How Did You Start Your Business?

[needles]

My work is slightly different to most of you guys, i have very little time making new stuff, and even less time learning to carve, have done a few things but no where near like I would like to, however I do make my income from repairing leather stuff, be it, gucci / prada, mui mui handbags etc to leather furniture to auto interiors, etc etc. so I am not a craftmens like you guys, although would dearly love to be.

I started in the building trade and developed a love for leather and repairing such ( a lot in a childrens charity repairing leather furniture etc for them), eventually being made redundant, whilst agonising over what an old git like me is going to do to pay the mortage, wife said you've been making money at repairing leather for a good while, do that..... oh yeh why didn't I think of that...? your a bloke she said.... ha ha.

difficult making ends meet sometimes, and sometimes hard to find the right amount of drive, but I love it. and its still paying the bills, although only just sometimes. If i have a choice I wouldn't change it for the world....

as one said above if you can start without debt, way to go,

start small and build up your reputation, that will help big time to carry you forward, best advertisement ever.

try not to worry about what the competition is doing, otherwise it can become an all consuming obsession, and if you're actively competing even if they don't know it, your already losing, because you'll be under valuing your time and work....... trying to be cheaper, quicker what ever.

thats my take on it anyway

[ljwilliams]

I also fit into the no business plan model for starters. I stumbled into leather when I thought the sheath I wanted cost way too much. I set out to make my own sheath and found out the hard way exactly why high quality leather sheaths cost so much. I sell sheaths now that cost more than the sheath I originally wanted. Funny how things work out.......

Did they take out a loan, get a government grant?

Absolutely not.....

Do not build your business on debt unless you are a successful business owner and already know how to start up a business then rapidly grow it. I would strongly suggest you grow slow and organically until you are in the position to really capitalize on a small business loan. You shouldn't consider taking on debt to grow your business until you have a customer base and need to scale up to meet their demand.

You need to reinvest that profit into your business to grow it...not to pay off debt

Sell through the newspaper? locally?

I cut my teeth on local custom jobs but have moved to almost strictly online sales.

How much money did you start with.

I started with maybe $200 worth of tools in a storage shed behind my house. I cleaned it out and built a basic work bench. I kept reinvesting a majority of the profits back into my business until I had enough to build my actual leather shop several months ago. As much as I love my new shop and all the new fancy machines.....I would not appreciate it if I had not froze my ass off in that storage shed for a year making leather.

Also would like to hear of any things that you would consider beginner mistakes that you encountered.

Buy good tools that will last *an expensive tool doesn't equal a good tool*

Don't under value your products

Wait until you have the money to buy things....don't grow on debt

Breakthroughs in your business plan or in your thinking.

Don't constantly compare your product and price to competitors. What works for them most likely won't work for you. Worry about making the best leather product you can and getting the most you can get for it.

Don't be a stubborn know it all. I actually talk to my competitors and ask them questions about when they were at my stage in the game. It sounds absurd but some of the best advice I have got came directly from my competitors.

You will learn the most at your bench when you are actually working. It's great to come on here and ask questions when you are stumped but nothing beats getting your ass out in the shop and putting in work.

Follow up with your customers a few weeks after the sale and ask for feedback on your product. Customers can be brutally honest and that is exactly what you need in the beginning to iron out problems.

Never have I wanted a like button on this forum so much since I found this forum! I have done the same the same thing so many times, except I keep finding so mNy pretty things I just want to try to make my self And end up sinking another grand....one of these days though, I hope someone looks at the things that I make and say,"How does she do that!" I really hope when that day comes I remember my beginnings and smile and not get mad when they copy or try to emulate my patterns, because people strive to that which they look up to.

[Lobo]

44 years ago I left the US Army and joined the police department. I had a wife, 2 kids to feed, a mortgage and bills to pay on some pretty skinny cop paychecks. There were items of gear that I needed, and others I just wanted to have, but I had little ability to pay for them. I started making those things, learned as I went along, and purchased basic tools as I needed and could afford them. Other cops I worked with saw what I was doing and started requesting things for themselves. That brought in a little cash, started paying for my materials and other tools leading to more products as I learned more. Over time the word spread around the region and I was making holsters, belts, and accessories on a regular basis, and contributing to the household budget as well.

That is how everything remained for over 30 years. Basically a small sideline business serving a small regional market. Never enough to live on, but usually enough to prevent too much month left at the end of the money.

Retired from law enforcement, started building houses and running a roofing company while making a few holsters and accessories on the side. Hooked up with several insurance companies doing claims consulting and investigations while making a few things on the side. As the economy and financial markets (including the insurance companies) started circling around the drain in 2008 my regular business income started shrinking. I had been actively buying and selling in on-line auctions for several years, so I decided to start making a few holsters every week to offer on-line, hoping to make enough to help out with utility bills and health insurance costs. Within a few months I was receiving a steady flow of orders and had no time for anything else. My wife put her foot down firmly and demanded that I get all the materials, supplies, and other business stuff out of the house, so I leased a production shop and launched a website. A year later I moved into a larger shop and hired a part-time assistant. Couple of years later I moved into a larger shop. Now my part-time assistant has become the full-time\ manager handling the bulk of the production work, finishing, packaging, etc, while I handle the website and e-mails and focus on new product development.

Present capacity is about 40 to 50 pieces per week. We regularly produce 25 to 40 per week for customers in all 50 US states and 33 other countries so far. We offer 13 holster designs, with or without 4 common options, in 4 finish colors, left-hand and right-hand, for 162 different handgun models, resulting in some 84,000 possible variations. This "menu-style" product line allows each customer to customize a standard design to individual needs and preferences. Adding in the different belts, magazine pouches, cartridge pouches, and other accessories leads to over 100,000 products.

Other than the website costs I have spent next to nothing on advertising. Everything happens by referral and word of mouth (with the internet this can be huge). No walk-in customers. No phone calls. Everything is done via website and e-mail.

Never thought about a business plan. Never borrowed a dime for business. Never applied for any grants. Always paid for supplies and equipment when ordered. Always paid the rent, utilities, business insurance, and other operating expenses as incurred.

Now I am approaching the point at which I must start drawing on my retirement funds. My assistant has been with me for 5 years and is fully capable of running the business on a day to day basis, so she will take over with a continuing flow of business and no burden of debt. This will allow her to earn a good living while contributing a bit to my retirement comfort and security. I will stay on in an advisory capacity during a transition period of several years. After more than 50 years of full-time employment and running a business I can't imagine just sitting around without being productive. There are always a few ideas floating around in my head for new designs or ways to tweak an older design, so I expect to keep myself as busy as I want to be.

It has always been an interesting ride.

[moix]

Found this topic very interesting ,
Well first of all i would like to tell about my inspiration to start my e-commerce store.My friends started a little business of leather jackets , they kept the quality very exclusive and very quickly turned it into a profitable business. I thought to second my chances and as well , and i thought of starting my e-commer store on leather bags & accessories http://www.ucreedo.com . I am still very new to this field and have a long long way to go. But i find 3 defining building blocks of this businesss.

1. Store(E-commerce store , merchant bank acct , digital marketing and all the onlione stuff)
2. Production(Where you are going to build your stuff)
3. Shipping

Once we sort out all these 3 points we are ready to get set go. I have so far kept a low tune in terms of marketing.I want to drive traffic to my site now and get popular

As far as my categories are concerned , i have categories ranging from

1. http://ucreedo.com/bag-packs
2. http://ucreedo.com/shoulder-bags
3. http://ucreedo.com/professional-leather-bags

If you guys have any suggestion , it will be highly appreciated, cheers and have a good day

[BIGGUNDOCTOR]

When I had my machine and fab shop we cash flowed the entire operation, I was 22 at the time. I agree that starting a business in debt is not a good idea. Start small, and grow the business as sales improve, don't get into a hurry. Too many want it, and they want it NOW! Unfortunately for them they were the ones that I purchased items from when the auctioneer was selling off their shops. I was buying machinery, and tooling for an average of 10¢ on the dollar for new.

As Dave Ramsey likes to point out, The borrower is slave to the lender.

My advice is to learn the skills to be proficient in what you want to do before you start offering them to customers,start small, and build the business on the profits. Too many also don't realize how much time the business side gets in the way of doing the work itself.

Advertising has changed tremendously since I had my shop back in the late 80's. Today I can sit here in DaBoonies and sell worldwide through the wonders of the internet. I know artists who sell through Facebook, and do quite well - $500 paintings sold in 15 minutes a few times. How many people still get a newspaper? I don't. Social media can be a tremendous boon to a business if it is used correctly.

[moix]

I have tried to handle the I.T stuff where as my friend is looking at the other 2 manufacturing and shipping. I am a complete newbie into this thing , but i am learning a lot and hope to bring my leather bags store on top one day. My aim is to provide best quality on affordable prices , i opted for 100% leather bags because i believe leather has the potential to be used for longer periods of times.

Edited February 9, 2015 by moix

[joecool911]

Business plan depends on size you intend getting. I'm a work for/by myself kind of guy who doesn't borrow money. Not much of plan needed. But if you intend financing and having employees, different situation.

[NerdyLeather]

I started small and avoided big loans, reinvesting early profits back into the business. At first, I sold locally and online, testing what worked. One beginner mistake was underpricing and not fully calculating expenses. A major breakthrough came when I began treating it like a real business -tracking costs, building supplier relationships, and focusing on branding and customer trust.

[NerdyLeather]

On 2/20/2026 at 10:45 PM, NerdyLeather said:

I started small and avoided big loans, reinvesting early profits back into the business. At first, I sold locally and online, testing what worked. One beginner mistake was underpricing and not fully calculating expenses. A major breakthrough came when I began treating it like a real business -tracking costs, building supplier relationships, and focusing on branding and customer trust.

On the business side, since you’re in New York and may expand in the future, it’s important to understand the legal requirements for operating in other states. A helpful resource that explains “foreign qualification” - and when a company must register to do business outside its home state - can be found here: https://www.incorp.com/resources/knowledge-base/foreign-qualification

[bruce johnson]

I have to admit that I cringed when I saw this thread from 2014 resurrected. It was probably the most moderated thread in the history of LW.net. Keeping it on track, personal insults, comments, You'd think differently but no. I think everyone of us on the moderation team had a hammer in hand. For old time's sake I read the whole thing again. I stayed out of the fray back then but Heck, it's time - here is my story. 

I learned leatherworking and doing my own repairs in 1985 from a family friend who had a saddle shop. I merrily went along doing my own hand sewn repairs mostly. In 1993 I broke my pelvis in a horse wreck and one of my "real job" clients was a Tandy manager. I didn't have much to do that winter and leathereworking was walker and crutch friendly. I took classes, made a few belts and small stuff. As I healed up I kept at it. I got to the point I was making a headstall a day plus a few other things. Once I could compete again I'd sell them off my saddle horn at ropings and cuttings. Still all hand sewing and carried it on for a few years as an unofficial business. In February of 2000 my first wife was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. Competition all but stopped and we stayed close to home. I made some association awards and had a little word of mouth market for my stuff. I needed to get past handsewing everything and bought a Tippmann Boss stitcher for $1600. At that time anything else that stitched leather was either wore out or $5000.  I was exposed enough at that point I filed for a business license and resale number as a sole proprietership. Jan 3rd 2002 my wife passed away after 3 days of hospitalization. Due to  combination of factors, I was left with a little over $90,000 dollars in medical debt the insurance would not cover and the hospital would not write off. In spite of making a salary of $45,000 a year the hospital was gracious enough let me pay their $90K over 2 years. All of the sudden the little leather side hustle needed to be a serious money making entity. 

I put it out that I would do awards, semi-production stuff, whatever. I had a few outlets that really stepped up. I needed a powered machine and Ferdco had an Adler for $2500 and could give me a month to pay it.. I told Ron to send it and literally had no idea how I was going to pay it off. The day it came I got an order for $5000 worth of association awards from a rodeo group. They wanted to send a $2500 deposit. The Lord provided. The first year seemed like it wasn't going to happen to that debt paid off. I had no credit cards and a debit card to one account that was usually low. I had gas cards and some weeks the groceries all came from the Shell station minimart. I ended up with some big award orders that winter and accounts that were steady with belt orders, custom rope bags and cans, purses, etc. I did repairs that maybe paid $5 but that $5 more than I had. I did a lot of barrel saddle rebuiilds from the tree up. Rundi and I started dating but nothing was going further until I got that debt paid. Some dates were her stitching belts on the Boss and edging while I stamped. That next summer and fall were good - minimal sleep at times but the light at the end of the tunnel was either daylight or a train engine coming to run me over. At the National Finals Rodeo that year I drove and Rundi was going to fly in the next night.  I went to the trade show that day and check the sellers there who had my stuff. Both had good sales so far. The first guy had a few thousand and the other lady had about $7000 and wondered if I could do a few custom rope cans before Christmas - yes I can! I maybe made it 20 feet out of that booth before I started bawling like a baby. It was frickin' paid off with a few thousand and two months to spare. Along that way I had made every pricing and time estimate mistake in the book and a lot that never got written about. In that two year time period, I had bought exactly two tools total - #2 Osborne edgers that I wore completely out. Rundi and I got engaged that night. 

I continued to do awards, more new saddle builds again, and a bunch of rope bags and rope cans - enjoyable stuff. I had a website and Johanna here did my first one. It was not easy to do them back then and she got me up there. I was expanding my shop tools from absolute to need-to-have bare minimum to the nice-to-have and better quality. I had an old guy next town over that had been in the leather and tool trading business for about 50 years at that point. I learned a bunch from him. I'd end up with some duplicate tools from buying sets that sat in boxes on my shelves. April of 2010 I put 8 tools on a page of my website and they all sold. Several messages - "If you get more, I am interested". Next day 8 more and they sold. I expected the tool deal to grow to maybe 10% of the leather business. By three months it was 30% and by the end of the year monthly it was 50-60%. I was still working full time and something had to give. First was new saddle builds, then bulk award orders, saddle repair. The last thing I gave up was rope cans, I loved doing them. If you did a Google search then for custom rope cans it was either me or Ellensburg Saddle that were always swapping first or second listing. It was a hard personal decision for me to stop rope cans (in an ironic note - our friend now Julie Baugher was Ellensburg Saddle Shop back then). 

The leather tool business has grown from a website page to a fully dedicated website. We have done trade shows for several years. It started as refurbished vintage and used tools only. We still do that for sure. It is a big part of the website business. Now we also carry a few selected lines of new tools as well. We have now handled approaching 18,000 tools and about 5000 stamps.  My business has always been a work in progress from leather repairs to rehab to entry fee money, a serious support leg, a legitimate side business, and morphed to this now .  I retired from my day job this past year and the tools are a full time thing for me now. The guy who got me started in 1985 sewing splint boot and skid boot repairs buys tools from me now. The guy who bought the first tool from me - still buying. I have a few people I can float business ideas by who tell me their honest thoughts. I would not be here without any of them. I have been beyond blessed. I didn't "stay in my lane", I followed what seemed to be the trends(or necessity) as I saw it for me at the time and it has worked out.