If you have been following me on Instagram (which you totally should because I post some rad stuff over there) you would have noticed I have been posting a bunch on my stories about the art I am selling on Redbubble. I never actually got around to explaining the story behind it, I thought I would finally tell you all about it including how it started as a school project which led to a visit to the Redbubble HQ with my classmates and becoming featured on their homepage.
Let’s go way back to the beginning (which is really only back in July 2017). For my Business Studies class, I had a group assignment where we were given $20 each to start a business and try and make a profit using the stuff we had learnt in class. My friends and I decided to create a Redbubble shop to sell artwork that promoted good mental health and we donated a portion of our profits to Headspace, an organisation here in Australia that provides services to teens to help them with their mental health. After the project finished I decided to buy my friends shares in the business and continue to run it as a shop for my lil brand Hello Bubblegum that I already had here. I kept making positive designs and managed to have a couple sell quite well.
Then late last year my Business class all went on a trip to Melbourne to visit Redbubble HQ and meet with the Chief Operations Manager of the business. We got a magical tour of the office and saw lots of hard working Redbubble employees working on making the website run awesomely, I was in awe at all the wonderful murals throughout the building, and got to see all the different products that you can buy through Redbubble in person. We got to learn all about how they manage their business which is super helpful for us as HSC students to use as an in depth case study for our assessments and exams.
During our trip to Melbourne we also visited the InterContinental Hotel where we had a tour and an awesome chat with the General Manager over high tea! Then on our way back home we made a final stop at the Allen’s Lolly Factory and learnt all about how they make some of my favourite lollies including chicos, snakes, bananas, jelly beans and more! We got to go on an epic tour of the factory, finding out all the ins and outs of managing such big operations and as a bonus we got to eat some of the lollies right off the production line. I gotta say, nothing beats lollies as fresh as those. The employees at all of the businesses we visited were so so lovely, not only did they give us incredible insight into the business world, they also surprised us with lovely gifts: free stickers, lollies and high tea – it really can’t get any better!After a super awesome trip I was even more excited to make new artworks and so I made a bunch and put them up hoping people would like them enough to buy them.
One of the most surprising things for me was when my stickers began selling in the United States a lot. I had thought that I would have to just tell my friends and use my social media to get sales but it turns out if you make a good design that is slightly different to what everyone else is making, it can sell well simply through shoppers searching on for what they want on redbubble. An example of this was with my ‘Don’t Worry Bee Happy’ sticker. There are lots of bee stickers on Redbubble, but most of them stick with a black and yellow theme and are similar to each other. By using pinks and blues I stood out in the crowd and started to get some sales which boosted my position in the search listings which then boosted my sales and the cycle continued.
Then, a couple days into this year magically through the internet I was alerted through an email that my latest work that I had just uploaded was chosen to be featured on Redbubble’s homepage, and at the top of lots of the product pages all over the site. Radiate Positivity, the happy lil sunshine radiating rainbows was all over the site and I had lots of sales of T-shirts, stickers, hoodies, posters, dresses, kids clothes, pillows, spiral notebooks, phone cases, laptop sleeves and more! I was a little overwhelmed with the amount of people that were buying my stuff and commenting how cheery it was. Thank you to every single person who bought something!!
There you have it, the story of how I started my humble little shop and my business studies adventures. If you wanna check it out you can click below to hop on over. If you have any ideas of what artwork I should do next, let me know!