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Episode 90 – Your Cricut Based Business Next Steps
If you are listening to this, you have a Cricut or a Silhouette, basically a cutter you got for $200-$600 at a local hobby store.
You make things for yourself, for friends and family. Maybe you are even making a little money here and there, or you've opened an etsy shop.
You might even be fulfilling orders almost every day.
What you all have in common is taking the next step to growing yourself into a better business, or maybe you might think of it as a "real" business.
What are the next steps:
Make it a business - Register with the state, get a resale or tax certificate, get a email address with your business name
Find Blank suppliers - stop buying from Walmart
Social Pages - Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn
Website..... maybe? Order online?
Start quoting in writing, on a form. Sales Quote excel /google sheet / apple sheet
Start invoicing the same way in writing
Find a way to accept credit cards. Circle pay, Paypal
Treat every customer, like a customer. even friends / family.
Create a price book / price sheet.
Get commercial equipment
Story of comparing a job from a hobby to a commercial machine
Hobby Cutter: cut a 58.5in Triangle..... that is 11.5 across bottom and 23.5 up, then back 23.5 down takes. 30.5 seconds, when in fast mode on certain models, its 15.6 seconds.
Graphtec Commercial does that in about 2.5 seconds.
That's 6x faster on the fastest hobby cutter or 12x faster on the standard one.
NOTE:
Consider the size. Affordable professional cutters cut about 15-48in wide, and can track 6-16 feet.
That means when you are using a hobby cutter, you are going to cut about 12" x 24" at a time. If you are cutting t-shirt designs that are a 7x7 square, you can cut 3 at a time. One over the other on a 12x24 in sheet. That is at a speed of about 2 inches per second.
Compared to a commercial unit, that is not that much more $.... you can cut 2 wide and about 27 long... so essentially over 50 at a time! Also at a speed that is 12 x faster.
Lets break this down into an actual job.
You are doing a family vacation to a theme park. Part of their tradition is making shirts for the whole family. That's 3 brothers, and their spouses, plus 2 kits a piece. Then a couple of sisters and their spouses on the other side of the family (plus kits) That's a total of 10 adults and 10 kids. Its a 3 day trip, so they want 3 shirts each. 60 shirts total.
If the design is that 7x7 how long will it take to do?
Hobby cutter:
5 minutes a shirt x 60 shirts = 300 min of machine run time. Plus you have to load and reload it 30 times. That's an extra 30 minutes of loading time. 5.5 hours of your hobby machine just cranking along.
Commercial cutter:
at 12 times faster you are close to 45 seconds a shirt
45*60 = 45 minutes of run time on your machine, with only having to load it up 2x.
Then you are ready to finally place them on the shirts.
Your job goes from being done a few hours after the kids go to bed, compared to trying to stay up all night, passing out at 2am.... then waking up in the morning and doing it for another hour or two.
This is quality time with your family & friends or time used to make more money / more sales.
So how much did you make an hour?
Lets say it takes 3 hours to press all the shirts, fold them, etc.
Hobby cutter - 8.5 hours of work for 60 shirts
Commercial cutter - less than 4 hours of work for 60 shirts
You double the amount of money you make per hour of work! You take this extra time and market on Facebook, attend events to meet more people, spend time with your family, spend more time building up your home based business.
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By Custom Apparel Startups
4.7
2727 ratings
If you are listening to this, you have a Cricut or a Silhouette, basically a cutter you got for $200-$600 at a local hobby store.
You make things for yourself, for friends and family. Maybe you are even making a little money here and there, or you've opened an etsy shop.
You might even be fulfilling orders almost every day.
What you all have in common is taking the next step to growing yourself into a better business, or maybe you might think of it as a "real" business.
What are the next steps:
Make it a business - Register with the state, get a resale or tax certificate, get a email address with your business name
Find Blank suppliers - stop buying from Walmart
Social Pages - Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn
Website..... maybe? Order online?
Start quoting in writing, on a form. Sales Quote excel /google sheet / apple sheet
Start invoicing the same way in writing
Find a way to accept credit cards. Circle pay, Paypal
Treat every customer, like a customer. even friends / family.
Create a price book / price sheet.
Get commercial equipment
Story of comparing a job from a hobby to a commercial machine
Hobby Cutter: cut a 58.5in Triangle..... that is 11.5 across bottom and 23.5 up, then back 23.5 down takes. 30.5 seconds, when in fast mode on certain models, its 15.6 seconds.
Graphtec Commercial does that in about 2.5 seconds.
That's 6x faster on the fastest hobby cutter or 12x faster on the standard one.
NOTE:
Consider the size. Affordable professional cutters cut about 15-48in wide, and can track 6-16 feet.
That means when you are using a hobby cutter, you are going to cut about 12" x 24" at a time. If you are cutting t-shirt designs that are a 7x7 square, you can cut 3 at a time. One over the other on a 12x24 in sheet. That is at a speed of about 2 inches per second.
Compared to a commercial unit, that is not that much more $.... you can cut 2 wide and about 27 long... so essentially over 50 at a time! Also at a speed that is 12 x faster.
Lets break this down into an actual job.
You are doing a family vacation to a theme park. Part of their tradition is making shirts for the whole family. That's 3 brothers, and their spouses, plus 2 kits a piece. Then a couple of sisters and their spouses on the other side of the family (plus kits) That's a total of 10 adults and 10 kids. Its a 3 day trip, so they want 3 shirts each. 60 shirts total.
If the design is that 7x7 how long will it take to do?
Hobby cutter:
5 minutes a shirt x 60 shirts = 300 min of machine run time. Plus you have to load and reload it 30 times. That's an extra 30 minutes of loading time. 5.5 hours of your hobby machine just cranking along.
Commercial cutter:
at 12 times faster you are close to 45 seconds a shirt
45*60 = 45 minutes of run time on your machine, with only having to load it up 2x.
Then you are ready to finally place them on the shirts.
Your job goes from being done a few hours after the kids go to bed, compared to trying to stay up all night, passing out at 2am.... then waking up in the morning and doing it for another hour or two.
This is quality time with your family & friends or time used to make more money / more sales.
So how much did you make an hour?
Lets say it takes 3 hours to press all the shirts, fold them, etc.
Hobby cutter - 8.5 hours of work for 60 shirts
Commercial cutter - less than 4 hours of work for 60 shirts
You double the amount of money you make per hour of work! You take this extra time and market on Facebook, attend events to meet more people, spend time with your family, spend more time building up your home based business.