Creativity & Entrepreneurship
FRANe, my personal business, began with a simple idea: learn to sew. In doing that, I fell in love and realized I wanted to create functional pieces using vintage materials and share my creativity with others.
I started finding amazing vintage quilts and turning them into jackets that I began selling on Etsy and FRANe was born. I run all aspects of my business: product production, marketing, customer relationships and bookkeeping. 2022 was a whirlwind of a year as I figured out how to run a small business—something that makes me smile as I type this.
A YEAR OF SUCCESS
In January 2022, FRANe was featured in a Huffington Post article about the quilt coat craze sweeping the country and the best places where you could purchase one. In the past year, FRANe sold well over 100 orders to customers across the country and around the globe. I spent over 1,000 hours sewing and designing each coat and learned countless lessons about running a business with every stitch.
CROSS-MARKETING MAGIC
In the spring of 2022, I partnered with other small women-owned, creative businesses for a tea party and photo shoot. The goal was to collectively highlight each of our businesses with gorgeous, curated photos to use for our websites, marketing and social media.
Cross-marketing my small brand meant that I reached a larger audience by tapping into the audiences that each of the other businesses had. With each small business having varying types of business models and levels of growth, we were able to provide each other with new marketing ideas and business advice along the way.
