We were lucky to catch up with Laurel-Ann Schrader recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Laurel-Ann, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

In 2014 when I started Schrader Creations in San Diego, I was more focused on food. I made homemade truffles, cakes and other specialty desserts. When I moved back to the east coast, it was much harder to get a food license to work from my house, so I shut the business down initially. My mother in law was creating art and needed a forum to sell her pictures. I decided I would venture out and try and sell her artwork. After a few months, I decided I needed to get back into crafting. Fast forward to 2020, the world shut down, but I was crafting away in my garage! After a few months of just selling from my garage, I decided to take the leap and open a small vendor space in a open market. We were very successful, but unfortunately the space was not a long term and after 16 months we decided to close up. To be honest, I was heartbroken! I felt like a failure. I felt like I let my family down. After a few months, I decided to just put some feelers out..and low and behold, a shop had opened up in my dream location.. I was hesitant, but went to take a look. My father in law had just passed, my husband was not 100% on board.. but I decided to take the leap. The idea was if I could find other creative thinkers, other individuals who needed a space to showcase their products, and carry a solid line of crafting products I would be golden. It took some convincing, a lot of hard work and perseverance, but we opened September 1, 2023! We now offer classes for adults and kids. We offer a kids camp in the summer. We also support a village pop up market every weekend, Memorial Day to Labor Day. I have a solid support system through my friends and family.

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?

I may have said more in the previous question… but the idea of our brand came from my daughter Ashley. She created the logo and handles all my marketing. It started small… 3 Generations of Crafters, with the tag line.. Handmade from our family to yours. We focus on more on the farmhouse design. All of our vendors/merchants are small businesses and also have the same mentality.

I would have to say what makes me super proud is that my girls are always my biggest cheerleaders and they help with marketing, graphic design and sometimes just talking me through decisions. It has truly become a family business.

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

social Media.. scariest thing EVER!! We started very small… but now, we have a social media calendar… we go live as much as we can. We do vendor showcases, new product releases. We have QR codes for our customers to follow. When we opened the initial store, I had 42 followers… After we closed, I focused on live sales.. we grew to 100 people… Now with everything we do, and trust me we have a way to go, but I so proud to say I have over 1200 followers

It is so important to surround yourself with those that encourage and support you. Utilize hash tags, cross promote with other local businesses.. We found that collaborating with other local business was huge. Reaching out to other crafters, bouncing ideas off each other… supporting each other…

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

In addition to our storefront, we also sell from our Square site. Unlike platforms like Etsy, there are no individual fees charged against the products we sell. Although we do pay for the website, at the end of the day we are seeing a larger return then we would from a third party.

The only major downside to keeping it all on our site, is having to maintain the site regularly. If issues arise with the site, we have have to look into them or contact square directly for any assistance. I know Amazon and Etsy have a large ser interface and are very well maintained by their team. For us, there may be a larger risk to the site going down. That being said, we have never directly experienced that.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.schradercreations.com
• Instagram: @schraderfamilycreations
• Facebook: @schradercreations