The Busy Bee Printery Celebrates it's ONE year birthday!

Written by Kelly Bigelow - Owner of The Busy Bee Printery

 

The Busy Bee Printery is officially one year old! This first year has been a whirlwind of learning, creating, making mistakes, making big decisions, and overall a great success! I was lucky to meet so many new faces and really learn what direction I want to take this new business in. 

A little summary of our first year:

As a mom of 4 kids, life is BUSY. I often found myself creating things to sell as a way to make some extra money, but also as a way to connect with other people, use creativity, and challenge myself! 

The year started off with orders spanning from a proposal, landscape tee's, local businesses around town, family vacation shirts, local sports teams, custom truck builders, local schools, a local garden club, roofers, builders, and the list goes on. 

One thing that has carried through from one job to the next is my desire to ensure that our products going out are high quality and that our customers are happy and feel taken care of! I want my customers to experience the true benefit of working with a local small business; a much more personalized, hometown kind of experience. I truly love when a customer is excited to get their products and that is what drives me to keep bettering The Busy Bee Printery. I want to bring the customer's vision to life and will listen and work with the customer to find the perfect fit for what they are looking for. I am constantly researching this field and collaborating with other businesses and creators for ideas and tips, to evolve with the industry and gain as much knowledge as I can, while maintaining the goal of staying a small local business.

Over the past few months, The Busy Bee Printery has begun doing pop-up shop fundraisers. This idea started when a customer wanted to get shirts made for a local club but wanted a way to do it as an online store. I thought, "why not!" and that opened up many new doors for The Busy Bee Printery! More info can be found in our pop-up info page and is also added below. 

What is something that The Busy Bee Printery is looking forward to in 2025?

The Busy Bee Printery has invested in a new DTF printer and oven system, a new dual pneumatic heat press and is ready to take on larger orders! We are going into 2025 with more knowledge of the industry, a larger workspace, more experience, and a bright outlook for the future of The Busy Bee Printery!

What goals does The Busy Bee Printery hope to reach this year?

The goal is to build up the website this year, and hopefully have an option for customers to visually build their products online and have the capability of ordering custom items whether it is for one product or 100 right on the website.  I hope to continue learning and growing!

 

Below you can find more info about our Pop Up Shop Fundraisers!

The online pop-up shop is something I am very excited about! It works like this: an organization can simply sign up for the pop-up, choose products to feature on their store, set a time span to have their store open and the rest is up to me! I build a storefront off of my website, upload all the products with the organization's logo displayed, add in all the options available, like sizes and colors, and run the store for the organization. The organization makes 20% from every sale. There is absolutely no cost to the organization and therefore no risk. I don't charge to set up the shop, or run the shop! 

Let's break down the "whys"

•  Why is there no cost for setting up the shop? 
  • Well, because I want the store to succeed just as much as you do. More orders = more money for my business and your organization to put it simply. It is a Win-Win

 

• Wouldn't the organization make more money if they just ordered the printed products and sold/distributed it themselves?  
  • They could! but not necessarily. Here is why. Let's say an organization wanted to sell hoodies and t-shirts as a way to raise money. If they wanted to go this route, (which by the way is totally fine, and some do) they would need to have a way to take the orders, they would need to keep track of what product, what color, what size, the quantity, and the cost for every order. They would need a way to take payment and also a way to get the order to this person once it was fulfilled. This also greatly limits the span of people that this order would be open to. Therefore the answer could be yes, but the workload would also be much greater for the organization. The order would then be submitted to me and my prices per item would only be slightly lower than what we would be charging on the popup, therefore the organization would need to increase their product prices to make a large enough profit margin and may not get as many sales with the higher costs.  

 

• What makes the pop-up shop the right choice?

 

         -The pop-up shop works great for many reasons.

• • No upfront costs
  • No work for the organization
  • The pop-up can easily be shared with friends or family electronically, posted on social media, or emailed, which greatly increases your sales.
  • The Busy Bee Printery is also essentially advertising your organization and that increases the exposure of your organization.
  • Shipping and pick-up options on the shop are convenient for the buyers and also help increase sales even to those buying states away!
  • The Busy Bee Printery handles everything from building the store, adding options, taking payments, ordering the products, printing the products, packaging and distributing the products.
  • The online store allows much more variety and options. It also allows the customers to look through products, read the descriptions and shop from the comfort of their own home. 

 

 

 

 

• Why do we need an ordering window?
  • Having an ordering window gives a set timespan for customers to order. This is important because it allows me to order all the goods at one time once the ordering window is closed. This honestly saves me time and money. Therefore it allows me to keep my costs lower and increase the profit margin which only benefits the organization. If I didn't wait for the ordering window to close, I would be ordering only a few products a day, paying multiple times for shipping, and I would not get the best rates like I do when I bulk order. I also find it easier to prevent mistakes when I am ordering all at once, especially when we have a lot of orders. 

 

• Why does it take 12-14 days after the window closes to get the items?
  • This is because it takes a few days to get all the items shipped to me, then I need to separate them, make sure everything came in correct, print and press all the items, then package and prepare for shipping or pick-up. Since I am a local small business and not a big company, I want to ensure that I am allowing myself enough time while prioritizing the quality of the items as my main focus.