Starting Your Own Lampshade Business

Business Overview:

Starting your own lampshade business is a great way to use your creativity to make beautiful home accessories that will sell for major profits. You can easily run this part-time business from the comfort of your own home, working as much or as little as you wish. All you need is some fabric, decorative trim and either a sewing machine or fabric glue. If you don’t know how to make a lampshade, it’s quite simple, and plenty of instruction abounds on the internet. It can be as complex as taking the time to create a template to as simple as purchasing inexpensive lampshades and covering them with unique fabric and adding more lavish decoration. This may be a good way to start out with this business idea, at least until you get more comfortable with making shades from scratch. If you plan to sell your lampshades online, you’ll need to have a robust website that shows your designs and lets customers order and pay online. If this piece of the business is not in your comfort zone, you can always hire a professional to design and develop your website for you. This will be a good investment that will allow you to make sales 24 hours a day, even when you’re not working. You could also sell on websites like Etsy. You’ll need to have a good stock of lampshades to ensure timely delivery to your customers. You could also offer custom lampshades to customers who wanted to use a special photo for their personalized lampshade. In this case you would need a method of transferring a photo to fabric. Another way to personalize your products is to allow customers to send you a piece of fabric (that matches other items in their house, for example) that you would make into a custom shade. Your website would explain all these options and give a pricelist that reflects different sizes and styles of shades. Be sure to check with local shipping companies to get the best prices on shipping your shades and don’t forget to include shipping costs into your price structure. Finally, you can advertise your business on home décor websites and put ads in your local phone book if you plan to sell locally. As business picks up, you will need to decide whether to take your business full-time and add more items to your inventory.

A Day in the Life of a Lampshade Business Owner:

Since this is a part-time business, you will work as much or as little as you wish. When you are working, you will spend some time working on lampshades, building up your inventory. You will take photos of your new designs and post them on your website. You will check your orders and prepare items to ship out in a timely manner. If you offer custom orders, you will want to contact your customers to discuss those projects.

About Your Customers:

Your customers will be individuals looking for unique, handmade lampshades.

What You Need to Start:

• Some knowledge of how to make lampshades
• Fabric
• Decorative trim
• Fabric glue
• Sewing supplies
• Website (if selling online)
• Computer with finance software

The Good:

• People are always looking for unique decorative items for their homes and offices.
• Materials are inexpensive.
• Your return on investment will be high.
• You can easily run this business part-time and from home.
• The start-up costs are low.

The Bad:

• It can take some time to hone your skills at making lampshades.
• You need to be patient while you build up your inventory and build your website.

Resources:

• National Association of Decorative Fabric Distributors
• Bureau of Labor Statistics on Textile, Apparel and Furnishings Occupations
• Wikipedia on Lampshades

About The Author

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