There are some big, exciting changes coming to one•little•m this month! Before we pull back the curtain on those, I want to take a little time to look at how far we’ve come.
STARTING OUR BUSINESS
My background is entirely creative, I don’t consider myself a business person. Sometimes I share with people how things go down behind the scenes here and they’re like, “I don’t think I could do that!” If you asked me in the beginning, I would have said, “Me neither!”
I have a BFA in graphic design from Missouri State University, with minors in art history and advertising (the latter I only did as a buffer, in case the “starving artist” thing was real). I wasn’t great with my advertising studies, and I didn’t really think about the “business” side when I started one•little•m.
By that point, I’d had full-time jobs designing ads for big companies like Tyson, Aramark, Walmart, Sears, and Craftsman. In that world, there are so many people involved in making the decisions on a final creative product. I felt like there were too many rules to follow to create the artwork, and that an original idea was always transformed by creative directors and legal teams into something entirely different in the end. The final product lost the unique originality it once had in the beginning. I wanted something I could own entirely from start to finish, something that would last longer than a 2-hour Black Friday banner ad.
That was really my “I’ve had it!” moment. You don’t have to work on many banner ad designs before you realize that you’re spending 40+ hours of your life to create a banner ad that’s “live” for 2 hours. Thank you Black Friday “doorbusters”. Never again.
The creation of this “little” business began to take form when I decided that I could change my fate and do something to attain a genuinely enjoyable professional life for myself. What a relief!
One•little•m has been in operation since November of 2009. Not long after Jon and I got married, I began working on a variety of “little creative things” to sell. These consisted of a willy-nilly selection of invitation designs, art prints, custom-made dresses, and other little accessories which I sold in a shop on Etsy. In addition to those, I occasionally sprinkled website and promotional design into the mix. I called it “one•little•m” because I thought the idea of just little ol’ me doing all these creative things for people was impressive.
I didn’t realize it, but I was such a jack back then. Yep – a jack of all trades, and, conversely, a master of none. I stretched myself so thin trying to do too many different things that none of my products were very strong in the beginning. It took me a good 3 years to discover my focus; but when the ad job laid me off, I realized that my passion was for paper creations, things really began to grow.
When I began to devote all of my creative juices to paper-based designs, my concepts became stronger and started coming more easily. I got really excited! My unique invitations started selling faster and more often. I was surprised and pleased to find that there are people out there like me who want to be different, who want to use a really ornate Harry Potter-inspired design for their wedding invitation, for example.
I was so busy taking orders and designing them as soon as they came in. I did all of the emailing, bookkeeping, design, printing setup, materials ordering, assembly, packing, and shipping work myself. It was exhausting! But I was so excited that I owned this thing, and I didn’t care. Eventually, I just could not manage all the work alone. I started enlisting friends to assemble invitations for me once a week, which lead to the important institution of using a calendar and a booking system. Mayhem managed, I daresay.
It was a big deal to share my work at first. I love feeling papers, and I love putting paperthings together. So delightful! And, I have to admit, I had some concerns about the financial side of it, too. Jon’s background is in business, he was involved behind the scenes from the beginning, but the demands of his full-time job meant his involvement with one•little•m was often a “parachute drop” to discuss goals, processes, or product designs. Really, it was the principles behind how we handled our personal finances that informed how we wanted to handle the business: Live with an open hand, take a calculated risk, plan ahead as best you can, and be flexible when those plans have to change.
FROM BUSINESS TO COMPANY
Starting out, I just wanted to own my job. Now almost six years into one•little•m, I can mark that one “Complete.” But the truth is, a company is not something you simply establish and put on auto-pilot. As an owner I can never say, “Once we reach this certain goal, then we’ll be golden!” A successful establishment is always changing, always improving, and never stagnant.
Michelangelo once said, “Every block of stone has a statue inside… it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” For the last six years, we’ve been working to do exactly that. In the next couple of weeks, we’re going to be making two major announcements that will begin to turn our little sculpture into something even better.
It’s so much fun to bring customers’ ideas to life with paper creations. Whatever else may change as this “little” business grows, that’s fundamental to why we exist. Products, trends, and styles may change, but I believe with all my heart that paper truly is the best! I’m so excited to see what happens next!