We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kellie Wright & Lindsay Minor a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Kellie and Lindsay, thanks for joining us today. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.
When we first started our business, we believed it would be a fun hobby we could do from our home. We had no business plan, real vision, or even intention for it to turn into a fully operational business. Our local community quickly changed our course as they were extremely receptive to our concept, and we had trouble keeping up with the demand. About a year after we started, the pandemic hit and we found ourselves with more free time at home and like so many other businesses, without as much work due to social distancing. We had been receiving messages from social media followers across the country asking if we could come up with a way to sell our product to them remotely, but had not had the time or capacity to seriously explore this. During the Covid lockdown, we decided it was time to pursue expanding our market and utilizing Internet sales as in person sales were limited. During the summer of 2020, we launched our Mail Order Kits, which allow us to send clay to customers’ homes and have them take impressions of their kids’ hands and feet, and then mail them back to us and use them to order our product. We launched an e-commerce website to manage orders and immediately saw our sales explode. We quickly realized that the two of us would not be able to keep up with orders alone, and began hiring and building a team. We also realized that we were going to need more space in order to scale our business, and in July of 2021, we opened a brick and mortar space, which doubles as a retail studio and a production warehouse. Today, we are still strategizing ways to continue to scale, which can be difficult in a business of handmade, artistic products. We are exploring marketing strategies and how to best build a successful team that will take our business to the next level.
Kellie, 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 best friends from high school who happen to live next door to each other. We have seven children between us, and are all too familiar with the bittersweet fact that they grow up too quickly. We had a ceramic handprint ornament made of our firstborn in another city as an infant, and when we continued having children, we couldn’t find a local place to have them made. This sparked our idea to start our business, which specializes in ceramic keepsakes of children’s hands and feet. We make platters, Christmas ornaments, and our most popular original product- acrylic shadowbox framed impressions. We also offer hand painted ceramics as well as Paint Your Own pottery. When we began, we had absolutely zero knowledge of or experience with ceramics- we spent about a year teaching ourselves the process and experimenting with the clay before we opened. Our local community has been incredibly receptive to and supportive of our business, and it became clear to us very quickly that our city was lacking and longing for a service like ours. As our social media following grew, we realized that we had a much larger market than we originally thought, and thus birthed our idea to create our Mail Order Kits, which allow the customer to make our products remotely. We have had an incredible customer response, and we continue to have the sweetest and most supportive customer base. What started as a hobby out of our garages has grown into a fully operational local business, and we are incredibly proud of what we have accomplished in a few short years in spite of the significant challenge of scaling a handmade product and having no entrepreneurial background.
How’d you meet your business partner?
We met when we were 14 years old in 9th grade volleyball two-a-days. We became the best of friends, and remained close as we went to college at different schools. Fast forward a few years, and we ended up purchasing homes next door to one another and raising our kids side by side. When we moved in next door, Kellie pitched the idea to Lindsay of starting a ceramic business from home and she somehow agreed despite being a full time dentist! Little did we know what was in store for us!
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
We have grown our social media following completely organically. Kellie realized early on that she enjoyed this part of the business- telling our story through photos and experiences while showcasing our products has been a lot of fun. We took all of our own photos for the first several years, edited them ourselves and just tried to post consistently. We were fortunate to connect with a few amazing bloggers, who really helped us gain momentum on social. Our biggest pieces of advice for building and growing a social media account are to post consistently, engage your audience in stories, and make sure your content is relevant to your niche. The more interactive you can be with your audience, the more relatable you become and the more your following will organically grow!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.cowtownclay.com
- Instagram: @cowtownclay
- Facebook: Cowtown Clay
Image Credits
santa ornaments and ho ho ho- Bree Linne Photography Feet- Jason Kindig Photo Shadowboxes and golf plate- Kristen Howell Photography
Suggest a Story: CanvasRebel is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.