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Living in a country town and facing social and geographic isolation was no match for Samantha Jockel’s ambition when she came up with the idea for Biddy Bags, a business that has now become a hit across the country, all without leaving her hometown of Redcliffe in Queensland.
Several years ago, Samantha had a longing for a knitted bag, but thought she might not have the creative ability to make it herself and so she turned to one of her neighbours to help her out. “I was living in Redcliffe, where there were a lot of retired people and I’m the sort of person who likes to know their neighbours, so I had a great relationship with them,” Samantha said. “I thought, wouldn’t it be great if I could give my idea to another lady and paid her to make it? So the idea came from there and as I thought about it a lot more, told a few people – young designers, local ladies – it started to form.”
The idea forming through those discussions with her neighbours and local designers was Biddy Bags; a collaboration that would provide a creative outlet and social interaction for Samantha’s isolated neighbours, while raising the profile of Australia’s ageing population. “Biddy Bags has always been always about connecting people. It’s about trying to get people to see our ageing population differently,” Samantha said. “It’s different out here; they get shipped out to a retirement village by their family as though we want to hide ageing people from common society. I wanted people to realise that no matter how old you are, you can have something valuable to contribute. I also wanted the people involved to realise that life can still be exciting at 80.”
With this goal in mind, Samantha set about creating the Biddy Bags business. Drawing on the concept of combining her own contemporary designs with the skills of her elders, Samantha did the rounds of the neighbourhood to recruit the people she needed to help her create Biddy Bags. Starting with the women’s clubs and working her way through the local fabric shops, craft places and even retirement villages, Samantha was greeted with little enthusiasm for her recruitment drive, but rather a healthy dose of scepticism; something she has worked hard to overcome through every stage of her business venture. “People assumed there was a catch, or that I was out to exploit them, I’ve had to work to overcome that perception,” Samantha said.
Luckily for all involved, Samantha’s friends were far more forthcoming with their recommendations, putting forward their own grandmothers and friends for the project. And so Biddy Bags started as a circle of friends, ten local ladies who were shop owners and designers, ready to apply their knitting and crochet skills to Samantha’s handbag concept.
The first Biddy Bag pattern evolved from the initial idea of a knitted bag with small handles to the crocheted version with a far more useable shoulder strap, as it is available today. “The Biddy Bag was our first thing and it’s still our biggest seller. It took us about a year to come up with the design. At first the idea was for a knitted bag, but I soon realised that design was not relevant for where we live; you just don’t want a hot knitted bag next to your body for three quarters of the year,” Samantha said. “We started to look at crocheting, which is a less common skill, so less people look at it and think ‘hey, I could do that’ and therefore they’re more likely to buy your product.”
Once a workable pattern was in place, Samantha had to find the start-up capital for the business; something of a stumbling block for many young entrepreneurs. She was adamant that the business would not start in debt, and so taking a loan was out of the question for Biddy Bags. Instead, at the tender age of 23, Samantha slogged out dozens of applications for grants to get the business up and running. |
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“We had to set up as a not-for-profit company with a board of directors so that we could apply for the grants that got us started. That was also about being transparent, because some people could question what we do, in terms of working with these ladies,” Samantha said. “It’s not a charity, we were able to get some assistance through grants, but it’s tough.”
No matter how tight the purse strings were pulled, Samantha has always made a point of paying the crafters for their bags upon completion, that way she said, ‘it’s our responsibility to sell the product, not theirs’. It was this philosophy that saw Samantha launch Biddy Bags free from debt and with more than half of the price of the bag going directly to its maker and the remaining profits streamed directly back into supplies to make more bags and expand the operation.
Now a popular e-commerce site with plenty of sales under its belt, Biddy Bags is described by Samantha as a ‘boutique social enterprise’. Samantha says the term describes the ‘high-end’ quality of the Biddy Bags. “[it] refers to the fact that our product is high-end, not a mass-produced kind of item, but more of a one-off. It’s about end price, about business, about making money, but also embedding that in a social context and enriching the cultural life of the community I live in,” Samantha said.
The concept is one that has served Biddy Bags well and created a wealth of interest in the business, in turn leading Samantha to expand their range of products to include a selection of contemporary-meets-classic products, including their latest design, the Chameleon Clutch. “I thought recently that not everyone can afford a $70 bag, although that’s relatively inexpensive in the broader market, the average person might still balk at that, so the organic washers that we put out for Mother’s Day were about creating a smaller piece for people to love or give as a gift at an affordable cost,” Samantha said. “The smaller things, like the Chameleon Bags came from that, from wanting to provide something at a gift price. I’m trying to make Biddy Bags as accessible to the general population as possible. I live in suburbia; I don’t live in inner Sydney or Melbourne city, it’s a different world out here.”
Having signed on Sarah Blasko as ambassador for the Biddy Bags brand, the business has gone from strength to strength in recent months, with plenty of media attention garnering ample visits and sales for the website. The experience of getting traffic to the website and publicising her brand is one Samantha has learnt a lot from, prompting her to say that one of her greatest lessons has been to take every opportunity, even if it seems like it might be a waste of time.
“A while ago the Courier Mail did a story on us and I got a thousand people on the site in one day, but not one sale. After that Blackmores wanted to do a tiny piece on me for their magazine, which has a very small readership. At the time, I really thought I couldn’t be bothered and it probably wouldn’t be worth it, but I went through with it and we got quite a number of sales from that piece,” Samantha said. “You never know where your market is and what’s actually going to result from what, so I think you might as well do everything. I try to track things like that, but you can have all the assumptions in the world, in the end you just have to pay attention and take every opportunity coming to you.”
It’s one of many lessons learnt along the way, as Samantha takes Biddy Bags on a steep learning curve from her hometown of Redcliffe to the rest of the world. Persistence, time and patience are attributes Samantha says every entrepreneur needs, along with being ‘a person of your word and really good at follow through.’ Samantha warns that in small business, there is no room for saying ‘I can’t be bothered today’, you always have to be at the top of your game when you’re getting a small brand up and running. Samantha also remarks on how important it is to foster your business relationships. “A lot of my success has come from really good people who have helped me, you have to treat those relationships well, because you never know who can help you with what when you start a venture like this one,” she said. Like so many successful crafters before her, Samantha credits her success to sound business and marketing strategies, saying “it’s not just about making something, sometimes it has to be about business.”
Samantha says she has learnt a great deal from her Biddy Bags experience and would recommend e-commerce to other entrepreneurs with one proviso; you must have a story to tell. “The benefit for us is that we have this great angle and so there has been quite a bit of media interest, which is how people come to your site,” she said. “The drawback of having a business on the Internet is that there are billions of sites to compete with and lots of people selling bags. You need a point of difference, something to draw people in.”
Samantha is quick to note that although the Internet is a great tool and it can get your business name broadcast to the public, you have to continually work to maintain your website traffic. In the case of Biddy Bags it was their original story that got them website hits, but they continue to hold our attention with their gorgeous products and the continuing positive impact Samantha’s business has upon both her biddies and her customers. “I believe that as a core group, people are good and they want to support good things, plus, everyone loves their Nanna!” Samantha said. “I think some people feel sad when they think about their Nanna, sitting at home by herself with no company or anything to do and I think they love the idea of buying these bags to give people like that a new outlet.”
By Jessica Williams |
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