I'm being naïve about this business idea aren't I ???

[KittyFourPaws]

HI

I have the idea to start as business making craft items and if it goes well expand to have " employees" .

I've designed the items so that they can be made in the home, the skill can be mastered by most.

I'm imagining I would pay on a piece by piece basis, with the "pay" equivalent to £10 ph .

I envision offering employment to those who find traditional jobs difficult to manage. Maybe even referred from SS / charities etc

It would give SAHM / vulnerable etc work in their own time , even grabbing 20 minutes when a baby naps. It is small so in a DA situation could easily be hidden.

Am I living in la-la land ?

There's bound to be masses of issues I haven thought of that will make it unworkable.

Over and above the " Legal" side of things ( pay, taxes) etc what else is going to trip me up ?

Insurance for instance , if it in their own home do I have to provide insurance ?

Thanks

yep, already have the equipment, left over from a business I ran with my EXH.

Pipe dream, I know, but developing it has kept me sane during lockdown !

Are you guessing those costs of materials, labour and the time it takes to make this craft item? Seems odd to be jumping well ahead of employing people when you don't seem to have demand outweighing sales.

How about selling the kits with instructions for say £15?

Have you researched if people want to actually buy them?

"Are you guessing those costs of materials, labour and the time it takes to make this craft item?"

Nope

"How about selling the kits with instructions for say £15?"

I had thought of that for some of the items , for others it wouldn't really work.

God you’ve just reminded me that DM worked from home making specialist dental brushes for a while when I was a kid.

She had a special machine about the size of a sewing machine in the dining room and boxes upon boxes of fiddly rings and bristles. Basically a factory cut their costs by letting women wfh.

What a pisser of a job. And FROM HOME.

Even at age 7 I remember thinking that wasn’t terribly sterile.

Would you be selling directly to the public (if so where and what are the costs) or selling to retailers? You’d have to sell a high volume to make it worthwhile, is that likely?

It is very hard to make a profit from handmade items generally - material costs generally high, time involved generally high. I really wanted to sell knitted items for a while and I tried but impossible to make a profit. Then I moved to paper cutting. I used to make very large complex pieces mainly as commissions and by the time I’d factored in costs, all my time (not just making but marketing, listing, responding to queries) I would make about £10 an hour.

I’m now back to it focussing on very intricate maps - some of them will have to be upwards of £400 (to me, after costs) to make me £10 an hour, and it’s relatively quick compared to some things.

It’s tough out there!

"You could sell the kits to your "employees" to sell on (but at what point does it all go a bit #bossbabe)"

Oh dear god noooooooooo!!!

Google the Blue Badge Company, they have a business doing very similar, putting out piece work to local people, seems to be working ok!

You’re jumping way ahead of yourself. You’re nowhere near hiring employees so pointless even going there yet.

You need to continue doing as you are and selling yourself and when demand outstrips the rate at which you can supply then you take on an employee.

"What if people take more than 1/2 an hour to assemble it? Do you pay them less?"

If they were faster than 1/2 though it wouldn't affect the pay per piece so it wont if they are slower, and 1/2 hr is quite generous, could be done a fair bit quicker with practice. But I need to cost for worst case not best case.

I run my own business and have done for years. Not in this field at all.
But I think you are living in a bit of a dream world frankly.
If your business idea has legs so to speak you need to focus on it 100% and not do it as a side to your normal job. All your energy and focus would be better employed on making your business work at a basic level with you fulfilling all the orders and successful marketing and selling your products. Then when it’s growing you start to slowly outsource the successful product and gradually expand.

I can’t help but think it’s all a bit pie in this sky dreaming from what you’ve currently outlined at present. I’m not knocking you but be realistic and write yourself a proper business plan with everything costed including your time. That’s your start point.

Your employees should be the best possible people you can find otherwise your business won't succeed. And if people are on benefits and you employ them you need to be absolutely sure that that employment isn't going to mess them up financially.

Get the business up and running on your own first without taking on anyone else.

I know this is WWAAAYYY down the line, just wondered really if SAHM etc would even want to do this sort of thing, and the response is............ mixed, so that's something I've learnt thanks to everyone who's has posted.

I’ve seen two potential pitfalls that you might want to look at-

Costs
You haven’t factored in the additional costs of employing someone, above the hourly wage. I’m not in the UK so not sure what your NI-type rates are but you need to factor in this, holiday pay, etc.

Similarly, you haven’t factored in the VAT that will be charged on the end product so you might quickly find that your example of

Materials £1.80, Labor 1/2 hour per item, : £5 , selling £20

Quickly becomes (numbers for illustrative purposes only):

Materials £1.80, Labor 1/2 hour per item, : £7 , selling £18.50 excluding VAT

It’s a basic example but shows that your margin is considerably down.

Second pitfall is around...

Production
If you need to have 100 of these items made per week by your SAHMs etc who are working around their kids/other jobs/whatever, what do you do if someone who is expected to make 20 only makes 5 because her child is sick/she didn’t have the time etc?

You need to have very reliable production line for anything like this.

I run a handmade business. It took nine years of sheer graft before I became an employer. Food for thought there OP. It isn't as easy as you think. You will need insurance, you will need reliable employees, you will need to pay holiday pay, possibly sick pay and maternity/paternity pay (because you can't just advertise to mums). What about fees to sell, Etsy costs me 12%, Amazon handmade 12%, eBay 20%. Returns, missing items, all have to be factored in. It's hard enough running a business, let alone being an employer. Doesn't sound like you will have the margin to pay someone £10 an hour while still earning for all the work you will have to do.
And if no one else is selling this product, why is that? It's very hard to introduce a brand new item to market without a marketing budget, honestly, been there and done that!

Love the idea OP but not sure you’re there yet.

@SinkGirl tell me more about these maps!

Many thanks for all who posted.

Where’s the quality control? Will you need to train the employees how to do it? Where would you do this? How do the pieces get to the employees and how do you get them back again? How much would that add to the unit cost? How many items are likely to be spoiled in the process of making them, how will that impact the cost? How do you ensure x number of items are made by each employee in a given time period? What would the sanction be if that didn’t happen? Would it be cheaper for your workers to be contractors for you ie self employed?

Try it out small scale and stay realistic...plenty of people near me all seem to sell some sort of things...cupcakes...make aprons etc but it cant be their main income as most have just moved into the area and have massive mortgages...and husbands are working in highly paid jobs...so its a bit of fun for them....I used to sell 1940's skirts and blouses made up from old patterns at a market...it was hit and miss...never made a lot of money at it but covered costs and cleared about 30 quid a day....that was in the 1980's.

I think it's a great idea, but honestly there are must so so many craft items for sale out there. I make and sell hand painted craft items, my pieces are very well made and I spend a long time on them. I make pocket money really, there's no way I can pay myself an hourly rate because there's always a limit to how much people will spend on something even if it's hand made, unique etc. I do it because I love it and it gives me a focus in life but it's never going to be a career.
I wish you good luck and maybe you'll come back and prove us all wrong, I hope you do!

The difficulty with involving others is you lose control.

I would be worried about quality control, things like people not making them at all, or not making them or posting them within your time frames and the off chance that people would then just start making the independently and cutting the middle man (you) out

I would do it, as long as you convinced me it wasn't some kind of con or pyramid scheme. I couldn't afford any up front costs at all.
If it genuinely was, you provide the bits, I assembled them, and you collected and paid me for each one then yes.
It would have to be by the item rather than by the hour though, to avoid any arguments about how many hours were put in.
Also, what happens if you judge the finished thing to be substandard? And I think it is fine... You need some sort of written standards/contract to cover that - in theory, I could make a hundred items, you could say half of them were crap, pay me for 50, then sell them all...
It requires a lot of trust between you and the employees.

Would people actually do the work
Would it appeal to a SAHM

No.
If they have the ability to make a craft why would they want to be empoyed by you and allow you to make the money? Surely they would make the craft and sell it to keep all the profit.