{"id":3750,"date":"2016-05-17T15:21:03","date_gmt":"2016-05-17T15:21:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/?p=3750"},"modified":"2016-07-13T15:39:10","modified_gmt":"2016-07-13T15:39:10","slug":"profile-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/spring-2016\/profile-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Profile"},"content":{"rendered":"

Celebrating Entrepreneurs \u2026 A Series<\/em><\/h2>\n

Be inspired by entrepreneur Holly Cox, who hails from Scottsdale, Arizona and has built a business around creating felted wool purses, pouches and pillows. In her own words, she describes her passion for sewing and her business, Wool and Spice<\/a> …<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Hannah-photo-for-article\"Holly Cox, Wool and Spice, Scottsdale, AZ<\/h4>\n

My inspiration for my business began from a love of sewing and a need to make money from a home-based business as I had two small children to take care of.<\/p>\n

Before starting Wool and Spice, I went to culinary school and worked 13 years in the restaurant business as both a chef and a front of the house manager. It was a grueling workload, and once I started having children, I just couldn\u2019t do it anymore. I absolutely love what I do now in comparison. Besides being my own boss, I get to spend my days creating, and I\u2019m actively involved with my children. Win-win!<\/p>\n

My day usually starts between 4 and 5 a.m. I sew in the morning and at around 7:30 a.m., I take a break to get my kids ready for school. After they are at school, I continue working until 3 p.m., at which time I pick my kids up from school. After school I am busy with homework, swim practice for my daughter and dinner. I\u2019m often seen sewing at the pool while my daughter swims. My weekends usually involve working an art show or farmer\u2019s market to sell my items. It\u2019s busy!<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a creative type, so the tech side of the business is grueling and unrewarding. The art shows I attend can be unpredictable as far as sales. So much depends upon the weather, the type of attendees\/buyers, time of year and competing artists.<\/p>\n

The artist community is a wonderful and supportive group of creative souls. I\u2019ve found some of my best support from other artists. I love what I do and being an artisan vendor allows me to pursue that passion.<\/p>\n

My product is unique mostly due to my use of recycled wool. I repurpose wool clothing into one of a kind wool purses, pouches, pillows and cards. All my wool is felted and cut apart before being remade into something new. I also use all my own patterns and designs. Each piece is unique and has its own personality.<\/p>\n

I need to have a way to express my creativity\u2014it can\u2019t be bottled up! I\u2019ve always been creative, and my customers can tell that I put passion and love into my products. My business allows me the flexibility to have a creative focus and be a stay at home mom.<\/p>\n

If the community doesn\u2019t support local artists then they usually will stop coming to that market and look elsewhere to sell their goods. Yes, it\u2019s important to support local artists! I don\u2019t think there\u2019s been a loss of popularity in farmer\u2019s markets, but I do think there is an oversaturation in some areas.<\/p>\n

My advice for aspiring entrepreneurs: Find your niche and build up lots of product before you start selling. It\u2019s easy to get overwhelmed by sales and then not be able to fill those orders. Finding a balance is important.<\/p>\n

My advice for those who would like to start a second career but might be afraid to do so: Have some extra money stashed away so you have something to fall back on just in case your business doesn\u2019t take off right away.<\/p>\n

I think that if you can figure out what makes you happy on the inside, then you become a better person on the outside. Sounds simply, but for me it was a long process and I\u2019m still evolving as an artist and a person. Work in progress!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Celebrating entrepreneurs \u2026 A Series<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3783,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spring-2016-columns","category-spring-2016"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3750"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4179,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3750\/revisions\/4179"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}