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

Susan, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you think folks should manage their own social media or hire a professional? What do you do?

I think you have to make the best decision for your company whether hiring someone for your social media is the best use of your time and money. It takes A LOT of time planning and deciding on where and what to post. When you are starting out I would first handle the social media by yourself and then see how it progresses and if you need someone as you begin to grow.

I think it is important to also decide which social media platform would be best for your brand and help to increase sales. Instagram for me has helped with sales however I do post videos on Tik Toc as well to increase visibility.

I don’t have a social media or team of people that work for me. My 7 year old daughter is my Cre8ive Director, and she helps with production, creating new gift sets and she has given me ideas for social media and my husband helps pack orders when he cans. but otherwise I do it ALL!

Every weekend I sit down and look at the week ahead and see what quirky (like unicorn day) or real holidays are being celebrated that week and plan my social media posts accordingly. I also plan a theme for the week that I would like to concentrate on…right now I have been concentrating more on graduation and end of school year since everyone is starting to look for those gifts now,It is also important to see which social media platform would be best for your brand. There are many different choices and I believe it is best to pnly focus on the ones you think would help grow.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers?

We are a mother- daughter duo (she is now 7) inspiring tech free and imaginary play with our personalized crayons, for the creative ones in your life!

Due to Covid, I was furloughed from my job in the fashion industry in March of 2020. I had worked for my company for 7 years and had been in the women’s clothing business for over 25+.

Because I was furloughed it allowed me to have time to spend with my daughter who was 5 at the time. Together we did crafts everyday and she chose the theme while I picked out things to do based on those themes.

One day she chose Crayons and we read the book, The Day The Crayons Quit and I looked on Pinterest how to make crayons. We made them and she handed them out to her friends who loved them.

I had been struggling for a couple of weeks trying to decide if I was going to go back to fashion once things opened up again or if I wanted to change careers at 47 years old which was incredibly scary to me.

One day at 2 am I woke up with the idea that I could start making crayons based on the wonderful feedback we got from Jessie gifting them . I immediately came up with the name, sketched the logo and wrote some ideas down.

The next morning I told my husband all of the ideas and he was VERY supportive and encouraged me to start the research and development. When my daughter heard the news she was VERY excited and wanted to help choose colors, pick out molds, pop the molds etc. She is now my Cre8ive Director and works along side me continuing to do those things.

We launched our business in Hoboken in August 2020, and due to our supportive community we were able to launch our Etsy shop in the same year and last year we began selling to retailers.

My daughter (now 7 years old) is instrumental in helping pop the crayons out of the molds and has expanded her role and now helps with some video making ideas, and chooses crayons to put in new gift boxes. My husband helps pack orders. He packs all of our party favor orders and some of the retail orders during the busy seasons.

I currently make and ship everything from our 2 bedroom apartment and am now moving to get more production space!

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

We first started selling in our local community and then people began recommending our crayons to their friends in other states. I wanted an easy to use platform which would help us facilitate selling to people in other states and I knew people who had Etsy stores which is why we chose that platform.

Before you sell on any platform, you need to carve out who your KEY customer is. Some things you need to think about is your customers age, what they do for a living, are they married, do they have children, are they….list goes on. You need to try to get as detailed as possible. This will help when you are posting your product on Etsy because you will need to think about key word phrases your customer is looking for when they are looking to purchase. Knowing who your key customer is plays a big role in your SEO because it can affect the way you title and tag your product.

You can create different listings with Etsy easily, however getting the SEO correct is challenging.

I continue to take courses on SEO and figuring out the correct ways to list a product. And each day I continue to try to learn more about this because it plays such an integral role with getting visits to your shop.

I believe Etsy is a great platform to sell your products, especially if they are handmade because so many people across the country are familiar with it. It is easy for a consumer or Etsy shop owner to communicate with each other which I feel is much more personable. It also allows people to place your reviews so you can see if the shop is reliable and if consumers are happy with their purchases.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I believe customer service and quality is what keeps our community coming back and reordering.

My last job in the fashion industry was Director of Customer Service And Operations so I know how important good customer service is to a small business!

With every purchase I want the customer to feel special so whenever I receive a purchase on Etsy I send them an email thanking them along with a coupon they can use on a future purchase. I also include a postcard with a hand written note with every purchase thanking our community for shopping with us. It is important to show your customer how important they are to you.

Of course mistakes are going to happen and it’s how you correct those mistakes which makes all the difference. A customer contacted me and I didn’t add glitter to their order as asked so I remade each crayon with glitter, added a shaped crayon as a bonus and shipped it overnight at our expense to them. She was SO surprised we did all of that without her asking and has continued to buy from us.

The other reason I believe we have a good reputation is we produce high quality crayons! We use only a brand name, non toxic crayons when making our product which helps us ensure we are making the best crayons we can.

We also pay A LOT of attention to detail which is extremely important when producing high quality product. When my daughter is popping the crayons out of the molds she points out any imperfections that she sees. After the crayons dry there is wax build up so I hand shave each crayon to remove the buildup and then polish each crayon before we put them in the box.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.cre8ivecrayonz.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cre8ivecrayonz/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cre8ivecrayonz
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-goldman-aa90a65/