We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Yana Wieckowski a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Yana, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s something crazy on unexpected that’s happened to you or your business

In the Spring of 2023 I had an inquiry come through my customer service portal on Shopify from a customer wondering about placing a custom order. I replied with my usually information about working with customers to make custom bibs, the process of selecting custom fabrics for products, and the additional costs associated with creating a single item in a fabric that we would have to special order for the product. Much to my surprise, she replied back wondering if I could do a custom order not of a single bib but for 1,000 bibs. To give you some context, we are a small business (just myself and 1-2 studio assistants) and we typically do runs of about 150 baby bibs per color/pattern so 1,000 bibs for a single order is way beyond the usual scope of our business. I was about to kindly reply that we aren’t able to handle that size of an order, but then I hesitated and thought on it for an evening (I also talked through it with my husband, who is also a small business owner). I set up a call with the customer, who works for a business that was looking to include bibs in something they were sending out to their new customers. She told me they really wanted to work with a US-based company who made high-quality products and that they didn’t need all 1,000 at once. We were able to set up a manufacturing plan/timeline that worked for her company as well as ours. A year later and not only have we finished the first contract of 1,000 bibs but we signed on to make another 4,000 over two years. Not immediately saying no completely changed the trajectory of my business. It’s provided consistent, long-term sales, allowed me to hire additional help, and forced me to explore new avenues for sourcing materials.

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?

My name is Yana and I am the founder and owner of Hemming Birds. I’m originally from New England, but have been living in Charleston for about 13 years. My background is actually in biology, not business or textiles (or anything related to what I do now!). I went to college for neuroscience and then grad school (I have a doctorate in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology from the University of Michigan) before relocating to Charleston to teach at College of Charleston. My focus really shifted after having my first baby – I realized that a life in academic science was not for me. During graduate school I had started sewing a lot, a skill my mom taught me as a child, as a way to relax after long days in the lab. Working together with feedback from my sister-in-law, who had a baby a few years before I did and had tried a variety of baby bibs that all fell short, I created the pattern for the “Charlie Bib,” which became my go-to gift for friends and family having babies. After leaving academia, I decided to turn my hobby into a business and launched Hemming Birds with a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2014.

All of our products are handcrafted in Charleston, SC in small batches from carefully-selected, high quality materials. In addition to the “Charlie Bib,” which 10 years later is still our best-selling product, we also make a luxuriously soft, absorbent bandana drool bib (the “Ollie”), the “Scout” functional bandanas for children and adults with special needs, heirloom-quality fabric hair bows, and machine-washable zipper pouches.

I’m extremely proud of how I’ve grown Hemming Birds from a small hobby brand popping up around town at small local events to a business working out of our own space with 1,000’s of customers, 50+ retail stores carrying our products, and a large client who ships out hundreds of our Scout bibs every month to their own customers all while raising three wonderful kids and keeping to our original values of making well made products in the US.

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

I started on Shopify early on, in 2014, right off the bat when I launched Hemming Birds after our Kickstarter campaign. At the time, Etsy was already a very popular option for handcrafted goods however I felt that having our own store would better show our strengths as a brand. For one, baby products were already pretty saturated on Etsy and opening a new shop only to land us on page 6,537 of a search when someone looked for “baby bibs” didn’t seem worth it. Secondly, our products have always been “ready to ship” and not “made to order” and I felt that a stand-alone store was better able to showcase this. It was a bit of a risky move as a brand just starting out, as Etsy did (and still does) have a huge audience. They’ve done a great job making it easy for customers to purchase from their site (they adopted saved payment information with your Etsy buying account earlier than Shopify). However, Shopify has always been ahead of the game integrating with advertising and social media platforms, which has been hugely beneficial over the years. Shopify themes allow you to create a beautiful, professional looking store. It was a bit of a gamble not opening an Etsy store when I first started, but overall I’m happy with the choice I made. As a side note, I also did try Amazon Handmade when it launched a few years back and did not have a good experience with it at all. To be honest, it was overly complicated to set up and manage and Amazon customers were the most difficult I’d ever dealt with (I don’t think they were in the market for high-quality, made-in-the-USA products).

I also conduct 99% of my wholesale business (selling direct to other retail shops) through the platform Faire. For many years I resisted, because Faire does collect a fee for most orders and with slim margins on wholesale orders (which typically are sold for about 50% of retail price) already I didn’t think I could manage. However after learning more about Faire from another small business owner (Emily of Texture Design Co who shared her positive experience with the platform) I signed up and it’s been wonderful. Yes, they do take a fee for most wholesale orders, however it’s grown my wholesale business from a handful of clients to over 50 stores in just a few years. The fee they take is far less than the cost of hiring an additional employee to find new retail customers and manage orders. Additionally, the platform is lovely and really easy to use. Maintaining a wholesale catalog and processing orders is simple and seamless and allows me to manage my entire wholesale business by myself at the same time as everything else that I do.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

This is easy – the quality of our products. We are meticulous about every detail of every product we make, and that keeps customers coming back. The majority of our customer base are people who have used our products and are buying more for themselves or as gifts for other people. Nothing makes me more satisfied as a small business owner then when someone uses our products and then later gifts them to another parent-to-be.

In addition to that, having good customer service is key. I am so thankful to all of our customers – it’s truly them that allow me to keep building this business that I love – and I approach my customer service interactions with this mindset.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://hemming-birds.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hemming_birds
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yanawieckowski/

Image Credits

The two photos with babies – image credit Jennifer White. All the other photographs were taken by myself (Yana Wieckowski).