We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ginny Guedes. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ginny below.
Ginny, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the best thing you’ve ever seen (or done yourself) to show a customer that you appreciate them?
At Skapa Leather, the foundation of what we do is empowerment through cosplay, and we have a special place in our hearts for LGBT+ youth. Representation isn’t always about displaying a Pride flag in your business or launching a campaign, sometimes it’s about individual interactions that make a huge difference.
We’ve sold pronoun tags for the last three years. They’re just small, hand dyed tags that you can wear on your belt or bag to help communicate with others how you identify, but they are enough to start a conversation.
So many times, we have had customers walk in and say “Oh! You have pronoun tags! That’s so cool!” We usually meet it with a simple, “representation is important,” and see where the conversation goes. They may be a teacher who considers buying them for their class or coworkers, but sometimes they’re a young queer person who is just starting to find their way in the world.
These kids often come from families that don’t accept their sexual orientation, leaving them feeling othered. Doing a small thing, like offering pronoun tags, helps them know that they are surrounded by people who understand what they are going through and have been through it themselves. If they don’t have money for a tag, they’ll often leave with one anyway because it’s a small reminder that they are not alone. We’ll surreptitiously pass a business card to someone who clearly needs someone to talk to and let them know they can always call us.
As a businessowner and a member of society, you have the opportunity to choose kindness. Our platform is medieval leather goods, that’s what gets people into our booth. We could easily choose to just sell our products and go about our day, but our business is kindness.
If we can sell a pouch or a pair of bracers to someone and it makes them feel more authentically themselves and their struggles are a little lighter that day, all of our hours in the shop and on the road are worth it.
It’s easy to just go out there and sell the things we make, but we make the choice to show our customers, our friends, that they are important. We’ve developed friendships across the country with the humans who open up to us about themselves and we don’t just appreciate them, we love them.
Ginny, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
We are a medieval leatherworking company that travels across the country to sell our products at Renaissance and Medieval Faires.
Ginny, our owner, started leatherwork about 15 years ago and has developed a wide range of handmade cosplay and every day wear products. Heather, co-owner, started learning the trade about four years ago after meeting Ginny and falling in love. We live in Fairmont, WV and enjoy playing disc golf, spending time with our friends at our local brewpub, and getting lost in board games.
Because each piece is hand cut, dyed, riveted, or sewn, everything is unique. Many of our products have special touches that make them one-of-a-kind, like our Warlord’s Medallion Pouches that have variations in conchos and decorative spots. We stand apart from many others in our field because of the attention to detail we put into our products. It would be much faster to skip steps, like edging and burnishing, and let us make more inventory, but we would rather take the time to ensure each piece is of high quality.
Our products can be a base to design your outfit around, or that special touch that makes it just right. We have developed a tiered pricing system so we can be accessible to cosplayers at a range of budget levels.
Cosplay is something people do to escape the challenging world around us. We are proud to make products that will not only look great, but last through multiple seasons of use and wear.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
Shortly after Ginny and Heather met, the COVID-19 pandemic began. Suddenly, there was uncertainty about the future of renaissance faires and questions about how to keep the business moving forward if they were unable to open. We did the easy thing of pushing our products more on social media, but we knew that the only thing that could stop this paralysing fear was doing something to help.
Organizations around the world shifted production to products that would help in the effort to flatten the curve, distilleries started making hand sanitizer, companies began sewing masks instead of clothing, and the like. We saw people talking about the pain they experienced from wearing masks for hours on end working in hospitals and other front line positions.
After seeing several plastic versions of devices to hold masks instead of looping them over the ears, Ginny went to the shop and started designing a mask extending ear relief, MEER, band that would hold masks in place without affecting the ears. We sent out about 2,000 MEER bands free of charge, asking people to donate what they could to help us keep making more. We didn’t feel it was right to charge for these products during such a difficult time.
We spent countless hours in the shop in the basement of our home laser cutting, trimming, and preparing the bands for shipment or hand delivery. They went to friends and organizations across the country, including more than 200 to our local hospital.
We don’t know if this effort helped develop product recognition, but we do know from reports by first responders and health care workers that what we did made a difference. At the time, business growth wasn’t our focus. We just wanted to do something, anything, to help people make it through the pandemic.
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
There are lots of Facebook groups and YouTube videos that cover a lot for small businesses, and leatherworking in particular. I study a lot of other people’s work to discover new ideas and techniques that can help improve upon existing designs. But, the most important thing I did was finding a business mentor.
Professional mentorship is a business, just like accounting and web design. It’s an investment you make in your future and the future of your company. It’s hard to convince yourself to spend a large amount of money on a mentorship program when you are in the early stages of developing your business, but, for me, that investment has been worthwhile.
My mentor, Michelle Coyle, president of BGSD Strategies, offers an executive consulting service called Impact Scaling School. The program focuses on equipping students with the strategies they need to dramatically increase their revenues and become outstanding in their field, leading with authenticity and integrity.
One of main things I thank Michelle for is helping me find my “why.” Why do we do what we do? What motivates us to get up in the and push through difficult days? For us, it’s about spreading kindness and simplifying my business down to that has made all the difference. 
Contact Info:
- Website: skapaleather.com
- Instagram: @skapaleather
- Facebook: Skapa Leather
Image Credits
Skapa Leather