If you follow me on Instagram (and if you’re not, you should! We have fun over there), this will look familiar to you. I thought the blog would be the perfect place to elaborate on my Instagram post and dive a little deeper into the data I shared. If you’d like to learn more about Lemon Press Studio’s 2024 and get the full story from what I posted on Insta, keep reading!
Sales by Channel (based on revenue)
I opted to calculate this breakdown according to revenue, versus order or item volume, since revenue is my most important metric. (Although order & item volumes result in a similar breakdown.) No surprise that Etsy was my biggest revenue driver this year. I really scaled back on markets, custom work, and other projects, and wholesale is typically a lower percentage than retail. At the same time, my Etsy traffic kind of blew up in the middle of the year, between Kamala Harris’ presidential candidacy announcement in June and my Portuguese tiles going viral in August and into the fall. So Etsy really worked for me, and I let that ride.
Shop Milestones
January: launched Metrics for Makers
This guide to KPIs and data analysis for small maker business owners was truly a labor of love over several months – close to a year, even. In fact, I had the entire guide completed mid-2023 but knew I’d really need to land the product offer and marketing and launch strategically. So by the time the entire offer was ready to launch, it was already 2024, which made for an exciting milestone to kick off the year!
March: released notepads & sticky notes
This was a super exciting milestone because it was actually a goal of mine for 2024 to expand my product line into more stationery items. I started with 5 4”x6” notepad designs and 4 4”x3” sticky note designs — because I couldn’t just pick one each of course. And later this year, I introduced a larger notepad (8.5”x5.5”). Looking at next year, I’d like to offer more designs in that larger notepad size, and possibly some square sticky notes, although I am partial to these rectangular ones!
August: the tile stickers went viral
This truly came out of nowhere and was really interesting to experience. It may warrant its own blog post. I literally came up with the video idea randomly, threw it together using existing video footage (THE BEST when I already have the footage I need), and uploaded it not expecting anything. 18 million views later, and it’s still going. I surpassed 10k Instagram followers because of it, my shop visits skyrocketed in September, and I did see an increase in sales, especially of the tiles. But I was surprised to find that it wasn’t a life-changing amount of orders. I feel like when small businesses go viral and they talk about it on TikTok, it always seems like that one viral video was their ticket to success. Don’t get me wrong at all – I am extremely grateful for the sales I received. And tbh, I’m thrilled that a video that actually featured my products went viral, since I feel like that can be a feat in itself!
November: Biggest wholesale order ever
Faire doesn’t “cha-ching” like my Etsy app does when I make a sale, so wholesale orders are always a pleasant surprise when I check my email. And this one double so when I saw how many this one company purchased! Typically, my wholesale orders are for 30-50 stickers. When I saw this order for 180, I had to re-read it at least 3 times. This also, of course, translated to the highest single-order spend I’ve ever gotten wholesale (and retail, come to think of it). Sales tend to slow down for me during the holiday season; although my products make *fantastic* gifts, most folks purchase them for themselves. So this was a huge win during what’s typically a slow time in my business!
Warm & fuzzies + Cold & pricklies
I shamelessly stole this version of “roses and thorns” from Whitney on RHOSLC. Authenticity is incredibly important to me (it’s one of my brand values!), so I wanted to share both some positives from the year, and some negatives. We should celebrate wins, and we should also be able to have space for the frustrations of losses. Without further ado, let’s discuss.
Warm & fuzzies:
Overall increase in orders and revenue YoY
This was a big one because – for one, I obviously always want my business to do better than last year – but more importantly, this year started off slow and noticeably behind last year. Thanks to several factors over the summer and fall, including the two I mentioned at the beginning of this post, my numbers began to come from behind to surpass last year’s. It’s been rewarding to see that “This Year” line cross the “Last Year” one.
10k Instagram friends
I know social media followers is a vanity metric if you don’t have the engagement to back it up. Regardless, this was an exciting number to reach! The vast majority of them came from the viral tile reel, so I’ll be interested to see what my social media numbers look like throughout next year.
Better media quality, from both improving my skills + new professional photos
If you know me as a small business owner & maker AT ALL, then you know that product photography is my albatross, Achilles heel, frog, and any other metaphorical thing that looms over my head and is a weak point. And for a product-based e-commerce business, it is super important to have good quality photos of your products. This year, I set out to get better photos and accomplished it in a few ways. First, I focused on improving my own photography skills. I invested in a few tools, fully embraced the fact that natural light does more for photo quality than any editing, and carved out time at the best time of day to take my photos. I also got new brand and product photos and video taken professionally by Lauren Grayson Photography, and I am thrilled with how everything came out! Between the content she produced for me, and my improved skillset, I feel confident in how my brand and products are represented online.
First profitable year!
Something I don’t think a lot of people, especially in the small maker business community, talk about is the fact that businesses aren’t always profitable immediately. I think with maker businesses especially, you start with a product that you create and then you decide to sell it. So you kind of work backwards into building business infrastructure around the thing you can sell immediately, versus creating the business plan and setting things up first and then creating the offer. So all that to say, I netted a loss each year, until this one. I can go more in-depth on this topic sometime as well, but those losses were due in part to investments in my business, like services and courses, for which returns take time. As much as I’d obviously want to profit greatly every year, those years in the red made sense. Now, in 2024, I’m consistently profitable most months as I’m seeing the returns on those investments in my business and getting better at managing expenses (read: no more impulse yarn buys). I’m looking forward to keeping that momentum going through next year as well!
Cold & pricklies:
Fewer wholesale orders than I wanted
This is pretty self-explanatory. Selling wholesale makes a lot of sense for my products and business model, so it’s always a channel I want to grow. It also takes more effort than Etsy, because it does require more research, marketing, and outreach that I didn’t spend as much time doing this year. So next year, I’m wanting to focus more of my time and energy on wholesale.
Low conversion & revenue at markets
This definitely warrants its own separate post. And this is definitely not exclusive to this year. In fact, I did two markets this year as I’ve continued to incrementally scale back on markets over the past couple of years. While I have learned market lessons the hard way, I still go into each one optimistic and then, frankly, disappointed after seeing market shoppers’ responses (really, lack thereof) to my products. So unfortunately, seeing that low conversion rate, and therefore low revenue, has been a recurring theme over the past few years, including this year. While there are many nonfinancial, qualitative positives to markets, I’m there to make money at the end of the day. So when the revenue just isn’t there, I can’t justify the time I spend doing them. Like I said, deserves its own post, but for the sake of this post, lack of success at markets was once again a negative this year.
Less time & motivation for new artwork
There are so many components to running a business, and where I want to spend my energy shifts and changes – which for the most part is great! There are some absolute must-haves I need to do to run my business (like fulfilling orders, tracking finances, etc.), and beyond that, I have flexibility to shift what I focus on, based on what I want to. Like I said, usually this works out really well as a way for me to manage and balance. But reflecting back on this year, I wish I had created more artwork — the heart and the why behind this business. Part of this was definitely time – I simply had to prioritize my must-dos, my full-time job, and life. But another part was a lack of motivation to create art. Next year, I’d like to be more intentional about getting creative juices flowing and spurring more motivation.
Slow start to the year
I mentioned this earlier, and this, too, is self explanatory anyway. This was a tough year for retail in general. Had I not had those boons over the summer, I definitely would have ended this year lower than last year. When sales are slow, I find my best bet is to keep moving forward doing what I do well and ride it out. I’m not sure what next year will look like economically and in retail specifically, so all I can do is stay consistent and true to my business’ core values.
Lemon Press Studio 