Some funny new Father's Day cards and some thoughts on these weird times!

What a weird year it's been eh? Hard to believe June is already here - where has the year gone?  That being said, April and May felt like a year onto themselves! To make ends meet here, I've had to make some adjustments to the way I run my business to stay afloat and I thought I might share some of these changes here.

I've been running O What A Feeling on stolen evening and weekend time since 2015 as a "side hustle" alongside my other full-time job.  I quit my day job back in November to focus on O What A Feeling full-time.  2020 was off to a good start - I finally had sufficient hours in a day to prep and post cards for the Valentine's Day order deluge (no more packing orders at 5AM before work and 9PM after work! What a luxury!) and I was awarded a place at the London Stationery Show in their LaunchPad competition for emerging designers.  I had a full dance card of illustration fairs and craft markets to attend.  Then the pandemic hit and my well-constructed business plan for the year went out the window.  I've been quite lucky really - I work alone in my studio, which is just down the street from my flat (literally a 30 second walk) so I was able to safely continue going to work everyday without putting myself or others at risk.  My wonderful local printer who print all my products, Sarsen Press, adapted their working procedures so I was able to continue having my cards printed and collected in a safe and contact-free manner.  I started purchasing all my postage online to limit social contact and reduce my trips to the local post office. 

I'm so incredibly grateful to my Etsy and Thortful customers who, when trapped at home under lockdown, chose to support independent business like mine online. I can't thank you all enough!  The old saying is true - every time you buy from a small business, a real person does a happy dance - I can assure you that over the past few months, this dance has become more and more elaborate! Thank you thank you thank you!  Things were tough though - I had to refund loads of orders and answer plenty of frustrated customer emails due to extreme postal delays and lost mail in April and May.  My trade show, The London Stationery Show, in April was cancelled so I have lost many wholesale opportunities for the coming months and most of my current stockists are have paused trading for the time being. I'm trying not to worry about this right now, even though wholesale income was supposed to be 50% of my revenue this year!

In mid-April, I did a bit of a pivot and started designing funny lockdown-themed birthday, anniversary, wedding and Father's Day cards which have been quite popular on Etsy and Thortful.  To be honest, I was really hesitant to be seen as capitalising on the pandemic, but I've had so much feedback from customers saying that these silly cards really cheered up their loved ones during this incredibly difficult time.  As many customers were either completely self isolating or limiting their non-essential journeys I started offering a personalisation service for my cards, where I would personalise the inside of their card and send it directly to the recipient on their behalf, saving them a trip to the post office to buy stamps.  At first I was handwriting each message but eventually demand for this service exceeded my hand stamina so I began printing these messages using a cute font on my studio printer.

I've also opened O What A Feeling shops on ebay (yes, really!), Folksy, and Depop - it's been really interesting seeing how different cards seem to be popular on these various platforms, as I've come to realise they target widely different demographics.  It's a lot of extra work keeping up with orders are they come in from 4 sources (I don't have a streamlined process!) and it's really complicated my bookkeeping but it's paying the bills so I'm incredibly grateful for these new customers!

Anyway, back to Father's Day.  It's a bit of a weird one this year.  Many countries are still in various stages of lockdown and many of us won't be able to spend time with our parents for a multitude of reasons.  I've designed some lockdown-themed Father's Day cards (it's still 10 days away, but we're unsure if there will be any further liftings of lockdown rules) as well as some general silly Father's Day Cards (including some freshly-revamped older designs!), which are all available in my Etsy and Thortful shops, so without further ado I present to you my 2020 Father's Day collection!