A year into Cookie Dough Kids

It’s now coming up to a year since I started my small business, Cookie Dough Kids, back in July 2018, and what a year it has been! I didn’t really give starting Cookie Dough Kids too much of a thought if I’m being honest, it was something that I knew I wanted to do and I just kind of jumped into it without thinking too hard about what could go wrong or how much work it was going to take, I just knew I wanted to have a go at doing something that I enjoy and could call my own. I remember thinking at the start that I wouldn’t get any orders at all, and within a few days I had my first order from a stranger (my family, bless them, had put in a couple of orders before that, that’s a family obligation!)

Our First Order

I was so excited when I got an order from somebody that I didn’t know, it felt like my birthday and Christmas all rolled into one! Since then over the year I’ve had more orders than I would ever have expected through my website and my Etsy store. I’m so so grateful for every single order that I receive and still get mega excited when I see an order come through! It’s so true what they say about how when you purchase through a small business you make someone somewhere do a little happy dance! Especially at Christmas time, it was busier than I ever hoped it would be, I have never ever seen so many pairs of Christmas pyjamas! But I absolutely loved making every single pair and thinking, babies and kids all over the UK are going to be waking up on Christmas day all excited wearing my Christmas pyjamas that I’ve made, I loved that idea! I currently still work full time, so I don’t have anywhere near as much time to put into Cookie Dough Kids as I would like to, but every bit of spare time that I do get, I try to put into it, whether it be making orders, writing product descriptions, thinking of new products and designs or writing blog posts like this one! Like this morning for example, I didn’t have to leave out for work until a little later than usual, so I used the extra half an hour that I had to write a couple more product descriptions! It’s little things like that you can do around everything else you have to do through the day to make a difference! It can be stressful and tiring working full time and trying to run and build a small business to be the best it can be with limited time, but I wouldn’t change it, I hope the hard work will pay off eventually and I’ll be able to possibly go part time and have more time to spend on Cookie Dough Kids, that’s the goal!

The Cookie Dough Kids Redesign

After a year of running the business, I decided that I wanted to re-design my website, which is something that has just been completed by the wonderful RR Web Design! He’s so talented and really listened to everything that I wanted to get from my website and helped me to achieve it. I hope my new website is another step to helping me grow my business and achieve my goal. I want to continue putting as much time and effort into Cookie Dough Kids as I possibly can and am constantly thinking about what more I can do to better things. I want to introduce so many more new products and am even thinking of venturing into doing more than just children’s wear, like more gifts and maybe even personalised goods for pets, Cookie Dough Pets! When I look at how much I have achieved in the past year I’m very proud, from making my first sale, to being asked to go on BBC radio Leicester Live to talk about my business! Reaching 2000 followers on Instagram (which I know is tiny in the big wide world of Instagram but huge to me!) And to running my first ever stall at a Christmas fair, all around everything else that happens in life like getting a promotion at work and buying my first house, it makes me so excited to think about what I can achieve in the year coming up! Fingers crossed that all of the hard work will pay off .. Kirsty x