Review: Craft, Inc: Turn Your Creative Hobby Into a Business

There’s a lot of buzz going ‘round about Craft, Inc: Turn Your Creative Hobby Into a Business. So, let me add my two cents as well.

I was very excited to see this book arrive from Chronicle Books, because I’ve been watching the advent of the Crafty Business Era for some time, and saying to myself: “We need our own business book!” So many craft-business books seem to have been written before the internet age, and outside the realm of the indie craft culture, so they tend to miss the mark.

Not so with Craft Inc. Author Meg Mateo Ilasco (a successful craft businessperson herself) has compiled the kind of things you’d expect to see (getting a business license, pricing your work, raw materials, consignment) with a lot of material you really need. Her chapter on product design alone is worth the price of the book, including some excellent techniques for market research, and solid thoughts on that fuzzy border between inspiration and imitation.

Interspersed throughout the book are interviews with well-known names: Lotta Jansdotter, Katherine Shaughnessy, Denyse Schmidt, and others. Their perspectives are definitely insightful, and taken together, they reveal that, as many different ways as there are to approach business, it always comes down to figuring out what works best for you.

Another standout section of Craft, Inc. deals with “Ups, Downs, and Next Steps,” from managing lean times to recovering from burnout to navigating big changes like hiring staff or moving out of your home office. When was the last time a business book told you that it’s perfectly okay if you decide to stop doing your business and return to a regular job?

Aside from all the useful information, the design of this book is just adorable. (Visual people like us really appreciate having our hard facts presented in a pleasing format.) So, in case you hadn’t already guessed, I highly recommend this one for any crafty person who’s ever thought of hanging out their shingle.