We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kat McDermott a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Kat, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

Previously, I was just a crazy cat lady who surrounded herself with all things cat — it didn’t matter what it was. If there were cats on it, I had to have it! But unfortunately, there weren’t a lot of things that looked like my cat, Linus, and that was a real bummer. He had unique color patterns that weren’t found on all the generic kitty merch everyone was selling. And more importantly, the cat designs were either too similar to each other or just… bleh.

No one really specialized in cats or offered anything different. Not unless I wanted to slap a photo of Linus onto something. I wanted to stand out with something cute and quirky!

So, I looked… and looked… The only options for custom cat work I could find was art prints. I had to reach out to bigger companies for things like bags, shirts, or keychains. And the ones I found either weren’t easy to contact or work with, had huge fees, or they didn’t seem to make me feel like I was understood as a “cat person”. And I was tired of having to settle.

Desperate and discouraged, I just did what I loved doing: I went to some craft stores for supplies, drew my cat myself and made what I wanted right at home. All the while thinking how ridiculous it was that, for a market as saturated as “cats” was, nobody sold what I was looking for.

That was a lightbulb moment.

I’ve always been a very crafty, artistic person with a deep love of cats. And I’ve already had a hand in making my own products for artist alleys and website in the past, but it felt more like a directionless hobby. I realized then that THIS was what I actually enjoyed doing: drawing cats and making cute stuff!

And so, I rebranded my business and through many trials and errors, Katnip Art was born from the desire to bring fellow cat owners and cat lovers a unique experience of preserving the memory of our furbabies with cute, unique handmade merchandise that turns heads and caters to the crazy cat person in us!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I’m a freelance artist who loves coffee, drawing floofy cats, and all things cute. I specialize in handmade cat-inspired merchandise, jewelry, stationery, & gifts (the majority of which are handmade in my workshop.)

My own passion for cats (and their mystifyingly adorable ways) has greatly influenced my work and allowed me to connect with so many people and offer them memorable, custom paraphernalia of their cat (and cats in general) that lasts a lifetime!

A big perk of my job is getting to see a lot of kitty pics for the custom work I offer, but my absolute favorite part is when my customers tell me how happy they are with the finished pieces, especially if it was a gift! Knowing I contributed to honoring the memory of their cat (whether they are still with them or have passed), is something I take great pride in.

But ultimately, my main goal is to not only provide cat lovers with adorable kitty merch, but I’d love to help out cats in need, too! As my business continues to grow, I’m planning to donate a portion of my earnings to my local cat shelter to go towards whatever they may need to get those kitties into forever homes.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.

I sell on both my own website and Etsy. I sell basically the same products and services across both, but Etsy is the main hub for my custom work, and my website is mainly just finished products.

Both each have their pros and cons: Etsy is a great place for starting out (especially if your handmake your products) because a lot of people already go there specifically for handmade crafts. They also generate their SEO and marketing for you to help gear traffic on your Etsy page. The biggest con on Etsy is the large amount of fees they take. They take a good chunk out of your earnings, which forces makers to have to increase their prices to ensure they can still make a sustainable income. Another thing Etsy does that’s unfortunate is, if you make $10k in 1 year either consistently or maybe you had a rush of orders for the holidays, you’re automatically enrolled into their off site add program forever and you can’t opt out. There’s more info on this online, but it’s very discouraging for businesses who don’t consistently hit that amount and can’t afford the fees for that program they were auto-enrolled into.

The benefit to owning your own website (through Shopify, Shift4, Amazon, etc.) is that the fees are typically only the payment processor (and/or any add-ons or plugins you use to run your biz with). But the con is that you now need to do your own marketing and SEO to drive traffic to your website since you’re now the person in charge of your landing page — unless you have a handy team of peeps to do this for you, that is!

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

I make the vast majority of my products in my home workshop, and I only use the highest quality of materials I can reasonably afford. But there are some products I’m unable to make on my own.

Finding vendors can be a bit challenging, but it really just comes down to what your budget is and what your view on quality is, and also where you want your products manufactured from. If your manufacturer is overseas, it may be easier on your wallet than if you purchased from a company within your country.

If I can’t find any local small businesses to help support, I like to go on Alibaba to source for manufacturers and I’ve established good relationships with a lot of businesses who produce fantastic finished pieces within my budget. The only problem is, a lot of the time you’re going to need a huge order minimum for some products, so be prepared to take that into consideration if you only need a certain amount.

But if you’re ever unsure about a quality of a product, contact someone on their team to send you some samples of their work so you can get an idea of what your finished piece may look like.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.KatnipArt.com
• Instagram: katzomg
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/KatnipArt
• Other: Etsy: www.etsy.com/shop/KatnipShop

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