March - April Update!
It has been a (relatively) quiet month since the last blog post, but I'm currently struggling to find the time to keep this up to date!
We attended the Sneinton Vegan Market on the 1st of April. It was a great experience, but the weather was disappointing and our sales were not great. We did meet some amazing people and received invites to other markets around Nottingham! In fact, we'll now be attending The Park Market at the Nottingham Park Estate on 30th April; we were invited by an attendee of the Vegan Market. It's the first Park Market of the season and we're really excited to be taking part.
We have recently invested in our own full size, sturdy gazebo and folding table! This means that we can now begin to appear at more local markets, where you require your own stall setup. The Park Market will be our first market with the new gazebo, so let's see how that goes!
The homemade soap cutter is performing better than initial expectations. With repeated uses and tightening of wires, the wires now stay tighter between cuttings. This makes cutting much easier, without the need to tighten each wire after cutting a loaf.
We received our first international order, too! An old friend from Norway wanted to try out some soaps, so we'll be shipping those soaps first thing on Monday! How exciting!
We've written up a business plan with the goal of securing funding in the near future. This would allow us to move into a dedicated workspace, rather than work from the home kitchen! As nice as it is, the business is quickly outgrowing the workspace and so we'll need somewhere a bit bigger to work and store the soaps! Writing the business plan was very hard, but rewarding. It allowed us to focus on the areas of the business that need improvement and pinpoint where success will come for us. It was also very educating; learning how to write the plan itself took a lot of time and effort.
Lastly, I've decided to take up a part-time job in order to fund some things in my personal life. It was a hard decision to make, but I'm happy knowing that the business funds can continue to exclusively fund the business and I can work hard part-time for my personal life. As a 23 year old, I see this as the perfect time to buckle down and work hard and if that means balancing a new business with another job 3 days a week, then that's what I'll do! I'll try to keep this blog updated next month with more information about local markets and other areas of the business. Thanks for reading!
