2023 Recap (all about our first year in business)
As I am easing my way into the New Year, I have been reflecting on the past year of business here at Madswick. (It was our first year in business by the way!) So much has happened, and it was so different from what I expected. This time last year I was happy to discover that my Husband (partner, friend, confidant, etc.) and I were expecting our third daughter in September. To be honest, I was very excited about this news, but also very nervous about what that would mean for the big plans I had created for 2023 at Madswick. Clarke and I are both self-employed and it hasn’t been the smoothest few years, I had it in my mind that I was going to produce a ton of patterns and become the next big wig pattern maker! Well to be honest it didn’t work out that way, I’m still pretty unknown in the sewing community, and I don’t make enough profit from this business to support my family of 5. But you know what? Thats ok! I have no intention of giving up this dream, and I have no intention of putting my ideas to the wayside. I just can’t launch as much content or products into your lives as I can create in my head. But I have years and years to do it and you won’t want to miss it, there are a lot of exciting ideas up there. However, (this is a gentle reminder to myself here) there is no rush and I think taking my time will be worth it in the end.
2023 taught me that I am not alone. Not at home, or in the sewing community. I am not the only mama with a wish to be a present mom and a business owner. I am not the only one in my family working, I have an extremely supportive partner. I also have extremely supportive parents who have let us move into their homes while they work in another state so we can pursue our dreams. I am a part of a network of dozens of other designers who want so badly for their designs to be discovered and cherished. I am a part of a community that loves to create, make, and design beautiful garments. What a gift right? So here is to 2023. I’m ready to say goodbye to it, it was the year of “resilience” for my family and we made it! We grew our businesses, we grew our family, we moved to a new state and we made it through our self-doubts. So hooray! If you made it to congrats, what an accomplishment. We are so lucky to have another day to keep on trying and creating in a way that feels abundant to us. I hope 2024 can bring us more of what we are after and less of unnecessary worries. But, before I completely move on to 2024…Yes I know we are almost done with January…I wanted to share some of the highs and even some lows at MADSWICK this past year. Buckle yourself in for an ultra-vulnerable and juicy blog post about my first year of business!
2023 Recap
January
Tauko Magazine announced that the Jordan Overalls I designed would be in Issue No. 6 of their magazine! This was my first garment pattern available for purchase and I was so excited to have it announced as I had sent it off to them in June of 2022. Some cool behind the scenes about working for Tauko…Anybody can submit a design and if you are selected you work with Kaisa to decide how involved you will be in the process of creating the final pattern. I opted to design, draft, and grade the entire pattern, write and illustrate the instructions, and make the sample garments. They gave me a styling guide, like pen types for illustrations, acronyms, and other things to make my pattern cohesive with the other designers from the magazine, but other than that I had free reign to create the pattern! They were extremely helpful and kind throughout the entire process. I received a payment for the pattern once I had sent them the deliverables and then anxiously awaited the magazine to launch. Interesting to note that at the time that pattern launched, I believe I had around 650 followers on Instagram. My primary marketing stream.
February
I was really really motivated to get the Raida Blouse sewing pattern released at the beginning of the year. So I started to finalize the pattern, finish the illustrations, grade the pattern, and get it ready for testing in January. By February I announced the tester application and anxiously awaited tester signups. I was excited by the 30+ people who signed up to test this pattern and got it finalized for testing. Raida was my first time hosting a pattern test. I had tested multiple different patterns for other designers, but nothing can prepare you to have people test your pattern. Looking back, I had no idea what I was getting into! Although I had some incredible and dedicated testers, I was not prepared for the responsibility I felt to each tester to make the pattern perfect. I admittedly felt extreme guilt every time a tester would post feedback to our Slack channel and felt that I had to rectify every problem in real time. I spent 10+ hours a day figuring out technical issues (thank you animated instructions IYKYK), replying to questions, and updating files to give real-time updates to the testers…then I spent all night worrying about the changes I wanted to implement the next day…which resulted in silly errors and some extreme exhaustion. The idea behind the Raida Dress was presented during this testing and I whipped up an instruction booklet for it too. Are you feeling tired yet? Yep me too haha. Let’s just say I learned a of what not to do during that pattern testing experience. All of this would have been avoidable if I hadn’t been so convinced I would bring a perfect pattern to testing. Perfectionism at its finest, but I digress. Ultimately the testing experience yielded a pattern that I am extremely proud of, and of those pattern testers 2/3 have been gracious enough to test for me multiple times since then. They are the real MVP’s and I couldn’t have done it without them.
March
The rest of March consisted of finishing testing, and launching the Raida Blouse! A few things I learned for the next testing experience in case you are interested, if not skip to April!
- Only look at Slack once a day (I revised this rule after testing the Jordan overalls, to no longer host the test on Slack…but more on that later)
- Have the pattern finished before calling for testers. I usually give a week or so between picking testers and starting the testing process to allow testers time to buy fabric and such. With the Raida Blouse pattern, I planned to finish all the loose ends during that week. That led to a lot of stress when I ran into some software complications and felt like I was scrambling to have everything done in time. Now I require myself to have the pattern finished before calling for testers, and I use the week to take a little break from the pattern and do 1 more check over a day or two before testing starts to catch things I haven’t noticed in other revisions.
- Stop sending out new versions of the pattern throughout testing. Inevitably in a pattern test, you will find mistakes in a pattern. During my first pattern test, I kept sending out revisions with the feedback I was receiving. It led to a lot of confusion for testers to make sure they were using the most updated version. Now I don’t make any updates until after testing is over, unless necessary. It made other testing experiences so much smoother, for me and the testers.
- Not taking feedback personally. This might seem obvious, but my emotions were telling me otherwise! I just wanted the pattern to be the best it could be, and my testers were so gracious and helped me make that possible.
- Being clear about the sewing level of the pattern test. Raida is a pretty involved make. I wouldn’t say a beginner can’t make it, but it takes longer than the average blouse and is much more involved. Many testers who were beginners and hadn’t ever tested for a designer before struggled during the pattern test, and a few weren’t able to finish. This wasn’t in any way their fault, seeing a pattern evolve in real-time is confusing for any sewist! It helped me understand the value of setting clearer expectations, trusting in the process a little more, and providing more information to people applying to tests to make it a good experience for all.
April
After launching the Raida Blouse I felt really excited to keep producing patterns. I had some interest during testing to offer a dress version of the Raida Blouse, so I spent the next few weeks fine tuning it. I also took a bunch of skillshare courses on photography, as I felt my skills were lacking in the Raida Blouse launch. This was super helpful as I’m my own photographer. It was cool to see that these photos actually were much better than my past photos. Some, have even been featured in a sewing magazine!
May
May mostly consisted of re-working the Jordan Overalls. I knew that if I was going to re-launch this pattern it needed to be different from the original pattern in the Magazine. I wanted to offer more views, and I also wanted to include more sizes. It also had minimal illustrations for the magazine, so I also went to work illustrating every step of the instructions. By the end of the month, we began testing and finalizing the pattern. I also spent a huge amount of time working on social media marketing. Making reels, showing up, and just really putting content out there. I wouldn’t say it was a waste of time, but I quickly learned that my engagement actually dropped and that it wasn’t actually helping my business in regards to sales. Back to the drawing board on that one!
June
In June the Jordan Overalls launched. TBH it is my least sold pattern to date and I was pretty I was pretty surprised by this. I thought for sure my Raida pattern was more niche and would sell less, but it’s been the complete opposite! I think it gave me some pause. I felt like I was building momentum and that each pattern launch would get better and better. But that wasn’t the case. Not a bad thing, just really interesting to note that each design is going to sell differently! By the end of June, I had created the base pattern for the Zamora Skirt, and I had begun a small testing group for it. 3rd time’s the charm, because this testing experience was so smooth and lovely! I even slept during the testing period ;)
July
In July we officially launched the Zamora Skirt & Little Zamora Skirt as a free pattern for those who downloaded it before the end of July. There were ~2000 downloads between the two size ranges in less than 2 weeks…I was completely in shock! This was the first moment I felt like, this could work. All this work might pay off one day! Literally. I also had a reality check with myself that I couldn’t pop out another pattern before September (the due date of our 3rd baby). As Madswick’s fit model, my third-trimester body wasn’t jiving with my bodice block. So I put pattern development on hold. I didn’t want to stop working on Madswick though, so I started looking into other ways to work on the business. Cue August!
August
In August I spent the majority of the month working behind the scenes with other brands. I listed my patterns online with Archive Patterns and the Foldline. Hearing Kate from the Fold Line call my pattern “delicious” was a highlight of the year for sure! I also began thinking of other ways to market my business and give back to the sewing community. While listening to an old episode of the Love to Sew Podcast about sewing challenges, I was inspired to create Sew Small September. I wanted a way to bring the sewing community together and help other brands like mine that were struggling to break through the noise. I felt like I had a good product, but nobody knew about it. After looking into it, I realized there were so many other brands going through the same thing! I reached out to Nat from Neighborhood Patterns about my idea and asked if she was interested in helping me host. Lucky for me she said yes! We worked behind the scenes all of August to create a fun sewing challenge involving over 50 different sewing brands.
September
September was all about implementing all of the things we planned for Sew Small September. It was such a great success, I felt incredible encouragement from the Instagram sewing community, and all of the other designers and fabric shops. I think that it helped boost morale, and hopefully sales for all those involved. Not much work was developed behind the scenes in September, I was quietly behind the scenes having our baby and moving across the country!
October
I always appreciate it when a Designer offers a free pattern. I don’t believe we should short-change designers, but I do like seeing a designer’s instruction booklet before I commit to buying a pattern. The Zamora Skirt was offered for free at first with that intent, but I opted to only offer it free briefly, and instead create a free Tote Bag pattern for anybody who subscribes to the Madswick newsletter. This way anybody going forward could try out a free pattern and see what our patterns are like risk free before delving into buying one of our patterns. In October we finalized and launched that pattern along with its sewalong!
November
November mostly looked like adjusting to our life as a family of 3 and our new home. We saw lots of family and I got little snippets of work in here and there. I tried finalizing a new pattern, this month, but just kept hitting roadblocks. Stepping back from that design was a great decision. It has left me time to design and create something I think I will be even prouder of. 2023 was our first year in business, so it was interesting to see sales change during the holiday season. We held our last sale of the year and had our best selling month in November. We also reached Star Seller on Etsy, which doesn’t mean much as the majority of our sales are through our website, but it was nice all the same!
December
In December I was feeling pretty burnt out and felt like I was just too focused on sales. I had been so concerned about creating more products and content all year, that by November I just needed to breathe a little bit. I also never want Madswick to seem like a place where people are constantly being told to buy things. Yes, I would love you to buy my patterns, but I ultimately want to inspire people to be creative and feel the wonderful feelings I feel when I create something. Those thoughts mixed with some Holiday goodness, and I decided to create a little Instagram series called “Giftmas.” For 12 days I shared different DIY sewing ideas you could easily make and use as Christmas Gifts. It was such a fun way to end the year and was a small way I could say thank you to every person who has been a part of this journey.
If you made it this far, wow! Thank you for reading and for being apart of this businesses journey. It is a dream come true that I get to call this my job, so thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of the support in our first year of business. We have many more plans for this year. This month we have taken time to re-evaluate and plan so that this year is even better and enjoyable for me and ya’ll. I might do another post about the plans, so stay tuned for that. Mostly I’m just wishing you a gentle and kind New Year. May you take time to be creative and fill your cup this year.
- Madeline