We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Paris Cunningham a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Paris, appreciate you joining us today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?
As a new business owner, I’ve learned how important it is to be consistent and persistent in order to build a successful business. You can have so many ideas and make so many great connections, which are also important pieces to having a successful business. However, you must be persistent in following up on those ideas/connections in order for them to yield the profit that may come from those assets. Also, in everything that you do in life, you must be consistent in order to increase your margin of success as opposed to failure or stagnancy.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Paris Cunningham, as an artist I’m known as Paris Jane and I am the owner and artist for ParisJaneCreates, LLC. I create custom and stock greeting cards, gifts and custom artwork. Most of my work focuses on the intersection between popular culture and Black/Minority culture. I create greeting cards , specifically, to reflect people and aspects of culture that are rarely seen on greeting cards or in mainstream artwork.
I began making custom graduation caps, paintings and logos for people formally in 2015, but, I’ve been creating handmade gifts for my friends and family since I was 7 years old.
The mission of ParisJaneCreates is to capture
the essence of a handmade gift by infusing culture and a personal touch into every item. Everything that comes from ParisJane is meant to share the heart-warming impact of receiving or experiencing media made especially for you!
Have you ever had to pivot?
I gradated from undergrad in 2016, with a degree in Psychology and a passion for art. I decided to apply for graduate school at Florida State University to study art therapy.
Throughout my first year at FSU, I quickly learned that the career path I had taken was not for me, as I began to fall into a depression. To keep my spirits up, I found myself working more on my artwork and fulfilling custom orders than engaging in school work and research.
After talking to friends, family and a few trusted professors, I decided to withdraw from my graduate program. Even though I’d spent $10,000 already to attend school, I decided my mental health deserved priority and that I should invest my early 20’s in discovering a profitable career creating art, which ultimately led me to creating my business, ParisJaneCreates.
How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.
I currently sell most items on my website at www.theparisjane.com/parisjanecreates.
The upside to having my own website is that I don;t have to pay a large percentage for sales made thorough my website. Also, I only have to produce merchandise that is already paid, which helps me to keep production costs low.
The downside to this avenue, though, is that in order to truly make a good amount of profit from my work, I have to invest a lot more in advertising than maybe artists that sell goods on Etsy or in larger stores.
To circumvent this issue, I’ve begun collaborating with and selling my products in smaller local shops.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.theparisjane.com/parisjanecreates
- Instagram: @ParisJaneCreates
- Facebook: ParisJaneCreates
- Linkedin: Paris Cunningham