So this is just a very short episode today, but it's really, and it wasn't one that I was going to necessarily record, but I really wanted to let you know that there is no obligation to do big sales and join in the Black Friday chaos. There are other shopping events, such as Colour Friday, that celebrate particularly our industry as crafters and makers, and so do get involved in some of those activities and share your work and share your story and support fellow makers.

Sarah: 7:06

I this morning I've opened up loads of emails which are talking about Black Friday and in some circumstances you can say, oh, brilliant, there's a discount on xyz I've been looking at for a while. Perfect, and it may be things that small businesses and handmade artists don't make, but there is also a plethora of gifting opportunities, homewares that come from solo entrepreneurs, from solo makers and family businesses that can be supported at this time of year. So that's my little spiel about black friday, um, or color friday, as I think we should all get behind um. So go and check it out. The hashtag is color friday and um, go and check out.

Sarah: 7:53

You don't already follow her, holly tucker, on instagram. Well, because she has a wealth of information and advice that is brilliant for all sorts of small businesses and, in particular, female-led ones. So that's it for today. It was just a super short episode because I just felt like I wanted to share with you, as we're getting closer to all these big retailers discounting everything, to share with you about other celebrations for buying this festive season. So take care, and I will speak to you very soon. Bye for now.