We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Amber Scardino. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Amber below.
Amber, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?
I started my business out of my home near downtown in 2013. I was home with my two incredibly energetic and inquisitive boys and keeping them busy with projects is what kept them somewhat calm, and me somewhat sane. My friends encouraged me to pursue my dream of opening my own home-based process art studio so I could share what we were doing with other kids, many of them being their kids early on. I had an art background and loved working with children. At the time I called the business Wee Warhols and decided to start with summer camps. I worked really hard to set our garage up as a functioning art studio and prepare for the first day of camp. I will never forget the panic that I felt on that first day. I was greeting the kids as their parents dropped them off when my husband came up to me and whispered that there was a lady with a briefcase and suit there to see me. Someone must have seen one of our initial ads and preemptively reported me for running a daycare out of my home and she was sent by the city to investigate. Luckily when I told her how many kids would be attending classes at a time and what our hours were, she informed me my operation was within the legal bounds and assured me that it wouldn’t be a problem if I stayed within certain thresholds. She gave me a booklet that listed regulations and I was sure to stick to it, since I didn’t want to break any laws. I carried on with camp and we had the time of our lives making creative messes, diving into sensory exploration, and play. We had built our home just two years prior and it was designed with entertaining in mind and had a secure gate, a private courtyard positioned in the center of the property, and with a garage that had an additional rear door that opened to it. This serendipitously turned out to provide an ideal layout for a small school and the children and parents really responded well to it when touring. Word quickly spread about the fun and creativity that was happening at Wee Warhols and, before long, we had to place interested families on a waiting list. After a successful summer, I began teaching weekly classes, hosting birthday parties, and added holiday camps. I taught art out of my garage for five years. As demand increased and given both the legal and capacity constraints, it became very clear to me that I was at the limit of what I could accommodate out of my home. I was unable to scale up in our small space without becoming a daycare and jumping through all kind of hoops and I had no interest in doing that. I was also a breakeven business and had hit the cap on revenue potential due to the limited number of seats I could offer. I was at a crossroads at which I needed to decide if I wanted to keep doing this as what amounted to a hobby, or really double down and turn it into a real business. Because of the massive wait lists, along with the overwhelming positive feedback and encouragement I received from my students, their parents, and my family, I decided on the latter.
About this time, I proactively reached out to the Warhol Foundation to inquire about using the name. I was worried about investing more on growing the business without having their official consent, only to receive a cease and desist once it would be too expensive to rebrand. Sure enough, they informed me that I could not use their name without paying them a hefty monthly fee, which I definitely couldn’t afford. In order to scale, I decided to rebrand the business to Figment Creative Labs, and bought a dedicated commercial space to develop into our enrichment studio. This was a lot at one time, but looking back it made sense to do it all in conjunction with each other. Opening the dedicated space was a big leap from where I started, but I knew that if I wanted to offer these amazing experiences to more than 10-12 kids at a time, I was going to have to increase capacity. I am very lucky to have a supportive husband and family. When we bought the space, my husband took off two whole months from work to oversee renovations of the space and make my vision become a reality. I have always worked long hours because the love for my business makes what I’m doing feel more like a way of life or a hobby than a real job. Luckily, as Figment has grown, so has my amazing staff of creative guides. I currently have a staff of 13 amazing creative ladies that all have special talents and each bring something unique to make Figment Creative Labs what it is today. I am happy to say that what started in my garage with me and 10-12 kids has grown into a hive of creativity and a bustling business. When we opened enrollment for summer camps this summer we sold out in a matter of hours with 170 kids on the waitlist for each week. Due to the steadily growing popularity and demand for Figment, I am currently keeping an eye out for the right place to open a second location. I couldn’t be happier about how Figment has grown and evolved over the years. It is my happy place and it makes me proud to constantly hear so many of our students say the same thing.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
We focus on process art with the littles and implement more STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) and introduce Maker Ed. as they grow with us. Over alI, I believe that creating should be a stress-free process that promotes self esteem and confidence. I hope that Figment will inspire creativity in people of all ages, bring families together through art and encourage learning through play.
It is really important to me that the children that pass through our doors feel like they have entered into a place of wonder, joy, and creativity. I want them to be inspired by the colors, textures, and light surrounding them and feel comforted by and love for the animals that surround them. I want them to feel heard and respected and know that their opinions and ideas matter. They are our future artists, inventors, engineers, teachers, designers, and leaders. We are teaching them how to find their own creativity and how to listen to the voice inside of them. We want to help them through times when they feel defeated and teach them how to find creative ways to problem solve. We want them to feel that Figment is their art studio and we are the creative guides to help them along in their journey.
We offer something for all ages, but we specialize in working with children. We have a preschool program, homeschooling groups, toddler playgroups, after school program, we host art birthday parties on Saturdays, we offer adult art nights, summer camps, and holiday camps. We have recently added a kiln, so we are now introducing clay classes into our programs as well.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
Being an art teacher, I am very visual. Instagram has been a great portfolio for the work that we do with kids. I also found a really great supportive creative community of other moms and art teachers on Instagram. I have met many good friends over the years on social media that have similar teaching philosophies and have similar businesses. I even co authored a book series called STEAM Kids with a few other ladies in my field that I met on social media. It is a project-based book series about hands-on learning. That would have never happened without social media. Because of my instagram account, the craft supply company Michael’s contacted me to be part of an add campaign where my boys and I were featured in a commercial. I would say that I built my Instagram account by having a love of what I do and being consistent with posting quality photos of our work daily and interacting with other accounts that I admire. After years of building our account, portfolio, and our following the Instagram account was hacked and vanished for a while. I would say this was kinda devastating. The fact that something I had diligently worked to build for so long could just be stolen like that was very discouraging. And, to add insult to injury, the hacker laughed about it in private messages with me. Luckily a client’s sister worked for Meta and was able to eventually recover the account a few weeks later. I have to admit that I have felt a little different about social media ever since that experience. I don’t have the desire to post like I did before. I try to encourage my staff to take more quality photos of work done in the classrooms with the incentive of ongoing photo contests. My advice to those starting to build their presence is: focus on creating content you truly love, don’t obsess about your numbers – focus on quality posts that truly interest or inspire and your following will grow organically, don’t let social media become an addiction that distracts from the priorities in your life – schedule time blocks to create and post your content, be positive – compliment and/or share others’ posts that interest and inspire you, be careful not to let your account get hacked! – keep up with the latest hacking methods so you know how to recognize them – you’d be shocked how difficult it is to recover an account once you get locked out!
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
Like many others, having an in person business during a pandemic was a challenge to say the least. We had to pivot a lot during Covid. We made art kits and I delivered them to many families stuck at home. We started a learning pod at the studio that included my two boys and a few other kiddos. I launched a “virtual summer camps” where we coupled art kits with live video sessions as an attempt to bring Figment into the homes of families. All of these things helped us stay afloat and acted as a big distraction for me during such a troubling time.
Figment has more recently become known for the menagerie of animals that we incorporate into our programs. We started with just a few classroom pets right after we moved to the new space. During Covid when we were stuck at home, I brought the few animals that we had at the studio home to care for. Each night we would have movie night where each of us would snuggle with an animal. I found this so therapeutic and the animals loved all the special attention too! Win-win! I realized that if being around and caring for animals was so helpful for my own stress level, that it would have the same effect on the kids at Figment. Well, this opened up the floodgates for me to bring more furry friends into the Figment family. Today we have a tortoise, three ducks, multiple chickens, 3 goats, a hedgehog, a snake, guinea pigs, a bunny, frogs, an axolotl, a bird, and a bearded dragon at Figment. They have been an amazing and unexpected addition to our space. The animals teach the kids empathy and responsibility and they love having them around and caring for them. This shift in purpose prompted us to sell our home downtown and move out to the country and start our mini farm where we have even more animals. So I would say that although Covid was a horrible time, it did make me evaluate what I wanted in life and was a big part in a realization that caring for animals brings me great joy and I wanted to share that with the kids at Figment.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://figmentcreativelabs.com
- Instagram: @figmentcreative
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/figmentcreative/
- Twitter: @figmentaustin
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/figment-creative-labs-childrens-art-classes-austin
Image Credits
Photos by myself, Crissa Fisher, and Hanny Marin