We recently connected with Leanne Stiner Missy Warner and have shared our conversation below.

Leanne Stiner, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Looking back, what’s an important lesson you learned at a prior job?

We have both worked customer service throughout the years. Between working in restaurants and retail we have both gained a lot of knowledge and experience of how to cater to the public. They say “treat people how you want to be treated” and that just isn’t how we look at it. We want to treat people how they want to be treated. Everyone is different. Not everyone wants to be treated the same or have the same needs. We like to treat our clients individually and give them their own unique experiences.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Missy and Leanne are cousins that grew up together in the Seattle area. These two spent their younger years camping, boating and playing card games. They built a strong bond with having such similar interests including all things art.

They both enjoyed crafting so much they created a fun tradition, for birthdays and Christmas the only gifts exchanged were hand made. Every year they would dabble in a new craft or use a different medium to surprise each other with.

About 8 years ago Missy had learned to knit Leanne some pot holders and Leanne taught herself how to crochet a baby blanket for Missy’s first unborn baby girl Everly. That was the year their love for fiber arts blossomed.

Fast forward a couple years they decided to open their first Etsy shop. Items sold in the shop to begin with were big, fluffy, floral, tulle flower girl dresses. At this point Missy did the majority of the research for how to make an online shop successful and the photography. Leanne hand made the dresses. Each one unique and different.

After Covid showed up the need for flower girl dresses disappeared. The world was starting to come out of lock down and the public was starting to return to the work place. There was a shortage of face coverings so they decided to help fill that need. They wanted families to be able to return to work and to be able to afford face coverings, they made the decision to offer face covers on their page but not to make a profit. Sell them at a price to cover cost of materials and shipping. With all honesty this ended up being a blessing. With Etsy part of the algorithm is number of sales and your ratings. These sales and reviews ended up boosting their viewing on Etsy in the long run.

As the world has quickly changed so has the business. Missy and Leanne want their business to evolve along with time. Both have different talents which have helped make this partnership and business successful. Missy is much more tech savvy and Leanne has much more time to actually create. They have began content creating along with making and selling hand crocheted items and pattern writing. Currently the best sellers are their hand crocheted Rainbow Collection beanies.

With a craft that is so time consuming the best advice they can give to be successful turning it into a business, is create a tool of some sort that is a need or want to others within that craft. That is part of why they have gotten into pattern writing and content creation. The majority of their followers on all platforms are crocheters, they turn them into clients by selling patterns and creating tutorials. The majority of their clients that purchase made items are people they know personally or at markets.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

You can find us on any platform @Misseverleedesigns. As tedious and time consuming it is, being on more platforms the better!

Social media presence is extremely important in todays society. It can be tricky because the algorithms are constantly changing and which platforms are being most useful for your business. Depending on your clientele different platforms will draw in more or less of your targeted audience. This is why you want multiple platforms, you can figure out which platform does more for your business and where you can hopefully find a wider range demographic. Different demographics primarily use specific platforms, who are you trying to reach? For example, millennials typically gravitate towards Facebook, while younger groups enjoy Snapchat or TikTok.

When our business first started the goal was to “advertise” on Instagram. Plenty of research was done to help learn what kind of posts did well on Instagram and how to get as many views and followers as possible. We have found it nearly impossible to build a following on IG, very image based platform. Life needs to be perfect and glamorous. That is just not us. Life gets messy and it can be boring to try and appear “perfect” all the time.

Once Tiktok started getting popular we hesitantly decided to give it a go. We found it so much fun and more our style. We loved the video aspect of it all. No more perfectly staged and edited photography.

To be successful on any platform you really do need to be mentally strong and ready for “trolls”. You also need to have a plan of how you want to manage any hate sent your way. You can block, comment or even try your best not to post anything controversial. You would be surprised how any innocent post can be turned into a controversy. Our large following on TikTok happened by “mistake”. We had posted a tutorial for a strawberry granny square we designed. The video immediately went viral because of the mass amount of engagement. Crocheters loved the tutorial so naturally there was a lot of love given. However, unknowingly the sound/song that was attached was a “canceled” artist. You know how they say bad publicity is good publicity? We have learned you know your video is doing well if the trolls have come to play. We personally enjoy reading and laughing at a lot of the trolls comments. No matter what the content is, you can never make everyone happy. We cannot even begin to count how many times we have been called “cringe”. It is an ongoing joke between us at this point. Our advice, if and only if you can stomach it, let the negative comments fly and let them do their thing to push your content. Of course, it isn’t worth it if the comments at all hurt your business or mental stability. Plenty of creators have had breakdowns from long term negativity. It is ok to take a break if ever needed! Keep your mind healthy.

If you have multiple revenue streams in your business, would you mind opening up about what those streams are and how they fit together?

As the world changes we want to keep moving in the same direction and profit where it best suits us and our morals.

Every business has a slower period and a busier period. Being a mostly hand made crochet business, our busiest time of year is between October and December. During warmer months most people are not looking for crochet items unless they are for baby gifts. So we try to turn our target clientele towards other crocheters.

We do this by writing and selling crochet patterns. This is a nice way to make revenue because once the pattern is written and uploaded to Etsy, we no longer have to do anything with it. Etsy automatically emails the pattern and it is just random, constant revenue.

Many crocheters are on a budget so we also want to be able to cater to them as well. We do this by offering free tutorials and patterns on our YouTube channel, social media platforms and blog. The more content we offer, the more followers and engagement we get, the more income we get from advertisers and the platforms themselves.

Contact Info:

• Website: Misseverleedesigns.com
• Instagram: Misseverleedesigns
• Facebook: Misseverleedesigns
• Youtube: Misseverleedesigns
• Other: TikTok: Misseverleedesigns

Image Credits
Missy Warner, Jackie Cherry