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

Gallit, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.

For me, Loveline Baskets was never meant to be what it is today. Eight years ago, my husband, Chris, and I were organic vegetable farmers. We had a daughter, Calliope, and an ideal life near the coast of Maine. Then tragedy struck. We lost our second child, Elon, after eight days of life. We were beyond devastated. It took everything we had to keep it together. During the day, we as parents made certain to love Calliope and make her feel safe. In the evenings though, I needed an activity to focus the love for my son. I started sewing cotton rope baskets.

Again, at this moment I never intended to make a business out of baskets. Let alone have it become as large as it has become. I just needed to sew baskets.

And sew baskets I did. I sewed nearly every evening, I consumed so much rope that our local department store had to start having more rope transferred in from other stores to supply me. Then they had to start special ordering rope from the manufacture. Then we started buying directly from the manufacture. In addition, we still bought everything our local store could get. Looking back it, it is kind of funny for me. Chris would go grocery shopping and I would add “rope” to the list.

Eventually, I had more baskets than I could give away. Being farmers we were accustomed to marketing what we grew so it was not a huge leap for me to apply to a few craft shows. Additionally, I approached a couple local gift shops and asked if they would like to carry my baskets. The response was really incredible and affirming. Networking at craft shows led to more wholesale accounts. Eventually I had all I could do. All I had to do was keep sewing.

This is when I ran into my first real obstacle to scaling up. My consumer grade sewing machine wasn’t up to the task. At the time, I wasn’t committed enough to invest the money in an industrial sewing machine. Instead I bought another machine similar to the one I had, and then another. I seem to remember Chris bought me one as a gift as well. I would cycle through the machines. As a machine or two needed servicing, Chris would drop them off at the repair shop. This way I always had a machine I could sew with.

Eventually, our daughter was old enough that I had more available time. I began toying with idea of making Loveline Baskets more of a proper and full time business for myself. Here was the second major obstacle to scaling my business. Having multiple sewing machines cycling through the repair shop was workable for where I was at at the time. I just wasn’t going to be able grow the business in a significant way by doing more of the same. I needed an Industrial sewing machine, yet the cost was just out of my reach.

As luck would have it, a benefactor approached us with an offer. The mother of a friend of our daughters had just come into a small financial windfall. She wanted to support a women-owned small business. She approached me and offered to invest in a scale appropriate sewing machine in exchange for some baskets and sewing lessons.

At this point, craft shows were too large of a time investment for my family to add more of them. So, I began accepting more wholesale accounts and added an Etsy store. I had recently received some local and national press, so the challenge wasn’t finding wholesale customers. The challenge was not accepting too many. We still had the farm and we just had another daughter so my time was limited. I found myself needing to work whenever I could find a moment.

Then the Pandemic of 2020 was upon us. As a result, Chris decided to retire from the farm and find employment elsewhere. We toyed with the idea of making Loveline Baskets our full-time employment. Neither of us had the courage to do so with two young kids and in the middle of the pandemic. Chris went to back to school to become an electrician.

A year passed. I had so many baskets to a make for wholesale orders that I was sewing late into the evening, weekends and school breaks now. Chris would get home from work and I would start sewing. The kids would have a long weekend and I would have to sew. Chris and I were in a cycle of working and bouncing the kids between us. I still loved making baskets, but ours lives were getting out of control.

Little did I know at the time but we were about to make the move to scale up yet again. One cold February evening to my surprise Chris proposed taking Loveline Baskets full-time. We didn’t have a business plan except a general idea what we needed to do make it work. I had the equipment I needed, so next day we jumped in feet first and took action. I joined our states’ Craft Association. Chris quit his job. We signed up for as many craft shows as we thought we could manage. Chris developed our line sheet so we could acquire more wholesale accounts. We maxed out a couple credit cards acquiring a professional tent/display and another sewing machine. Chris started adding wood lids and handles to our baskets. Basically, on a wing and a prayer we threw everything we had into making this work.

A year later we took stock of our situation. We survived, but barely. We didn’t do enough craft shows. The craft shows we did were underperforming. We took on to many wholesale accounts. Etsy wasn’t meeting our expectations. Working from home with small children is challenging. We had played it too safe in many ways. Going full-time is a big risk in and of itself. What we needed to do was to break through the barriers we placed on ourselves and take risks outside of our comfort zone.

For year two decided to do just that and step outside our comfort zone. We were afraid of applying to prestigious craft shows out of state. So, we decided to do twice as many craft shows. Most of which were out of state and highly juried. Even though wholesale accounts were my bread and butter for so many years, I had to learn that it was okay to say “no”. We started paying for advertising on Etsy and the results have been truly amazing. We still needed a studio space for myself outside the home, but that was going to have to wait.

Year two of full-time has just come and went. Some of the clear successes for us has been going out of state for craft shows. For us they are bigger shows in areas of greater affluency than we live in. I didn’t do as good a job at saying “no” to new wholesale account as I could have. The additional work load for not as much money is kind of demoralizing. Amazingly, paid advertising on Etsy was the surprise winner of all the changes we made for the year. There were times when I dreamt of only doing making baskets for Etsy. Not very realistic, but it was fun to dream. Finally I really need to get a studio outside our home.

Looking forward. We are making minor changes to the crafts show we do. Saying “no” to more wholesale accounts is something I will continue to work on. We need to hire an employee, which is a really scary commitment for us. And finally, I just moved into my studio away from our home. Wish us luck.

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.

My name is Gallit Cavendish. Together with my husband, Chris, we operate Loveline Baskets along the shores of Merrymeeting Bay in Bowdoinham, Maine. We make cotton rope baskets, bowls, bags, and accessories with leather and wood accents.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

A local knitting goods store had contacted me about doing a co-branded knitting bag for them. The order wasn’t particularly large but it wasn’t small for me either. They were to provide the embossed leather labels and social media blasts. I was to make the bags and hand stitch on the labels. They were lovely to work with and very responsive as we worked on the design, color selection, pricing, and various other details.

We had agreed on everything. The down payment had been received. The rope I needed for the bags had arrived. The leather labels were being manufactured. I started to sew my first bag and the rope was not performing as I was accustomed. It was a different manufacturer and for whatever reason it was unusable for this project. I placed an order from my main supplier. This was in the middle of our slow sales season and cash was precious. To have to absorb the extra material cost really was painful.

I had done a mock-up of the bag before hand so knew how much time it would take to make and charge accordingly. However, I hadn’t accounted for my need to provide a consistent product. I always strive for consistency, but I had never seen so many of the same bags going to the same customer together before. The added time and focus on minute details was demoralizing.

Finally the day came when the bags were made and I had to hand sew the leather labels on. By this point I had given up on the thought of having made a profit. I just wanted it done. My husband and I stayed up late listening to music and talking as we hand stitched those labels. At least there was one bright spot.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

I was a chef. He was a farmer. He came into my restaurant to sell his tomatoes. After work I called my sister and told her I just met the man I was going to marry.

We were both in the middle of our busy seasons so we didn’t really date at first. I would visit him at the farmers market and flirt. He would make produce deliveries to the restaurant and we would smooch on the loading dock. I would send him home with the food I was preparing.

As our seasons slowed we began spending more time together. Within the year, I had quit working at the restaurant and joined the farm. Within three years, we were married and had our first child.

Of course we no longer farm and Loveline Baskets has become our livelihood.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lovelinebaskets.etsy.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lovelinebaskets/

Image Credits
I took all of the photographs.