So as you all know I love to support local and started a segment where we could share, learn and inspire! It is so important to support local and share your findings with others.
During lock down, we are going to do a whole lot of these to highlight these businesses – many of which are taking HUGE strain during this time – and shed some awareness and love to all.
Scrolling through social media on the look out for businesses and brands that we can showcase is no easy feat. And then I find awesome new businesses like this one, the Beaded.dog and I get so excited! These gorgeous beaded collars are absolutely stunning and come in a variety of colours and patterns.
Thank you to Gustav Gous and the Beaded.dog team for chatting to us about their new business!
You opened your own business – How does it feel to be a successful business owner that inspires others and loves what they do?
It feels really good! The first step is always the hardest: actually turning one’s business idea into a functional business that is in revenue. I hope that by achieving this, we will inspire many other people to go out and start their own businesses.
What are the top 3 learnings you have had to find out the hard way since starting your own business?
Personally, the whole experience has been a big learning curve. However, I have enjoyed most of it and I continue to learn new skills daily. The first challenge was setting up an online store, which was completely new to me. I used Shopify as a platform to build our website. Shopify is an excellent, user-friendly platform and a brilliant tool to help set up an e-commerce shop. Getting our pricing right was definitely the next challenge, especially when dealing with larger retail stores. This is something one will have to keep in mind when deciding on the price of your products – everyone needs their margins.
Where do you see your business in 5 years? Once we have gotten over the effects of the lock down.
Our main goal has honestly just been to create a product that our customers love. But of course this constitutes a number of objectives and actions.
Short term, our goals are to create brand awareness, to build a social media presence and to achieve customer satisfaction to the furthest extent possible.
For the future, our goals are to get our collars into as many retail stores across South Africa as we can. And then a larger long-term goal would be to export our collars to other countries – we have our sights set on the UK and US. Ultimately we want to create a widely recognised and loved “petwear” product.
What is your advice to individuals out there wanting to start their own businesses but are too scared?
Like I said earlier, the first step is the hardest. So many people come up with great business ideas but never go the distance with them. People struggle to move past the concept-phase for fear of the risk involved in relation to the amount of work it takes to get an idea off the ground. Yes, starting your own business is hard work but it can be extremely rewarding. If you genuinely believe in it, get up and turn that idea into a business.
Tell us 2 things that are the BEST part about owning your own business and make it all worth while?
One of the best things about being a business-owner must be the satisfaction that comes with creating a functional business out of one of your own ideas. Especially when this idea is something that you are passionate about. I don’t remember ever not having a dog in my life.
These companionships with my pets formed such an integral part of my upbringing, and is still a huge part of my life today, and now I was able to channel my creativity into this area of my life and turn it into something I can share with others.
There are few things as enjoyable as when a customer gets as excited about my product as I am! Which brings me to another great part of building your own business – celebrating each mile stone, big or small, that your business reaches. This excitement makes it all worthwhile for me.
How has lock down affected you and your team?
Beaded.dog is a start-up, and we only launched our website in February of this year. So the lockdown came at a really bad time for us, because we felt like we just got up and running and then lockdown happened. During the initial period of lockdown, only essential goods were allowed to be sold, which excluded dog collars. So we were unable to deliver any of the products we sold on our website. Furthermore, the lockdown disabled the production of any new collars, so we started running out of stock! This held back a lot of our progress and I would be lying if I said this didn’t cause me some stress. But many South African businesses have had it way worse than us, so I’m just grateful that we are still up and running.
Here are all their gorgeous beaded collars on their website and you can shop online.
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