Craftsmanship as business

Even though I loved making manual things since I was a kid, launching my own bow tie brand is not something that would occur to me to do as a business.

At the beginning I wanted some nice bow ties that don’t break the bank. It shouldn’t be that hard in London, right? Well, wrong. So at the end I decided to make a bow tie for myself.

This was it:

Honestly it was rubbish, but I was happy. And shockingly, I got more compliments on this one than I ever got to any of my other bow ties before.

So I went on and bought a tiny sewing machine. Not that I’d have a clue how to use it. Bobin? Is that some sort of African cat? No? I have to do what with it? Oh my God!

This is it:

After few hours of frustration over bunching thread, my flatmate came to rescue and told me to put the bobin thread upside down. Problem solved! Then I made my blue polka dots design. At that stage it was still very amateurish, but it looked alright and again brought me many looks and compliments.

I was decided to give it a shot as a business. I know, who wears self-tie bow ties? Just Doctor Who and me, but anyway. If I’d be starting from a business viability perspective, I would decide to do something else, but I don’t care, I want to do this because bow ties are awesome and because comparing to what’s out there, I definitely have a very different style.

So I started taking it more seriously. I spent a good week doing pretty much nothing than making one bow tie after other. It was a great fun. I’d wake up and rushed to my study to get sewing. I wouldn’t have breakfast until I was totally starving. Then I’d continue, often until midnight.

At the end of the week the bow ties started to look really decent. These are the ones from my current pictures. I went to a few shops and I got a really positive feedback — one that translates into something tangible, so my bow ties are going to be in a shop soon.

Now I’m trying to raise awareness and do some basic marketing on Facebook, so I can actually start selling in a reasonable volume. Not that I’d know much about marketing, but I’ll figure out.

This figuring out part is great. I learn and do things the way I want them to be. I love polka dots, so I have two designs with polka dots. I prefer cotton over silk (durability, cleaning, can be dressed up and down), so my bow ties are made of cotton.

And it’s all simple. My background is IT and in IT everything takes ages and everything is complex. Sure, once you have a product, you can sell it to as many people as you want, but getting to that phase takes a lot of time. Sometimes it’s month after month staring at a screen and feeling like there’s no light at the end of a tunnel.

So this is what I really appreciate about making manual things, how simple it all is. One probably won’t get Zuck-rich selling bow ties, but I don’t mind that. After all, it’s a side project, one I do to do something creative and to relax my mind.