We recently connected with Ashley Wilson and have shared our conversation below.

Ashley, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. One of the toughest things about entrepreneurship is that there is almost always unexpected problems that come up – problems that you often can’t read about in advance, can’t prepare for, etc. Have you had such and experience and if so, can you tell us the story of one of those unexpected problems you’ve encountered?

One major small business challenge has been finding manufacturing partners who maintain our high qulaity control standards, while meeting deadlines, and who can scale production with a growing business. I have worked for over a year to bring our Creative Learning Table to market. We took a chance on working with a small business who laid out a plan for growth with us, however they have missed deadline after deadline and can’t possibly keep up with our growing demand. After accepting 150 pre-orders for our Creative Learning Table, our manufacturing partner has been able to delivery very few. This has lead to thousands of dollars in customer refunds and been a very scary time for our business. We have learned a lot through this challenging experience and most importantly pushed us to become even stronger. Our comitment to our customers, high qulaity products, and to our mission is a top priority.

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 Ashley and I live in sunny San Diego with my husband and three amazing girls ages 4,6, and 8. I have a master degree in early childhood education and spent the first 8 years of my post-college life teaching pre-K, kindergarten and fourth grade. In 2019 I opened a children’s art studio and was running it out of my home with plans to open a brick and mortar location in 2020. When COVID hit, and I had to close my studio, everyone was stuck at home! I began brainstorming ways to share all of the great sensory and fine motor activities we did in class with my students at home.

My passion for play-based and hands-on learning flourished during the early pandemic months when I had time to create all kinds of learning experiences for my girls. This time out of work pushed me to start The Creative Learning Co™ and Creative Learning Boards™ were born!

Each of our learning boards, has been thoughtfully designed, developed, and tested, using my educational background and first-hand experience working in and out of the classroom. I pinch myself every day that this is my job and feel so grateful for such wonderful and supportive customers. I have built my entire business on organic marketing through our social channels. I am most proud of the connections and relationships I have built with my customers. Teachers, parents and caregivers share images, videos and testimonials every day, which is beyond rewarding. Additionally, I have built CLC with a firm commitment to high quality products and amazing customer service. So many small businesses fall short in the customer service department and this is where we have been able to stand out and really shine.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

My “near death” story for our business is in the process of working itself out now. We have been working on developing a sensory table to compliment our product line for over a year. We teamed up with another small business to bring this to market and it turns out they lead us to believe they had broader capabilities than they do. They have missed multiple deadlines and struggled to keep up to fill our orders. We have had to issue thousands of dollars in refunds due to not having product to fill orders. It has been super stressful and frustrating since we have all the components for the table in our warehouse to ship except the table frame which is made by this other small business. Since we have re-invested the money from these orders into other parts of the business, it has been a huge challenge coming up with the cash for refunds. I have learned a lot from this experience and will certainly be more aware of things when partnering with a new manufacturing partner.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I have built our Instagram following completely organically from a lot of hard work, consistency (posting daily), and relationship building. Putting time in to daily conversations, providing meaningful content and value, getting to know people in our space, networking with other small businesses, participating in giveaways with other brands who have similar audiences, are all things I have done to build our following. Being closely connected to our customers through our social channels has built trust and brand awareness that has really served us well. 90% of our sales comes from Instagram, so putting in the time to grow this sales channel has been super valuable. My advice for those just starting out would be to set realistic expectations, stay consistent and build those relationships. Have genuine conversations, get to know people, support them and cheer them on, and in return they will support you (because they are invested in the relationship and want to see you successful). Very few people are able to grow their accounts rapidly. Just stay consistent and share valuable content. Ask yourself, “would I scroll past this or stop and read”. You want people to stop and read.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thecreativelearningco.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecreativelearningco/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9HX4OlZW3mA0-wg49sicuQ
• Other: Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thecreativelearningco

Image Credits
Kelsey Swann Photography