This book could very well be considered a bible for indie-minded crafters who want to take their craft to the next level. Author Meg Mateo Ilasco covers all the basics, everything from choosing a legal structure for your business and record keeping to creating a pricing formula for your goods and marketing your wares, and she even touches on what to do when you want to grow your business further and decide you need to hire help or when you've decided that it's time to call it quits.
Much of this information can be garnered from around the internet for free, but you'll have to know where to look, and tracking all of the info down can sometimes be daunting for someone just starting out. Craft Inc. serves as a great overview and handy reference guide for all aspects of your business.
One of the things I really enjoyed, and I remember reading as much in other people's reviews of the book, were the interviews with established crafty entrepreneurs. Ilasco scored interviews with notable names on the craft & design scene, including Lotta Jansdotter, Jill Bliss and Jonathan Adler. Each interview is carefully tailored to the section of the book in which it appears, so after you read about the basics of order fulfillment, wholesale and consignment, for example, you'll get to see how jewelry designer Dawn Benedetto of Poppi handled setting minimum opening order requirements for wholesale orders.
If you're just starting out on your journey as a creative business person, I would highly recommend checking out this book, as it should give you a good idea of everything that running your own crafty business can entail. If you've already been managing your creative business for awhile, you might know much of this information already. That said, I consider myself fairly knowledgeable on many of the topics covered in the book, and I still found a few things that I hadn't thought about before, particularly within the interview sections. Where ever you are in your crafty business venture, I bet Craft Inc. could probably give you some new insights.
Much of this information can be garnered from around the internet for free, but you'll have to know where to look, and tracking all of the info down can sometimes be daunting for someone just starting out. Craft Inc. serves as a great overview and handy reference guide for all aspects of your business.
One of the things I really enjoyed, and I remember reading as much in other people's reviews of the book, were the interviews with established crafty entrepreneurs. Ilasco scored interviews with notable names on the craft & design scene, including Lotta Jansdotter, Jill Bliss and Jonathan Adler. Each interview is carefully tailored to the section of the book in which it appears, so after you read about the basics of order fulfillment, wholesale and consignment, for example, you'll get to see how jewelry designer Dawn Benedetto of Poppi handled setting minimum opening order requirements for wholesale orders.
If you're just starting out on your journey as a creative business person, I would highly recommend checking out this book, as it should give you a good idea of everything that running your own crafty business can entail. If you've already been managing your creative business for awhile, you might know much of this information already. That said, I consider myself fairly knowledgeable on many of the topics covered in the book, and I still found a few things that I hadn't thought about before, particularly within the interview sections. Where ever you are in your crafty business venture, I bet Craft Inc. could probably give you some new insights.
