You have a passion for sewing and love to create super cute outfits for your kids. You are good at it! Then your friends begin requesting that you sew for their kids too, and your family suggests that you could open a boutique and start selling. It's so exciting!
Does this sound familiar at all?
That's exactly how it was for me, and we hear it often in our patterns group too. So...
If you could do your favorite hobby every day and get paid to do it, why not go for it? It sounds like a dream job! And it very well can be. If you're like I was, though, it can be hard to know how to get started. For that reason, I'm excited to help point you in the right direction; not by telling you to run to the store and buy five bolts of all your favorite fabrics (although that can come later), but by giving you the basics on how to get started as a legitimate boutique. You deserve it! Whether you're hoping to sell one order a month out of your home, or several outfits per day online, you will want to take the proper steps to keep your customers happy and yourself protected.
We are going to refer to this topic as "compliance." Compliance basically means that you are following the rules. (Learning the rules isn't as fun as sewing, I admit, but it is important to keep you sewing for a long time.) I learned most of what I know about compliance from the US Safety Compliance Group on Facebook, which you are very welcome to join, and I highly recommend you do. They started out as a discussion group for cloth diapers but it has expanded to include all sorts of handmade items. There are helpful discussions going on there every day. Misty Henry is the head admin on the page and she seems to know everything there is to know about compliance. She has provided a lot of the info for today's blog post and you will soon be a huge fan of hers. (Trust me.) So let's get down to business!