Building An Unconventional Illustration Business: A Step-by-Step Case Study

This is quite a momentous post for me…after many years of fighting self doubt, procrastination and false starts I’m super excited to announce the new illustration-based business that Lea and I are about to launch.

It finally feels like I’ve found my focus when it comes to forging a career and a business using my illustration skills and that I’ve found what I was meant to be doing as an illustrator all along. But it’s not what I thought it would be - nor probably what most of you think of when you’re sitting there pondering about how you too can earn money from your illustrations…

An Unconventional Approach

We’ve been working on this business behind the scenes for the last couple of months and are finally ready to share it with you. When you consider the conventional route that many people follow to create an illustration-based career, this is somewhat of a more unconventional path which puts an illustrator firmly in control of their career and no longer at the mercy of an Art Director or Publisher. That’s what is so appealing to both of us…

A Case Study

Over the next 12 months, we’ve decided to use our experience as a case study for others. We’ll be sharing the progress of the business each month from day one - well, almost day one.

We’ll be sharing all of the highs, lows, successes and failures in the hope that it will, in turn, inspire other illustrators that it is possible - and to show how it can be done without having to put your illustration career in the hands of Art Directors or Publishers.

If you sign-up to the zero2illo newsletter (the sign up box is over in the blog sidebar), we’ll even be sharing the nitty gritty financial details too, including expenditure and income, in the hope that it will provide a complete and realistic picture of what it takes to create a new business from scratch.

Introducing The New Business…

Our new business is called ‘Then There Were None‘ and it’s basically an online shop…but with a twist.

Most readers will probably know that along with my passion for illustration, I am also passionate about wildlife and nature (just take a look at my portfolio and this will be pretty obvious) - specifically saving endangered species from extinction and these two passions combine to form the driving force behind the new business.

Here’s a basic run down of how the ‘Then There Were None’ shop will work:

• There will only be 6 products on sale at any one time - 3 branded “flagship” products and a current collection comprising of 3 products only.
• The collections will comprise of one product for babies, one product for children and one product for adults - typically either a babygro or bib, a t-shirt and a tote bag or print or gift cards.
• The collections will be based around the main holidays in the year - Christmas, Valentines Day, Easter, Thanksgiving, Halloween etc.
• The 3 branded products will always be available but the collections will only be available for a 6 week period (5 weeks prior to the holiday/event and 1 week afterwards before they become extinct!).
• 10% of all profits (including any commissions I receive as a result of this site) will be donated to charities both large and small, which are working to conserve and save species from extinction.

Next week, Lea will be talking more about what we’ve done so far and why we’ve decided to add the twists plus why I finally feel like I can get over my hangs up about marketing myself. We hope you’ll follow along with the case study and wish us luck with the progress of the business!