Personalization is a great way for gift-givers to ensure that their gift is unique. Even the most basic gift can be transformed by a personalized message. If you've got an eye for designing clever, custom-made items, consider starting your own business.
Instructions
1. Identify your niche. Personalized gifts aren't new. With personalized gift retailers both inside malls and online, your items must be particularly clever or unusual in order to make money. Think beyond personalized mugs, towels, shirts, and key chains. Stick with an area that interests you or that in which you you have expertise. Personalized business products can include portfolios, briefcases, flash drives, and journals.
Personalized gifts aren't just about adding someone's name. Other ideas for making money include creating novelty photos, where the birthday girl is Photoshopped to look as if he or she is standing next to a favorite celebrity. Think about different demographics that you can appeal to such as new moms, hostesses, pet owners, puzzle lovers, and grandparents. Think about how your items can cater to birthday parties, baby showers, bridal showers, military life, hobbies, and obsessions.
2. Take advantage of GIMP, a free design software tool, to create custom designs for your personalized items. While most of the items you sell won't be made until they're ordered, you'll still need to create a portfolio for customers to get an idea of your talent.
3. Find wholesale suppliers for your goods, such as soaps, candles, children's clothing, accessories, bags, office supplies, pottery, holiday stockings, wreaths, and baskets. Be sure to check the supplier's references. When in doubt, pay with a credit card that offers buyer protection (call your credit card to check). Buy conservatively until you have established a relationship with your supplier.
4. Buy equipment that you can use to personalize your items. Printing presses, which range from $100 to $16,000, can be used to custom design just about any type of product and can be operated from within your garage or a spare room. You can get a complete manual printing press for less than $1,000, which should be enough for a small to medium-sized business. Engraving machines start at about $1,000 for name tags, key chains and small signs, and may be as much as $18,000 for engravers that can accommodate larger items such as trophies, glasses, and flasks. For commercial embroidery machines, check out companies such as Brother International.
5. Set up a Web site that will let you customize your pages so that customers can adjust the specifications of the products they want. Look for an e-commerce solution that will provide you with enough storage space for your products, plenty of search-engine optimization (SEO) and marketing tools, accounting tools, and a secure environment. Create a Web page that asks for customer suggestions. On your site, include how you came to start your business, your goals, and your commitment to customer satisfaction. Take quality images of your products and detail how each one can be personalized.
Tags: your items, credit card, gifts aren, just about, Personalized gifts, Personalized gifts aren
