We were lucky to catch up with Rebecca Schaafsman recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Rebecca thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Looking back, what’s an important lesson you learned at a prior job
After working in restaurants for the past 13 years, the most important knowledge and lessons I’ve gained that has helped my business is networking. Networking is such a beautiful thing. It’s where you can connect with like minded individuals, share what everyone is up to, get inspired, learn from each other and what works best for whom and so fourth. Another form of networking that I absolutely love is vending! My favorite vending spots are fun pop up events, street fairs and mountain day festivals. I have such a wonderful time connecting with everyone who is there. I really like to outreach to as many people as possible so I can connect with them and learn from them. Then I can see what people like, what’s hip right now, what colors people are attracted to at that point in time. It’s all relative and ongoing. In the past 4 years I graduated into sales roles to widen my knowledge of the art of selling and many other skills. I learned how to enhance my skills from where they were naturally to other perspectives, who to approach products differently, and also experience great ways to outreach to others. I’ve seen how other companies run, which is fascinating! There is a tremendous amount knowledge to be learned. Always learning = always growing!
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?
Hey everyone, my name is Rebecca Schaafsman but I like to go by the name Bex! It’s more fun, spunky and easy to remember. In high school I lived with my dad in Milwaukee, WI, where he owned his own business endless possibilities. I helped my dad roof, build benches that he created for swimming pools as we were all swimmers growing up. He also build editions onto our home, decks for lots of people, pergolas and many more projects. I would often go with him to the job site and help him. You can say he is a jack of all trades, and I highly resemble my dad, as I learned so much from him growing up! My dad also taught me how to sew! So I took off with that when I was younger trying to make my own clothes at 16 for club nights, and garters for all the school dances and halloween costumes.
My sister and I would go to my moms in Green Bay every other weekend, where we would all watch Trading Spaces, as it was our thing! I learned so much and was super inspired! After watching so much of that, I wanted to redo my room every year into a new theme. I would paint fun designs on the walls, new duvet cover I would sew up, new curtains, you name it every year. It was such a blast, and I was lucky my dad let me! Haha
Fast forward to 2011 when I was graduating college with an Interior Design degree from The Art Institute International of Minnesota. I learned so much and am thankful for experiencing all the projects in college that I reflect back on today! I loved fabric so much and wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to do after graduating, so I thought real hard about what I loved and started piecing everything together. I love fabrics, I love traveling, I love bringing people together, I love being outdoors, and I absolutely love color!! So what was I going to do with all of that! I wasn’t yet ready to be locked into one job I would have forever, I wanted to travel, see the world, camp, enjoy the outdoors, live simply before I got too old and couldn’t explore the world anymore. I was definitely a free spirit!! I had finally come up with a fun idea that combined everything I love together in one item, Hammocks!!! I had recently found a store that was going out of sale, where I found tons of upholstery fabrics that I knew were extra strong and durable and could hol high weight restrictions. I found some amazing colors, textures and patterns. I was in uptime heaven! Soon after making a few abs going to the beach with all my friends with the hammocks, everyone had loved them. I knew of some friends heading on a fantastic journey to Boundary Waters in Duluth, MN. And of course wanted to join, so I brought 4 hammocks with me and started exploring more in nature. Everything aligned so well! I then moved to Breckinridge, CO to be more in nature, explore and meet lots new people. There I slowly started to build my very small hammock business, and this guy Ted ended up buying a hammock from me. We then played kick ball with some friends and became inseparable! Which we still are today, and it’s been 10 years! He is an artist himself so we collaboratively thought of fun ideas of what to make, we put our heads together, but into our own art forms and helped push each other. My goal was to live in a van for a period of time, travel to music festivals and share my art. So I asked Ted if he would join and he gladly accepted! In the summer of 2012 we went to Costa Rica for Envision Festival, then came back to the states and traveled up and down the west coast hitting up 10 more music festivals! It was a dream! Ted and I then landed in Englewood, CO after the road trip and have been building our artist lives since! Ted business has grown in many directions, as well as mine. I changed up my packaging on my hammocks back in 2016 and added a carry bag to make it easier to travel. And started exploring how I can expand into other hammocks that were lighter weight. But I wanted to have fun with these hammocks and not just sew something up, I wanted to manipulate the material. So I researched materials, tie dye and how I can put those together. Still staying in what I love but expanding! So in 2018 I released some new hammocks are my hand tie dyed ripstop hammocks. My whole goal with both sets of hammocks were to make strong durable hammocks so any one or two people can enjoy and not feel as through they were going to fall out. So keeping that all in mind my tie dye hammocks hold up to 550 lbs with the carabiners holding up to 1,200 lbs! My upholstery hammocks could hold anywhere from 350-800 lbs depending on material and if I used two layers or one. Recently, before covid, my local fabric store went out of sale, and then during covid all of the other stores I would find beautiful fabrics, we’re starting to discontinue their upholstery fabrics. So I thought real hard and realized it was time to let the upholstery hammocks go. It was tough, but it makes so much sense I’m not holding back! My tie dye hammocks are my front line runners now and I’m so excited to see where these hammocks will spread all over too. With the ripstop material and tie dying it, I have added Fanny packs, and even Sun Shades to my website. It had been so much fun exploring new ways to tie dye, what to die dye, color combinations and how it all blends together, you never really know exactly how the tie dye will come out. This art form is always changing, growing and keeps me on my toes. I am looking to expand the tie dye onto sweats with some others ideas in the mix with some other artists. So Bex hammocks is not stopping here, I’m going to keep growing this beautiful business, and keep learning new ways to keep my art alive!
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
Through vending at various street fairs, mountain fairs, fun art pop up shows, summer festivals and daily life is where I find most new clientele. I love to pick an array of shows to vend at each summer as I love connecting with all walks of life and the different interests that bring people together. In my daily life, I’m a social butterfly and will strike up conversations with people in my day to day activities. Sometimes that leads to talking about what we do, and when mentioning about my hammock business, they get so excited as they have been in search of a new hammock! And one that also holds more than 300lbs! I just love the fun random interactions in life, you never know who your going to meet or why, but it’s always a pleasure to meet everyone! And I absolutely love learning what others are into, so going into lots of various situations helps broaden my perspective.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
My business is going through a shift right now and has slowly been getting there as fabric stores around my area have been discontinuing their upholstery fabrics selections. My main fabric store closed down about 6 months before Covid, so I bought all the material I could, and made all the hammocks I could. I still saw a few good fabrics at various stores from time to time, but everything started dwindling and nothing was restocking. After selling out of my upholstery fabric hammocks halfway through summer, and the lightweight tie dye hammocks seemed to be a huge hit, I made the decision I was going to focus more on my tie dye hammocks and expand my other tie dye collections. I’m sure going to miss my upholstery fabric hammocks, as I started my hammock journey with that style. Though after 10 years with such a great product, I’m grateful that I was able to supply such a quality product to many folks that will continue to enjoy their one-of-a-kind hammock for so many years ahead! I’m very much looking forward to expanding my tie dye journey ahead, as I grow my lightweight tie dye hammocks, sunshade and Fanny packs! It’s going to be a fantastic ride, with lots of exciting new things in the mix!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.bexhammocks.com
- Instagram: @bexhammocks
- Facebook: www.Facebook.com/bexhammocks
- Linkedin: Rebecca Schaafsman