We recently connected with Cari Sanders and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Cari thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So, let’s imagine that you were advising someone who wanted to start something similar to you and they asked you what you would do differently in the startup-process knowing what you know now. How would you respond?

Looking back when I first started my business, I was so excited and motivated. I dreamed the big dreams of my business becoming this huge success that would boggle minds. I put in a lot of hard work and things began to grow. But always in the back of my mind I always doubted myself and my abilities. Many times I wouldn’t push myself to do more or put myself out there for fear that others would see me as a fraud. Someone who really wasn’t good enough and thought too highly of myself. So I would make excuses as to why I couldn’t go after certain goals. My kids need me more, or I have to many other things to do at home. But really those were just excuses keeping me down. Occasionally I would bite back the fear and really push forward. When I did I would see the successes, little and big head my way. I still struggle with doubts and insecurities when trying something new or something more in the public eye. But now I know there is no need for excuses. That everyone struggles with self doubt at times. But some of the biggest moments, and biggest rewards come when you push yourself to really be your best and really put yourself out there.

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?

My name is Cari Sanders and I am the owner of Sinful Cutters, LLC. It is a design studio for cookie cutters, culinary stencils, baking tools, accessories and more. Originally, back in 2014 I started Sinful Decadence. It was a home bakery for highly decorated sugar cookies, cheesecakes and other baked goods. I had always loved cheesecake and developed a passion for making any and all flavors of cheesecakes. They were so good and I just started taking orders for them. Then my daughter had her 4th birthday party and wanted Spiderman cookies. I had never decorated cookies to that degree of design. So like most stay at home moms, I jumped online and found so many recipes, how to videos and tutorials. Instantly my love for cookie decorating was ignited. I decorated those cookies with a combination of “These are the ugliest things I’ve ever seen.” to “I can’t believe how great these turned out”. Shortly after, I found a reason to decorate cookies for all holidays, birthdays, and get togethers. I just loved decorating cookies. I started an Instagram page and started sharing my creations. Soon I discovered there was a whole world of cookie decorators out there that were amazingly talented that shared in my crazy new obsession. My Instagram followers began to grow, orders started taking off and things got busy, like really busy. Eventually, cheesecakes took a back seat and orders when exclusively to cookies. My posts of my cookies started getting the attention of bigger named companies that started reaching out to me to decorate cookies for their cookie cutters. Then I started designing cookie cutters and sets for them, along with decorating the example cookies for their packaging and online stores. It was so exciting.

But I kinda wanted more. More that would grow my business and what I wanted to bring to the table. After a long and crazy 12 hour night/day in the emergency room with our son one day, my exhausting led me to buying a 3d printer so I could print my own cookie cutters. I somehow got it in my head that I was going to start designing, printing and selling my own cookie cutters. That I was going to build this HUGE cookie cutter empire. I wanted so much to make this an amazingly successful business that would make great things happen for my family. Sinful Cutters was born and things did grow. The actually grew to the point of having eighteen 3d printers in our lower level, along with now piping bags, decorating tools, food colors, sprinkles and so many other products. They were taking over our home. I was doing over 200 orders a week and getting bigger and bigger. Then in November of 2021, I moved Sinful Cutters out of our home and into a building that would now hold thirty-two 3d printers, have a shipping room, video/photo studio, design area and office for me. It was amazing. I was so happy and felt so successful. And to some extent I was pretty successful. I hired my first employee and boy oh boy were we getting so many things done. I grew even more by creating a monthly cookie cutter subscription box called The Cookie Badass Box that would ship a themed monthly box filled with cookie cutters, stencils, decorating tools and a gift. Each month’s cookie cutters would have pictures of example cookies that were decorated by a different featured Cookie Artist or ‘Cookie Badass’. There was a full bio of each Cookie Badass that would come along with the box each month that would tell more about them and how they got into doing what they do and how they do it.

Then in the beginning of 2024 exhaustion was really starting to set in. over 400 orders were being shipped each week and the subscription box was now over 300 subscribers. I was happy with my success. But I was truly mentally and physically exhausted. So I decided to scale things back. I decided I no longer wanted to deal with the printing of so many cookie cutters each week and shipping them all out along with decorating tools, piping bags etc. I needed a break. In June of 2024 I took my last physical cookie cutter order and put my stores on hold.

After taking a couple of months off, I made the decision to start selling all of my cookie cutters digitally. 3d printing was becoming so much more popular. With 3d printers becoming so much cheaper and better, and the software so much easier, so many more customers were able to print their own cookie cutters at home. All they needed was the cookie cutter STL File and they were set. Well, that’s what I had…tons of them. I currently have over 7000 different cookie cutter STL files. It was an easy decision to start selling my cookie cutter STL Files online. As well, I am also selling instant download printable cookie packaging, cookie stencil SVG cut files, PNG clipart that matches the cookie cutters for use with edible image printers, and so many other digital downloads.

As of now I am still in the process of transitioning all of my product listings from physically shipped items, to instant download items. It is very time consuming. But I have just over 3000 of my 7000 listings up and selling. I now have so much more time for my family and I still have the ability to design, create and grow. I’m having the best time dreaming of what to create next and how it will benefit my customers.

Home bakers and professionals alike can find out more about all of my adorable cookie cutter creations, digital downloads and more at SinfulCutters.com or my Etsy shop, SinfulCutters.Etsy.com

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Building your social media audience is a lot of hard work and can be pretty intimidating. I started out with zero followers just like everyone else and I have grown to over 61K followers on Instagram, and over 20K followers on Facebook. I do have TikTok and X, but don’t really focus on those much.

I found the most success by joining groups on Facebook. Finding people that were most like me and had interests in the products I was selling. I sell 3d printed cookie cutters. So I got into cookie and cake decorating groups on Facebook and got to know people and built relationships with people who would become my customers. We became friends. Those friends became followers, then customers, then promoters. We would work together to promote eachother and we would grow our followers together. I would work with them on designing and printing cookie cutters for projects they had coming up. I’d send them the cookie cutters and they would decorate the cookies that I would then show as the examples in my product listings and social media posts. When I would post the pictures of their cookies with my products, I would tag them and promote them in the posts. They in turn would share the pictures of their cookies, tagging me and promoting eachother. We would both end up getting more followers and more customers.

Along with working with others to grow followers. I started targeting my posts to what was getting me the most traffic. Decorated cookies and cookie cutters are nice to look at. But cookie decorating videos and tutorials were way better and drawing and keeping attention of my audience. The more my audience would watch and engage in my posts, the more social media platforms were showing my posts and videos to non-followers, gaining their attention. This in turn would convert them into followers and many times customers.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

Keeping in touch with customers and growing those relationships really is a key to fostering brand loyalty. I grew a big portion of my customers and social media followers by engaging with them online. When customers of mine would post about items of mine that they used, I would reshare their posts and send them sweet messages of thanks. We would develop friendships and many times would start working on future projects together. We would engage with each other through social media messaging, posts and Facebook groups. As well, there were conventions such as CookieCon that is hosted once and sometimes twice a year. You get to join 900 of your closest cookie friends to learn, create and network with one another.

Creating your customer base on true relationships with bring you so much brand loyalty as they truly become your friends and keep coming back to you for you products. Friends support each other and I truly belive that my customers are my friends. I try to support them, just as much as they support me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://SinfulCutters.com
• Instagram: https://Instagram.com/sinfulcutters
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/sinfulcutters
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carisanders/
• Twitter: https://x.com/sinfulcutters
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@sinfulcuttersllc5105
• Other: https://SinfulCutters.Etsy.com

Image Credits

All images are original and Created by myself, Cari Sanders