Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Candace Holmes. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Candace, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Our very first goal, and the one still integral to our business, was to make crafting more accessible. There are 3 founders, and all of us are makers and artists. At the beginning of the pandemic, we saw how many people got into new crafts or reinvigorated their interests in different artistic mediums (us included!)This got us thinking about the obstacles that typically keep people away from pursuing those hobbies or new professional mediums, when it’s clear a lot of people enjoy crafting and want to do them. Once we started brainstorming how we could solve this, the idea for Secret Handshake Studios started to come into focus. This type of tool library or community space exists for things like woodworking and pottery, but not for many of the other crafting equipment people want to use. Our space allows for low-pressure and low-cost experimentation with new tools, allowing creativity to flourish in a new way!

Candace, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

There are three of us who run our business together: Candace Holmes, Mary Crawford, and Devin Crawford. Each of us have completely different backgrounds and experiences with art and business, but the thread that really ties us all together is our love of collaboration and committment to our local community. We believe that’s something you can really feel in the air when you come into our studio space.

We run Secret Handshake Studios, a community crafting studio, that provide access to specialty crafting tools and equipment and guidance on how to use those tools. Our space has 2 sewing machines, embroidery capabilities, a 4-station screenprinter, 2 tufting guns, a 3d printer, a vinyl cutter, and jewelry making tools. We are currently fundraising to add stained glass making equipment, a laser cutter, and another 3d printer as well! We offer monthly membership, daypasses, or one-on-one classes to use the equipment in our shop.

We opened for membership November 1st, and the thing we are most proud of is absolutely seeing all the rad work that has already been created in and because of our space :)

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Our first steps in creating our business were buying & rennovating our building and acquiring enough crafting tools to make it a worthwhile investment for people to become members of the space. While doing all of this back-end work, we hosted vendor pop-ups, attended many other maker markets and art shows, got to know the people living and working in our neighborhood, and befriended the other small business owners in our area. I think coming into a place that doesn’t know you and telling the community you have something to offer them can come across as insincere. Because we spent an entire year talking to our community and listening to their needs, by the time we officially opened, we had already built a respectful reputation that now we just get to expand on.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I think a lesson that this late-stage capitalist society we are living in really wants us all to believe is that we have to do things perfectly for them to be worth doing. Starting a business requires making and learning from a series of mistakes, sometimes doing things before you feel ready and doing them imperfectly. One of our biggest takeaways from opening our studio is that it’s okay for things not to go as planned, for your idea to not be “perfectly executed.” Otherwise, we have been stuck in the pre-opening phase forever haha.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.secrethandshakekc.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secret.handshake.studios/

Image Credits
Luke Harbur