to get a bit depressed at the 'woman beats recession' stories that are about really shit businesses that haven't even started

[Heroine]

I an getting a bit bored of the 'I was made reduntant and now I am starting my own recession beating bead-selling/ironing/wardrobe consultancy/dating agency business that hasn't even started, is doomed to fail and only possible because a) I can pump my large redundancy payout into it and b) because my husband is not redundant, but somehow I providing hope for any women who is not a lazy arse to make a fortune out of 'doing something she loves'

They really are patronising in the extreme and I am sure only there because you can get a nice pretty made-up shot of someone runnning a crap home-made dreamweaver business.

Ihate the way these articles are written as though any daft woman silly enough to work in something as unfeminine as a real job is a silly thing who just isn't as clever as the golddigging sponge and her fantasy business..
oh it makes me fume there are so many at this time of the year... nhmph

Joke. Making things by hand (butcake stuff) is highly important imo. The craft movement is an antidote to all that mass produced shite from China or whereever. Homegrown= good. And cupcakes ARE an essential. they are food that should be pescribed to all new mums to get them through the first weeks of
hell motherhood!

It doesn't sound as though you should be defensive, poshsinglemum. You acknowledge that your work is supplemental to your main income, but seem committed to it, and if you are making a profit, you are doing to opposite of what we are complaining about on this thread.

However. we don't necessarily live in a free-market society if people are arsing about deliberately losing money as they can't be bothered to treat their "business" seriously! As PPs have mentioned, that distorts the business environment for everyone!

(P.S. porcupine: your poor sister! Did she manage to get out of that all?)

Even when there isn't a recession businesses fail. I for example am useless at maths therefore this will hinder my business development but at least people are trying. where weak businesses fail, strong ones will survive. Competetion is good for the economy, however lame!

Isn't this how that awful Pedlars website thing started?

Cupcake businesses are fairy godmothers for an age that doesn't believe in magic.

In this type of news story, a woman is transformed from a place of misery and suffering (her old job) to a wonderful life of sunshine and friendship, through the power of a business idea. No mention of trying hard to balance the books, dealing with difficult suppliers, being screwed over by a customer before you learn better, working all hours, arguing with your family about the long hours. And the great thing is (for the Daily Mail especially) is that the success is all down to the woman's hard work, not to her family situation.

But, on the other hand, perhaps they can encourage women to see themselves as potential entrepreneurs, and to set up businesses that utilise their talents.

I've been wondering whether Pedlars website actually has transactional functionality. After all, anyone can buy a domain name and put together a website. (Someone I knew at one stage of education allegedly used some birthday money to run for [ed insitution] office; he knew he wouldn't win, but thought it would be a bit of fun to campaign, have pictures of himself around [e.i.] and have the [e.i.] paper be forced to interview him!)

Anyway, what happens if one clicks on "Buy" on the Pedlars site? Is there a sudden Denial of Service, or have they left an empty trap just in case there are some very silly mice about?

"Just-in-case trap: We acquired this in Italy by a contessa who was ashamed to have such a thing in her castello. It had been given to her by kind friends who said, "Just in case..." Well, she was not about to admit a mouse might be found in any one of her five palazzi, so here it is!"

£129.00

If only that '1,000 cupcakes a day' woman did sell them for 75p a pop - £2.50 was the price she was charging at Latitude last year, for a dry, tasteless fairy cake with a minute swirl of buttercream - AND she had her kids working the stall! No wonder she can afford to put the Amelias through private education on the proceeds...

(I am, of course bitter and jealous that the sale of my own moistly delish cakes will remain a sideline to my day job as I don't have her contacts, mutter, mutter)

Take heart, lovecat, that her contacts are actually capital, which she is spending as surely as money for Normal Folk. Now, she may have loadsa money and contacts, but they can't last forever.

I have to say that these articles do irritate me too - everything seems far too shiny and easy for them, and I don't know how they manage to make any money from it.
I am trying to set up my own business though - I lost my job as an FE lecturer in July (no redundancy for me), and it's been hard to find other pt teaching work again. I was teaching textiles and fashion, and was designing and making stuff whilst teaching.
I am now trying to get this up and running as some sort of business - and yes,I am fortunate to be supported in this by my dh, but it is a ridiculously small venture at the moment, and a long term project.
I will probably have to a start teaching my own courses out of some community centre somewhere, as I highly doubt that I will make much at all from selling the stuff I make.
TBH, I am well out of my comfort zone, but I have never been given an opportunity like this before, and I think I'd regret it if I didn't try to do something that I enjoy and have spent years training as, and developing skills in. Also, being stuck at home is going to send me slowly insane........
I'm not being smug here, just in case people get the hump......I;m just trying to make the best out of a situation that I have found myself in.

lovemysleep - you should totally start teaching as finding a course to teach me how to sew is a frigging nightmare. There is demand out there.

Northerngirl. I had it easy because my husband kept me, but I didn't use his money for business. I had a grant from the enterprise agency £40 per week.

I started with a silk flower arrangement which cost me about £5 to make.

spot on, purits . I work in a certain very elite 'home counties' area. Full of these women you speak of. Many fanny around crafting seaside pebbles into twisted wirey bits or sticking chutneys in jars and sticking twee labels on saying 'Mummy Made' ..hubby works all hours in the Big Smoke, supporting dear wifey's little hobby,(whilst she proclaims herself as Businesswoman of the year)In reality she makes £4.50 a week if she's lucky, but it matters not, she's too busy lunching with the gals and getting her hair done and spending hubby's wads..this is not an exaggeration, i work where some of these 'essentials' are on sale because my boss got bullied into taking goods from these yummy mummys

One tried to persuade me to take some of her homemade greetings cards (which were not unique designs or i might have considered ie were usual teddies/flowers) .. but hers were 'different because i infused them with Reiki energy'.
I declined.

I'm not talking about the really talented women who make a successful go of homecrafts etc and actually WORK AT IT..the women i encounter regularly wouldn't know real work if hit them in the face and if were faced with actual re-orders would panic, make some excuse about their manicure not being up to it and run off to Champneys.

LMAO at infused with reiki!!!

I asked her to explain as there was nothing on the cards to do with Reiki. She said hers were different to the others i sell as she'd 'blown Reiki symbols over them' after making them. Unfortunately it's not a good marketing point as there was no evidence of this so i had to turn her down
(i'm not knocking Reiki, btw... Just 'Reiki cards' that are a bit 'emperor's new clothes' if you get my drift!)

Good work questioning her like that.With any luck, she will feel ashamed.

And plenty of women set up businesses and earn a lot too and support their families, pay school fees etc out of it. There will always be hobby businesses. Plenty of men and women who sell their original successful business try something like this and a good few fail

Hobby businesses are great. Why on earth not?

i cant say id ever support a hobby business. Why buy what you can make?

I am getting sick of these selling parties personally. I tried doing Pampered Chef last year and gave up fairly quickly as I really felt like I was ramming myself down peoples throats. Yes the stuff is good but it is pretty much the same as Lakeland and no cheaper.

I know a few people who do these and although I do understand why they are trying them I am sick of hearing it now.

This one cracked me up last week. A friend had been to one of these My Secret Kitchen parties and bought loads of these sachets of this 'amazing beer bread they had made'. I said oh yeah I used to make beer bread when I lived in Aus, it is just self raising flour and beer right? She was a bit as she had bought these sachets which the instructions were to add a bottle of beer to the mix and cook!

www.mysecretkitchen.co.uk/products/beer-bread-mixes.html

I was pissing myself - £4.99 for 1kg of flour. Brilliant!

YANBU - EVE magazine R.I.P used to have these sorts of "aspirational" articles all the time. They tended to feature women who's partners obviously earnt vast amounts of money to cushion the inevitable blow of business failure. The woman would simper about how she had been made redundant so decided to start her own candle business in the "spare barn conversion" at the bottom of the garden, and there would usually be lots of pictures of said woman in her huge designer kitchen, dressed head to toe in designer clothes and holding manky candles aloft.

I wish they had done follow up articles on these women a year later or wrote about more real life struggles to start a business, rather than ones funded by rich hubby.

PSM: it's not that anyone is knocking hobby businesses (I have one, too though one fucking day it will keep me) - what is being knocked is the peddling of hobby businesses as real businesses, to people who would love to be self-employed but do not have the cushion of a wealthy hubby/fat reduncancy payoff/huge legacy from rich granny.

I'm self-employed and have been for years, but did "not have the cushion of a wealthy hubby/fat redundancy payoff/huge legacy from rich granny".

Ever heard of "savings"?

I was just giggling to myself about porcine's "why buy what you can make?" since I do sew things (by machine and by hand) and my washing peg bag is made out of a wire hanger from the drycleaner's and a bit of old Ikea curtain (the bit you chop off at the end), whereas my friend's is from Cath Kidston!

However, I had to stop laughing when I considered that contrast, because Cath Kidston stuff seems to be well made, and I cannot knock that at all. Her day bags are a really practical and elegant shape, and not so expensive if they are as robust as they look (I have seen a couple in RL). Really, it is only the twee material that makes it impossible for me to consider buying one. I bet, though, that the ditsy/twee appearance of her business fools many people into thinking I Can Do It, Too. However, people who think ICDIT without having the skills and drive (or business partner(s) with the complementary attributes?) would probably be better off saying instead: "I Can Buy It, Too."

Trouble is, at a certain level of emotional ambition, buying is not as glam as making/being.

Again, poshsinglemum, not having a go at you, but at deluded people who don't have enough to make the hobby more than a hobby.