“Small businesses mean you’re supporting a family, feeding someone, putting gas in their car…small businesses mean you are directly helping and supporting someone,” small business owner, Colleen Murphy said.
Social media has become the way people promote themselves and their work. Feeds are flooded with small businesses promoting their work to help with their personal branding and exposure. The work varies from clothing lines, hand-crafted jewelry and art pieces.
Murphy, officially started her business September 2019, called “Art by COLLEENXMURPHY.” She first started off creating resin jewelry. Since then, she expanded to creating resin keychains, jewelry, stickers and paintings.
Murphy only works on orders for her business two days out of the week, since she is also a hairdresser part-time. Some orders can be made in one night while others take multiple nights. This depends on how much resin she uses and the curing time of the resin. The resin is cured through UV light.
Colleen’s Products:
- Resin Earrings
- Resin Keychains
- Resin Spoons
- Stickers
- Prints/paintings
An issue a lot of small businesses face is advertising their business. She learned this with her experience at working at a small “mom and pop” hair salon. Murphy mainly uses Twitter to promote her work. However, she also advertises her business through a salon where she was employed at.
“Although I think word-of-mouth is the best advertiser of all, my business started on Twitter and gains the most attention on there as well,” Murphy said. “I also have my artwork along with business cards in a hair salon I used to work in.”
Depending on the time of the year, Murphy averages between five and 10 orders per month. Her most popular products she sells are her resin spoons and resin heart keychains.
The other issue small businesses have been faced with is COVID-19. The pandemic has affected most businesses globally, but specifically small businesses. Overall, the pandemic has overall affected Murphy’s business and creativity.
“In the beginning, I debated shutting down to be safe and had to close due to a Covid scare,” Murphy said. “Covid has mainly affected my creativity and drive to create.”
Despite the pandemic, Murphy has goals to grow her business and plans to work on her art near full-time. Her other goal is to paint more t-shirts and create more block paintings.
“Right now, I am limited in space to create and holding two or more jobs, I don’t have much time to work on my business,” Murphy said. “I plan to keep creating and experimenting with new mediums and see where that takes me.”
Murphy is still at the beginning stages of her small business. A lot of the time and effort that goes into running a small business is advertising and creating the hand-crafted products.
Murphy is still at the beginning stages of her small business but hopes her business has more recognition by this time next year. She is in charge of all the labor and shipping of her products.
“I have greatly seen and experienced the importance of community and small businesses,” Murphy said. “I have ordered from many small businesses and I truly believe you can’t find the love and passion that these people put in their products in any large corporation.”
Here are links to Colleen Murphy’s website and social media:
Website: https://www.colleenxmurphy.com
Twitter: @colleenxmurphy
Instagram: @colleenxmurphy
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