I'm sitting at my desk with a B6 notepad infront of me (From Tilly Journals, for the record! I highly recommend!) and all I know is that changes need to happen.
Rymermade has been open for just shy of 8 years, and there have been a whole lot of ups and downs. I won't lie - the downs have far outweighed the ups, but something about my small business has pulled me back again and agian. The truth is, I love this business, and I feel like I need to dive head-first into some changes and I'm not quite sure what they are.
Adapting to challenges
As small business owners, none of us are strangers to adapting to challenges - especially if using a printer is part of your daily life! I feel like I have spent the first 7 years of Rymermade's life fire-fighting, and adapting to all of the challenges that came my way. A little tweak here, a total rebrand there, and as we approach our 8th Summer I finally feel like I am getting to know exactly who my brand is and what she needs.
It started to dawn on me over the course of last year that my strength lies in community - building up other people, supporting other businesses where I can, using my skills as a Virtual Assistant to elevate the work of my clients, but I've never quite been able to apply the same energy to myself. The cynical and insecure part of me notices that people love my work when they think that other brand owners created it, but that they don't celebrate the work I put in to Rymermade simply because it is me. This has made me shy away from the community that once brought me so much joy, but I am using that insular time for self-reflection and learning where my lane is so that I can stay in it.
I've also been creating studio vlogs recently and have been thoroughly enjoying being able to create content - I don't have many subscribers yet, but I am looking forward to the moment I realise my shop has evolved so much that my vlogs become a trip down memory lane.
Growth and Progress
I've been toying with cutting right down on how much I have available on my website. For example, I have card designs on there that I designed back in 2017 and they feel tired now. I'm unsure exactly how I want to do this; I could discount them, but I currently have a few hundred pounds worth of stock I already heavily discounted and nobody wants them, so I fear this would just add to the pile of things that I will probably have to throw away! But I've become fixated on the idea of purging myself of deadweight and leaving space for only things that excited me and fill my life with colour and joy.
Over 2026 I am going to commit to being fully ready-to-ship, other than stickers which I will print on demand. This will cut down on shipping times and make the process of packing orders much more easy for me. It will also enable me to take photographs of every single product for listings and social media, which is something else I want to commit to completing in 2026. On the flip side, I will need to invest in every new release rather than only ordering products when a customer orders them, which will put additioonal financial pressure on me and increase the risk of a product performing poorly, so I will be much more mindful about what I am releasing and when.
Have you got any exciting challenges and changes coming up, either in your personal life or for your brand? I'd love to hear about it!