Made to Last Series: Doing the Next Right Thing with Sarah Omura of SoHandmade

This interview is part of Made to Last – a series of interviews we’re doing with established makers who have grown and evolved their businesses over the long term. In each interview, we’ll look back at where the maker was a few years ago and then learn what they’re up to today. Our goal is to show you what “success” really looks like for makers. It means something different to each and every person and involves radically different paths – but always includes hard work, uncertainty, creativity, reflection, and failure.

About Sarah

Sarah Omura is the maker of SoHandmade, a line of eco-friendly toys for pretend play. Sarah’s products are impeccably designed and made and she is practical, openhearted, and passionate.

Based in Woodstock, NY, Sarah is the mom of two kids. Her unique line of interactive, portable toys came as a solution to her own dilemma: how to keep her toddler's toys contained while they were running errands. She called on her background as a textile designer to create engaging graphic designs, which have a beautiful aesthetic but also leave plenty of room for toddlers’ imaginations to roam.

Sarah’s Start

So Handmade started in 2011 with an Etsy shop of home goods. A couple of years later, she experimented with toys and the shop has evolved from there.

Sarah in 2020

I spoke with Sarah in May, 2020 on our seasonally-produced podcast called Making Do. Sarah spoke with me about her journey with SoHandmade, the impact of COVID on her business, and her wild journey into mask-making. It was fascinating to hear about how Sarah had been keeping SoHandmade afloat, in challenging times, and in ways she never could have imagined a few months prior.

Click here to hear our full 2020 conversation.

Takeaways from my 2020 conversation with Sarah:

• Let the line evolve.
  Although she started her Etsy shop in 2011, she pivoted because she started making “car rolls” to keep her active toddler’s toy cars under control. By 2014, she had pivoted entirely to kids’ toys. This responsive approach has continued in her process of adding and developing products. She thinks of craft fairs as a great opportunity to learn what people like and want, developing products from that starting point. And then she did the same in the early months of 2020, as she found that she could make face masks and ride out a period of lower sales in her regular line.

• Find clarity in simplicity.
  This simple encapsulation of her work struck me as being powerful in its clarity: “I’m always busy, I’m always sewing. And I sell what I’m making.” And she uses that simplicity as a refocusing tool as well: “If I’m making a new product and doubting what I’m doing, I always tell myself: ‘Keep it simple.’”

• Use downtime to grow.
  It can be easy to panic when sales are down. But when Sarah found a sales lull in the first months of covid, she used that time to build towards the future. Sarah said: “With the lull in some sales that Covid caused, I delved into things I knew I had been neglecting in my business. For instance, Pinterest was always this black hole. So I did a course on Pinterest and really tried to up my game. For the first few weeks of the pandemic, that’s what I focused on.”

Sarah in 2022

When we spoke in June 2022, Sarah’s 2020 focus on mask-making was very much in her rear-view mirror: all her mask-making had finished in Fall, 2020. Sarah said, “At that point I was so sick of making them I was completely happy to stop doing it.”

Then, Sarah turned to her online presence. She knew there would be no craft events that year and she believed online sales would be big for the 2020 holiday season and into 2021. Sure enough, her holiday sales were very strong in 2020. That’s when she knew she would need to build on that success moving forward. “Going into 2021, I wanted to go into the online space because I saw how successful it had been for the holiday period and wanted to carry on the momentum.”

Sarah started by creating a Shopify website for her brand. As she said, “Etsy fees are increasing all the time. But even beyond that, you’re working so hard on social media. And pushing people to Etsy from social media isn’t great because people can step right away from your shop. I wanted something that I could drive my own traffic to and would also could serve as an introduction to me and the brand. It has worked out really great. I still think Etsy is my main source of income. But Shopify is definitely getting up there.”

Then in 2021, she delved into social media to work on driving traffic towards that Shopify site. She had been thinking about hiring help because Instagram is such a difficult thing and she doesn’t have time to be making reels and doing what’s needed with all of the content there. Then one day, she reached out to one of the moms who always posted her products. Serendipitously, that mom was looking for a little part-time work. So now, she works with Sarah very closely on Instagram: She makes reels, talks to people, does outreach to other mom influencers, and replies to comments. She was able to find a niche with a group of moms that is interested in homeschooling and sensory activities. And she’s in that group so she knows the best people to send Sarah’s products to for promotion. Now she has a little group of moms that post reels, unboxings, etc. That increased her reach and traffic to her website as a consequence. Instagram is the top driver of traffic to her Shopify site.

2021 was a bump upwards, in terms of sales, and 2022 looks to be the same. Sarah said, “If I had kept my strategies the same, things would have gone down but I added all these new strategies so things have stayed level or grown. You have to have the foundations before you can build up from there. The website was first, because you need somewhere for people to go. Then she worked on Instagram and partnering with mom-influencers to drive traffic to that site. Next on Sarah’s list is to work on her email marketing – and then eventually to work on her SEO.

Takeaways from my 2022 conversation with Sarah:

• Use paid, professional help selectively and learn to DIY smarter.
  Sarah said of her photo process, “I do photoshoots with someone every year. Sometimes I do a combined shoot. I send off my products and she hires models and everything. I met her via instagram. Then I see the style and I replicate some of that myself. I see what she did in terms of props. I find things with a similar vibe and use her aesthetic to try to replicate it myself in other shots. But having a professional to guide you in the right direction is great.”

• Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
  Sarah does a beautiful job slowly developing diversity in her platforms and channels. “You can’t ever say ‘I’m just going to focus on Instagram.’ To focus on just one channel or platform is the same problem as relying entirely on Etsy. Etsy or Instagram can just go away. For example, Pinterest was really good for me for a couple of years. And then it fell off a cliff. It was around the time that they bought the idea pins. I had been doing really well but then suddenly there was nothing. I was up to 200K viewers/month and then nothing.Email addresses belong to you and that won’t go away. You have these different methods and channels to fall back on. If something dreadful happens with one of them, you have your other streams. It’s not putting all of your eggs in one basket.”

• Take real time off.
  Every year, Sarah steps completely away from the business for a full month. She doesn’t hire help to keep things going during that time. “I considered having someone come in but it’s just to stressful to be wondering what’s going on back home in the studio. I haven’t been able to travel and see my family so I don’t want anything to get in the way of that. I’m going to close my Etsy and Shopify.”

• Be patient.
  Sarah holds a vision for her own business but works in a steady, stepwise way. Her projects build and develop over the course of time – and the lack of “rushing” in her business seem to give her initiatives staying power.

• Do work in batches.
  When asked how she stays focused and continually moves forward, Sarah says, “Ticking off one thing at a time is really important for me. I can’t do everything all at once. So for me, it’s a slow progression. I don’t have a master plan, it’s more just taking in all the information and feeling out what seems important to do next. I think batch-working is definitely the way to go. If you float around, you feel like you’re not accomplishing anything. For me, I need to do a batch of one thing at a time. I keep a sheet where I have separate boxes with to-do lists for “to make”, “to photograph”, “to order”, etc.

• Make choices that work for you.
  Over time, Sarah has realized that she can use different platforms and tools in ways that are specific to her business. As an example, she is on Faire, but she only puts 20-30 items of some of her products so that she has enough for her other channels.

Thank you, Sarah, for sharing your insight, wisdom, and hard-earned experience with us!

You can find our other Made to Last interviews here: 

• And more coming soon!