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

Becky, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Often the greatest growth and the biggest wins come right after a defeat. Other times the failure serves as a lesson that’s helpful later in your journey. We’d appreciate if you could open up about a time you’ve failed

Selling at pop-up markets is always a gamble, especially when fees to attend are on the higher end. Days where attendance is low, sales are low or on more than one occasion, no sales, those days leave me questioning, hurt, and feeling like this was a fail of a concept. It’s tough to work through.

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’ve long been a maker in some capacity whether it was growing up and playing around the house, my multi-decade career in theater doing props and scenery, treats for dogs, tearing apart my house and remaking it, or baking. Creativity is my lifeblood hence I’ve been dubbed a Thing Maker by friends. My brain is constantly awhirl with ideas for things to make.

Tired of seeing the kitschy farmhouse home decor signs around with their quaint sayings, the idea to do a funny take on the opposite came to me thus The Antisign Shop was born, modern home decor where every day is opposite day.

Working through the idea, I decided to go nearly full-on with the opposite theme. The wood I use is upcycled and reclaimed, rough and beaten up. Hitting the antonyms, I made a list of words and phrases to reflect a dark humor version. The only resemblance to the quaint ones is the similar font. Everything is done by hand in my workshop.

Pulling everything together to start a small maker business such as a logo, business cards, a website, ways to sell online, photographing and editing, finding venues to sell, and so much more is a feat, one of which I am quite proud of. Being a maker is more than making items: it’s marketing, social media, getting the word out there that your cool items exist.

When you make products to sell, your heart goes into them especially if they’re an unusual item. It’s tough to find markets and stores to sell at, the fees and work that goes into participating in those, then it’s hard watching people laugh, say your product is clever and smart but walk away without purchasing. It can be incredibly defeating, taking the wind out of your sails but when you can find your audience, it’s very rewarding too.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

I do hand make all of my products except items like stickers. Given I own the proper tools and came with the skillset, it wasn’t difficult for me to start making the wood signs and home decor items right off the bat.

Making your own products does take time though. It takes time to figure out how to make the products so they live up to the vision in your head then once that’s figured, it takes time to analyze how to streamline the process enough to keep the quality exacting but speed the production. It’s quite a bit of testing, materials testing, deciding what works and tossing what does not.

The most difficult part, probably the hardest lesson for sure is selling, getting people to buy what you’ve made.

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

Currently my items are for sale on my website (theantisignshop.com) as well as Etsy, Facebook, and Instagram.

As I fund my business until sales can account for expenditures, spending needs to be kept to a minimum therefore it can be tough to market and get the product out in the world to be seen. Sites like Facebook and Instagram offer free-to-list along with a limited version of Ecwid for my website, though once a sale comes through, credit card fees, selling fees, shipping, and other fees take a significant chunk out of funds received, nearly fifty percent of the total sale.

Selling on Etsy is a double-edged sword. While it can get your products out in front of people and people think of Etsy first to shop handmade items, the amount of people selling on Etsy these days is tremendous so it’s near impossible to be found. Further, their fees have taken a big hike up which, again, makes making a profit difficult. They’ve seemingly turned from supporting makers to making a profit for themselves.

The adage of spending money to make money is definitely true but it’s essential to keep a tight hand on budgets when starting out in order to not end super belly up if things go awry.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.theantisignshop.com
• Instagram: @theantisignshop
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theantisignshop
• Other: Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/AntisignShop

Image Credits
image credits: self