We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jennifer Bryant. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jennifer below.

Jennifer, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with what makes profitability in your industry a challenge – what would you say is the biggest challenge?

The biggest challenge to profitability in my industry would definitely have to be the big box store competitors. Over the past couple of years when going to some of my regular stores, I would wander down the isles and frequently come across Macrame items. These items, of course are mass produced and come with a price tag that typically reflects this. With this comes the group of people who don’t understand why macrame artists like myself charge the prices we do. Since this then becomes a competition essentially between small businesses and big box stores a lot of the small businesses in this industry then undervalue themselves. A lot of times, this causes small businesses to lose money and when you are doing things like macrame, it is constantly us putting out more and more money into cord and other supplies we may use, it can get pretty dicey. Whereas billion dollar companies aren’t constantly worried how they will afford the next batch of supplies.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Jennifer Bryant and I am the owner and Macrame artist of Thingamaboho. I am a wife and mom of five from Leavenworth, Kansas. I launched Thingamaboho back in March of 2020, right before everything began to shut down and at that time I almost considered turning around and shutting right back down myself because I didn’t think there was any way that I was going to have any business. This came about as a rebrand to my previous business because I just didn’t love what I was doing, when I discovered macrame though, I knew that was what I needed to focus on. For years I have been a stay-at-home mom, and all of our kids were in school. We wanted to ensure that there would always be someone available for days off school if someone got sick, flexibility to take them to and from school as well as attend events. It just made sense to venture into the world as a small business owner. Do I have a lot of free time to do what I want now? Absolutely not. Being a small business owner is a 24/7 job. I am sure many would agree that we even think about our businesses while we sleep.

I create a variety of items from smaller things like keychains, vent clips, and jewelry all the way to wall hangings and even photography backdrops for weddings and other events. I absolutely love what I do and have enjoyed watching my continuous growth through each item I create. Our business is structured in two different ways, we have our retail side where customers can purchase whatever is in stock, and then if there’s anything specific they want we absolutely love doing custom orders. The other side of our business plan is wholesale where other retailers can purchase our items at discounted rates and resell them in their shops, we have very specific items that get offered on the wholesale side.

One thing that I am the proudest of would definitely be my growth over the past year. If you would have asked me a year ago where I would be in my business, I would have responded with “Closed”. It took me a long time and a lot of discipline to work through everything. Hit a roadblock? Let’s shut it down! Have a month with not-so-great sales? Let’s shut it down. If I wouldn’t have such an amazing support system. I wouldn’t have made it another year. Now, it’s absolutely amazing and I am so glad I didn’t give up. So please, anyone who is reading this, if there is a dream that you are chasing, don’t give up.

“There are so many macrame artists.”

While this might be true, the one thing I can definitely say I love is that while we each may create similar things, at the end of the day, we all learn how to add our own flair to our work. If you have a piece you would like to have done, but it is not something I am comfortable doing but know someone who could? I am definitely giving you their information.

One other thing that I would love to share about my business, is the number of original pieces I offer. As a typical rule, the majority of larger pieces that I create are going to be one-of-a-kind, There are a few items that I have that I recreate, but I feel that it is super important to have items that my customers can look at and know that they have something special.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

The initial capital that I used to start my business actually came from my husband. He believed in me and my business so much that he was willing to put the money into it as long as I needed it. I was of course super embarrassed almost every time I needed to come to him for supplies or anything else that goes into it. It felt like I was just wasting his money. Now, because he believed in me so much, we are on two and a half years of being open and this year (2022) is the first time I have been self-sufficient in supporting my business on my own as well as making a profit.

How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.

This is a fun one to answer. I actually started out on Etsy, it seemed to be super easy to get my work out there since lots of customers shop on Etsy. The issue I ran into back in November 2021 is that I was going through my numbers and looking at the analytics and I realized that Etsy had so many fees and things that they were taking from me, that I was losing when the orders coming in showed that I was rocking it! It was disheartening. I then realized that most of my sales were coming in from my social media platforms so I switched up and launched my own website using Shopify and it has been the best experience.

I think the biggest con for starting your own website is definitely driving your customers there and SEO (Search Engine Optimization), so what I had ended up doing was leaving my Etsy shop open and it essentially became a landing page for people to be able to find me as well as just hustling on social media letting everyone know, “hey, I am still here!”

Contact Info:

• Website: thingamaboho.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/thingamaboho
• Facebook: facebook.com/thingamaboho
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thingamaboho