Craftywafty started a group on Facebook in 2018 with some friends sharing a few pictures of stuff they had made, friends invited friends and it grew to about 140 members over 2 years. https://www.facebook.com/groups/690444757797011
Debbie & Caron had long dreamt about starting a craft business, when lockdown kicked in in March 2020, we found ourselves with a new way of life and a significantly reduced income.
We conceived the idea in May that we would fulfil our dream and start a craft shop to support our community of crafters and the epic journey of becoming not just becoming entrepreneurs of a shop but also interpreneurs with an online business.
Our business was registered on the 19th June 2020 and we started contacting suppliers, setting up systems, gathering stock and logging inventory.
Building our website and adding products was a sizeable task for beginners, we did some training, watched a lot of how to tutorials, made a few mistakes, spent time correcting them and eventually we unlocked the website on 31st July 2020. After some weeks of struggle the 6th August 2020 was a really big day as we were approved for Shopping Ads on Google.
Our first advert was put on Google 8th August, by the 12th August we had made 5 sales and we were very happy.
We loaded up our Craftywafty Facebook Page with all of our craft projects done over many years. We asked our community of crafters to share our Facebook our page and had 250 followers by the 9th August. People really supported our efforts and liked and shared the amazing craft ideas we were sharing on the Facebook page. By the start of September we had over 500 followers.
We decided that we actually needed to try and launch our business, everything we had done before had been a stepping stone. We ran a two week competition event with a winner being selected at the start of October 2020.
By the time we ran a launch event for the business on 1st October we had over 1000 subscribers. We all start somewhere!
The big UK craft manufacturers and suppliers like Crafters Companion, Creative Expressions, had granted us Trade accounts.
I remember when we hit 75 sessions in a day 23rd October 2020, we were ecstatic thinking is was massive, and it was for our little company, but we had planted the seeds for a much bigger company.
In 2021 a YouTube channel was created so we could demo our skills and show off what some really cool products can actually do. We added new social platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest. Learning all of these platforms was a big challenge for a small business owner.
In 2022 we set up our shop on eBay https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/craftywaftyshop
By 2023 we began to start importing products from overseas bring online more brands Like 49 & Market, Ciao Bella, from the US and Europe and further niche company craft products based in the UK.
We also started to do a pop up shop to support local craft clubs and became a point of sale retailer.
A great year for us was 2024, our brand was being recognised, our ads were published in magazines and online and we saw a massive growth of sales and and customers. We started to stock Chloes Creative Crafts which are lovely and sparkly craft products.
In 2025 we have now served about 5000 happy customers, we constantly perform well with great products, fast delivery and have a 5 star review rating. You can see our reviews on the homepage. Its great to see good customer feedback.
New to our portfolio in 2025 is the addition of digital download projects. Yes, you can download the instructions for bespoke projects created by Craftywafty and follow or join in a live training event on Facebooks on a Thursday night and rewatch it at anytime on YouTube. Just subscribe to the Craftywafty Facebook Page and YouTube channel and you to will wow your fellow crafters and loved ones with amazing gifts.
https://www.facebook.com/Craftywaftyshop
https://www.youtube.com/@craftywaftyshop
We also thought it was time to get on TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@craftywaftyshop?lang=en
We are now looking to the future, onwards and upwards and Happy Crafting Everyone.
Love you,