Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Macey Haley. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Macey, appreciate you joining us today. It’s easy to look at a business or industry as an outsider and assume it’s super profitable – but we’ve seen over and over again in our conversation with folks that most industries have factors that make profitability a challenge. What’s biggest challenge to profitability in your industry?

I think one of the biggest challenges to profitability in the handmade goods industry is that people are accustomed to paying for cheap and undervalued labor. People are used to businesses trying to get them the best deal on a product, rather than paying employees fairly and using overseas labor to cut production costs. This makes it extremely difficult to produce quality goods at a price people are willing to pay. Each one of my pieces that I sell are handmade and take hours upon hours to produce, which in turn makes the price tag higher than something you would buy at a big box store. This makes it difficult to convenience consumers to purchase a product made with ethical labor, rather than a $20 sweater that is sold in stores.

Macey, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

A little bit about me- my name is Macey and I am the sole owner and employee of Mushy Knits. Many years ago, I started my journey into the fashion industry by deciding to get my degree in Fashion Marketing and Management. I have always known that one day I wanted to own my own business, so I felt this was the best first step. When I was about two years into my program, I had learned so much about the atrocities that the fashion industry had inflicted on the environment, that I left the program because I couldn’t fathom contributing to that. However, while I was in that program, I fell in love with knitting and fiber arts. I started knitting and could’t stop. I eventually decided to open up my own Etsy shop to sell my goods because owning my business was still a huge dream of mine. I took my knowledge of the fast fashion industry’s downfalls and combined it with my own goals of the company I wanted to own, and made Mushy Knits. My goal with Mushy Knits is to create beautiful pieces that are unique and made to last. My pieces are made mostly with materials that are upcycled, zero- waste, or saved from going into the landfills. As well as the packaging I use is completely recyclable or compostable. My mission and biggest goal with Mushy Knits is to create a clothing and accessories brand that has little to no carbon footprint, pays employees well and fairly for their labor, and make stunning pieces that are made to last for years and years.

Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?

I use the platform Etsy to sell my products. I decided to use Etsy for a few reasons. The main one being, I was a small handmade goods business just starting out and I didn’t really have a following or customer base yet. Because I didn’t have a following yet, Etsy seemed like the best choice for me because this was already a well known platform that many people use as a search engine to find goods from small businesses. This was also about the time during the pandemic that selling goods on Etsy really started to take off. While Esty does have various tools for creators like marketing and statistical tracking, it does have quite a few cons. My biggest issue is the amount of fees they charge small business owners to simply have products listed on their site, and the price just keeps going up. Another thing that I dislike about Etsy is that I am not able to customize my shop layout very much at all. It is all very ‘fill in the blank’ when building your shop, and I don’t feel as though my shop layout on Etsy matches what the personality of my shop is at all. However, overall I do think Etsy was the best place for me to start, and hopefully one day soon, I will be able to have a big enough customer base to build my own site using another platform.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

Finding the funds to start a business is always difficult, especially as a college student with no experience. So, when we started getting the stimulus checks during the pandemic, I decided to use one of them to fund the start of Mushy Knits. There were so many little things that really started to add up for me, even though I was just opening up an Etsy shop. Things like packaging, lighting, props, materials to make the goods, storage, advertising, and so much more. I think I went into it with a very naive attitude on how much it would really cost to create a brand.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.etsy.com/shop/MushyKnitsShop
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mushyknits/