Obstacles Can Threaten Profits for Home Boutique Businesses
Among the baker’s dozen of women who sold handmade ornaments and stuffed Santas at Anita Kedrowski’s cozy home holiday boutique in Reseda, most began crafting purely for the love of it, or because they wanted to be creative in their spare time.
So selling more than $4,000 worth of goods in four days was like getting a little something extra in their Christmas stockings.
The home boutique trend, in which crafters basically set up shop in someone’s home to sell their handmade wares, blossomed about 15 years ago as the do-it-yourself and craft market burgeoned.
It was not unusual for a three-day boutique to bring in as much as $30,000 in sales, depending on the number of crafters participating.
Crafters, mostly women looking for a way to supplement family income, would pay a nominal fee, and sometimes a percentage of sales, to the organizer.
Today, crafting is a $10.4-billion industry, according to the Hobby Industry Assn. And in 15% of the crafting households, it is estimated at least one person makes crafts to sell.
But don’t give up your day job to sell sock puppets. Most crafters will warn that selling handmade goods is a tough way to make a living.
“Craft people don’t make much money,” says Kedrowski, who for nine years has turned four rooms in her home into Candy Lane Boutique. “Sales can be really good, but your investment is high. And it takes a lot of time to make things.”
A rash of competition--from other home crafters to parks, community fairs, churches and craft malls--has cut into the home boutique market, while opening other venues for crafters to ply their wares.
“Years ago, it was very worthwhile [to have a boutique in a home] because you could make money,” said Diane Schwarz, who more than 20 years ago began selling handmade dolls, dried floral arrangements and wood-painted decorations “as a way to pay for my kids’ education so I could be home with them.”
But today, she said, “It’s not as profitable. There’s lots of competition, lots of do-it-yourselfers.”
Although no business permit is required for a one- or two-day home event in Los Angeles, sellers need to file with the State Board of Equalization for sales tax and report income to the state Franchise Tax Board.
Besides do-it-yourselfers, boutiques have been a boon for nonprofit groups that bring in extra cash by sponsoring arts and crafts events.
The Holiday Arts & Crafts Boutique at Mason Recreation Center, for instance, “is a major fund-raiser for our youth programs,” said Virginia Corbin-Marinovich, facility manager for the Chatsworth park.
With 105 vendors paying $40 each for a spot, the daylong event last Saturday was expected to bring in more than $4,000. After deducting about $1,000 for publicity and other expenses, the center will clear more than $3,000 to help pay for camps, athletics, preschool and after-school activities.
“That’s pretty good for a little park,” Corbin-Marinovich said.
St. Stephen Presbyterian Church in Chatsworth grossed $13,000 in sales from its Four Seasons Boutique, which featured 41 vendors paying $35 each, plus 10% of their sales. The church gleaned $2,500 to support family service projects, such as scholarships and providing milk to a Valley shelter.
Many crafters who once hosted or participated in home boutiques are now opting for church- or community-sponsored events, citing security concerns, wear and tear on homes, and the sheer work it takes to put one together.
A Santa Clarita crafter, whose three-day home boutique took in more than $20,000 a few years ago, decided recently that while the money was good, it just wasn’t worth the stress. “It just got old,” she said. “It was hard on the family and it was just too much work.”
When Schwarz hosted the Faire Ladies boutique in her Chatsworth home, she began prepping the house nearly two weeks before the three-day event, moving furniture out of rooms, cleaning, packing away precious household items, then setting up tables and displays.
“My house looked wonderful, just like a store,” she said. “People still talk about it.”
With a mailing list of several thousand, about 200 people would traipse through her home daily, sometimes forming lines down the block just to get in. Vendors paid $20 to $25, plus 10% of sales, and she even turned down sellers because she had so many participating.
“It was nice, but it was very hard on my house.”
Now she sells mostly at community or church-sponsored events, a Thousand Oaks crafts mall and the Ventura County Street Fair, where this year’s hot sellers for her were decorative wooden chickens ($6 to $12) and “snowman poop”--miniature marshmallows packaged in clear bags with a poem (“You’ve been bad, so here’s the scoop, all you get is snowman poop.”).
At 50 cents a poop, er, pop, “I must have sold 500 to 600 bags,” she said.
But while crafters such as Schwarz and Cowitz prefer public venues, Kedrowski continues her home-grown tradition, even though ‘it completely disrupts our life for four days.
“It’s a tremendous amount of work, but I don’t like to schlepp around to other boutiques,” she said.
She makes no money from the other sellers at her boutique, merely asking them to split the $70 cost of fliers and postcards. She also sponsors a nonprofit group, which this year was New Horizons School. Teachers and students sold appliqued T-shirts ($15), beaded necklaces ($2 to $5) and painted ceramic Christmas trees ($53).
Because they must invest in material and labor at least six months before the holiday selling season, experienced sellers try to determine what the coming trend might be, then try to be as cost-efficient as possible.
Inexpensive jewelry, decorative wood pieces, dried floral centerpieces and Christmas and Hanukkah decorations are consistent sellers.
At the Ventura Street Fair, where booths rent for $80 to $125, this year’s big movers included a $45 child’s tepee made of fabric and PVC pipe, small step stools with decorative laminated tops that sold for $25-$32, $19 metal weather vanes that stick in the ground and leaded glass trinket boxes embedded with flowers in the $15-$24 range.
“People like cheap and cute,” said Cowitz, who sold “a ton” of her $18 Hanukkah-themed stuffed bears.
“Buyers are always looking for something different,” said Sheree Mattson, who makes jewelry in her Agoura home. Last year, she said, she was lucky enough to spot the trend for wire-wrapped beaded jewelry. This year, she said, a more Victorian style is selling well.
Mattson turned her hobby into a business the way many professional crafters do--someone
admired something she had made for herself and wanted it.
“I had seen a pretty, but expensive, necklace in a store and thought, ‘I could make that,’ ” she said. So she did, wore it to work, and found others liked it too. In fact, they liked it so much they placed orders. One day she made $750 during her lunch break and decided this could be more than a hobby.
“I couldn’t support myself on this, but it lets us take vacations and have a car.”
