My New Title: Shop Owner

On January 4, just in time for the new year, I officially started a new chapter in my life: I opened the doors to our online yarn shop called Josephine Yarns. Although we had been working on getting everything together for many months before, sharing our work and making it available to the whole wide world felt like such a massive step forward.

This journey has been nothing like I had expected. It challenged me in ways that I didn't see coming, and in forcing me to overcome those challenges so we can move forward, it made me braver and more confident in the things that I can do. I'm sure that it will continue to test me constantly and, despite that, I'm filled with excitement when I think of the future of this little venture, and of my future including it. It's giving me so much energy and joy that I finally wake up happy again. Every day, I'm dreaming, planning and building this future, but today, almost exactly two months after that exciting step, I want to take some time to look back at everything we accomplished since July of last year when we decided to move beyond the idea phase:

We chose a meaningful name, in honor of the woman who instilled the love of handmade in both me and my mother: my darling grandmother.

We legally registered and incorporated the business - a step that I researched and stressed out about a great deal and that, of course, turned out much less daunting once I actually did it.

We opened a business account at the bank.

We researched, found and communicated with our first potential suppliers.

We placed our first wholesale orders to build our initial inventory, and since we had limited funds and a wide selection of wonderful yarns, it was quite a decision-making challenge.

We photographed all the yarns; knowing about my lack of skills and professional equipment, I dreaded this step quite a bit, until one day, I realized that all I need to do is to keep it simple. Now I am actually very happy with the results.

We decided on an online store platform; with plenty of options out there and not much knowledge about this field, it felt like diving into unknown waters, but I'm glad to report we made it back to shore safe and sound. We went with Shopify and we're very happy with our decision, since it's been a very user-friendly and straightforward process.

We got our business logo through a wonderful Etsy shop called Autumns Creek.

We did a lot of changing and tweaking (and learning in the process) to build our store to the look and functionality we wanted.

We figured out shipping costs. This was another one of those tasks that I found incredibly daunting, in part because it got the best of me in the past when I had some other online shop ideas, but this time we prevailed; of course, it's still something very new to us, so we're learning as we go.

We wrote product listings, which was a little more difficult than expected, as we tried to translate all our research and excitement for the products into a few concise lines.

We designed and ordered business cards.

We rented a PO box, something that was very important to us, since we are operating from home.

I say we because without the help and support and input of my family, I have no doubt that I would still be stuck in the idea phase even now. Josephine Yarns is the work of all of us, and I'm thrilled to watch it grow over the years. I am so proud of it already but I have many more ideas to make it even better, and I hope you'll join us on this journey!

Disclaimer: the Shopify link used in this post is part of the affiliate program, which means I get some compensation if a subscription results from it.