Blooming Beautiful: Starting a Business With Almost No Money
When I was thinking about starting my first business, Blooming Beautiful, we were living with my parents. We had an 8 month old and my husband was at university getting his post graduate teaching diploma.
We did not have much spare money to invest in starting a business.
Through Blooming Beautiful I sold secondhand maternity clothes on behalf of other women.
My costs were:
Logo – mum helped me design it (free – outline of me pregnant with Ruby).
Advertisements -I printed them at the local Warehouse Stationery ($6 for ream of paper plus 10c a sheet for 4 ads each sheet).
I placed the ads at places like Plunket, kindergartens, and daycare centers (Free).
Clothing Racks (secondhand $40 x 2)
Mannequin (secondhand $50 approx)
It was an incredibly inexpensive business to start. Mostly the cost of paper (advertisements and tags). The ‘store’ was a spare room in our house.
My admin was a school maths book. The cost of goods sold was so low. We referred to it as our cash cow.
Lioness: When the Costs Step Up
My second business was Lioness. This was quite a different business. I designed and produced breastfeeding tops. Our tag line was “breastfeeding in public privately”
I was pregnant with our second child, our son Jack when I started Lioness. (This is me modelling with Jack)
The costs with this business were much higher:
Design of patterns – I have a Certificate in Pattern Making and Garment Assembly (free)
Material – bought by the metre from a warehouse in South Auckland
Cost of cutting material – dependent on quantity
Cost of sewing tops – dependent on quantity
Postage
Packaging
Labels
Advertising – Magazines & newspaper
Child Expo – we had a stall
Clothing Label tag
Website design
Website hosting
Our income per item was greater with the tops than the maternity clothes but the cost of goods sold was greater also.
We were in a position to put more money in this business, but each time, my personal comfort level was to always and only put in money that we could afford to lose, or if we lost it, our home life wasn’t in jeopardy at all.
Initially with Lioness we started with a smaller run, so limited material costs. I cut the first lot out myself although we still sent them to a professional seamstress.
We did some free giveaways to promote the business. I joined a radio giveaway to talk about it on the radio.
We sold these 2 businesses when we bought our first home and moved south of Auckland to Cambridge.
Once Upon A Garden: Investing in Setup, Keeping Running Costs Low
We had 2 more children in Cambridge and when my youngest was 3, I started thinking of another business. This time was different again. I retrained as a Landscape Designer and Once Upon A Garden Landscape Design was born.
For the fuller story read my blog: Your First Business Idea Doesn’t Have to Be Forever
I invested in this business more than my previous ones. (Approximate Figures)
SET UP COSTS
Retraining – Diploma of Landscape Design ($2500)
TurboCAD Software ($400)
Laptop (already had but have upgraded over the years)
Graphic Designer for Logo and Letterhead – $800
Vehicle Signage ($300)
T-shirts/Sweatshirt branded ($700)
Business cards and promotional material ($300)
ONGOING COSTS
Once the foundational costs were purchased, the costs of goods sold was very minimal.
Each design incurred a draft cost ($10)
Cardboard Tube packaging ($11)
Costs of final printing ($30-100)
Thank you chocolates and a card ($10)
With Once Upon A Garden, a deposit is paid from the client at the start of each job which well and truly covered any costs incurred by me, so the cost of goods sold with this one was very low.
The setup was higher here but they were one off costs and ongoing this business is very cheap to run.
So How Much Money Do You Need to Start a Business?
Depends on the business. For my first 2 businesses, I didn’t need cards but for some reason I thought I would for Once Upon A Garden. So I ordered a thousand. Turns out, my clients find me on social media etc. and when they find me , they don’t need a business card. (I still have a fair amount in my business cupboard in the garage).
We can easily assume we know what each business needs but I have learnt that is not always the case.
With Blooming Beautiful I advertised with physical photocopied homemade ads. Lioness was in magazines and newspapers and the radio. Once Upon A Garden is via social media and we have a website. Each one has different needs.
Ways to Keep Startup Costs Down
There are ways to lower the cost of a lot of items. Design your own logo on Canva, use an online printing business for your cards etc. and funnily enough check what you actually need before getting it. You can do your own bookkeeping, via Excel spreadsheets. I do all my accounts, get them as ready as possible then hand them to my accountant who usually spends just a couple of hours checking things. A lot of equipment can be bought secondhand then upgraded as and when you grow.
There are times to be lean and there are times to invest. Initially I did everything myself and only did free courses and learnt the slow way for sure.
And then when I was able, I bought the smaller courses and eventually bought the larger ones to buy time and someone else’s expertise.
So there is a time to be lean and when the situation allows, a time to seek help.
My One Rule for Investing in a Business
My approach with our finances for starting each business has stayed the same. Only invest money that we could live without. This relieved me of a lot of stress when starting these businesses. And when the opportunity arose as the business grew, I could invest more. This has worked wonderfully for us. Admittedly, Tim was working full time so my businesses never had to carry us financially, and I know that is a huge advantage. My recommendation would be to consider what your ‘can afford to lose’ amount is and start there.
And another starter low cost move is to watch my free class. I walk you through my Entry to Exit Blueprint and we go deeper into WHY you want to be in business. It’s 30 minutes, and true to everything in this post, it costs nothing. Sign up here.
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