Editor’s note: This article was first published in July 2017. It is a snapshot of that month: the woman’s age (25), her four years in Spain, her daily orders, the lack of a website and her plans for a shop and workshop describe her situation then.
Starting a small business from home isn’t as complicated as many people think. All it takes is a skill (or good taste) and making something people like. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel or come up with something “super-innovative” either. Simple ideas have proven to work quite well.
We’ve already seen the young man who quit his job at a gas station after his business idea started bringing in millions. We also covered the story of Big Dipper, where a young mother built a very profitable business out of something as simple as preparing organic food for children in her home kitchen, an idea that has since grown into a large, established company.
How does this young woman make money from home?
This time we stay in Spain to see how, in a very simple way and without any technical knowledge (not even a website, for now), a woman is building a project that started out as a modest way to earn some extra money and is now beginning to see strong demand from different parts of the country.
Catalina Velásquez is a 25-year-old Colombian mother who has been living here in Spain for four years.
A little over a year ago, when she was about to have her baby, she started looking for decorative items for children. She says she couldn’t find what she wanted, and when she did, the price was sky-high or the quality wasn’t what she was hoping for, so she decided to make it herself.
See also: The fisherman and the businessman: the worker’s mindset vs. the entrepreneur’s
After seeing the result, she decided to make a few of these wooden silhouettes for friends and family, and it wasn’t long before their friends started placing orders too.
Since Catalina wanted to stay at home to look after her daughter but needed to earn money, she decided to sell her handmade, personalized wooden silhouettes through a Facebook page she created, called BUBU Decoración Infantil.
Catalina knows it’s important to have her own website to showcase her products, but because she lacks the know-how and the time, she hasn’t built one yet. Even so, to reach potential customers she turned to Facebook Ads (Facebook’s promoted posts), where for just a few euros a week she can reach thousands of potential customers all over Spain.
She is surprised by the results and the response she has had. She says she is currently getting orders every day, to the point that she already needs help to keep up with demand, bearing in mind that she cuts and paints the figures herself and meets her customers’ personalization requests as best she can.
Her best-selling product has been silhouettes of pregnant women with space for the baby’s ultrasound picture and the baby’s name.
Right now, this entrepreneur, who set out to make some extra money from home and has ended up with a profitable business on her hands, aims to open a physical shop, create a website to showcase her products and start a workshop where others can learn this kind of craft and embroidery.
See also: 38 ideas for making extra money from home
If you look closely, the story repeats itself when it comes to finding the key to a profitable business: do something you enjoy, create a product because, as a consumer, you noticed something missing from what you were looking for, and, most importantly, in a technological age, offer something that’s being lost. In this case, that means handmade, personalized work, which customers certainly appreciate.
Featured image: Garry Knight from London, England, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
.jpg){kind=link}