The Wombat Workshop

A Magenta Graffito.

Little Notebooks for Big Adventures.
The Wombat Workshop is presently A Thing.

I've sold a couple of notebooks. I've talked it up a little at work, and I gave away a few of my prototypes. I have people at work interested in buying. I will have a table at a friend's small craft fair in a couple of weeks, in an environment with hopefully other interested buyers.

The Wombat Workshop is born. Or maybe Wombat's Workshop? What sounds better to you? Maps for sale will fall under this business name as well, I think.

If you're interested in purchasing notebooks from me directly, you can contact me on Google Plus, on Twitter, or via Email, with payment via PayPal. Let me know what color(s) you're interested in and I'll see what I can do.

The Punch List
So many things need to happen. I need to make more notebooks to sell, first and foremost. Showing up to a craft fair with only 20 notebooks ain't gonna cut it. Figuring out what colors people want will take some time in the field, but I'll take my best guess at it and we'll see how it goes.

Logo
A new logo would be awesome, but for now I may just take the wombat head from the above logo and add some text. I'll probably explore other designs shortly in any case. Making a stamp would be doubleplusawesome. Easily putting contact info on the back of every notebook will be huge.

Using that logo, I need to print up some cards with contact information. But in order to do that effectively, I need some place to send people. I could set up a landing/contact page somewhere for now. I'm in the process of setting up an Etsy store, too. I'd be interested in hearing your stories about selling in online craft markets, should you have any.

SharkMarks, test sales coming soon.

Pricing and Naming
I need to finalize prices. I'm dealing with 2 form factors: 3x5 inch and 2x2.5 inch (Fairy). Right now I can do interior paper that's either blank (Graffito) or graph (Carto). If I figure out lined paper that works, I'll offer that as well (Scribo). These notebooks are probably too small to effectively handle hex paper, but I'll look into it if anyone out there is interested and lets me know. I can do custom jobs and/or personalization. A shark cutout on the cover would be a nice touch, I think.

I'm thinking $3.50 each or $6/pair for the 3x5 notebooks, and $2 each or $3/pair for the Fairy size. Graph paper is more expensive for me than blank, but not horrendously so. It looks like I'm covering my expenses at the moment, including my time. Adjustments will happen as needed, and prices will probably be higher in the Etsy store to cover that overhead.

First Class shipping in a security envelope runs $0.70 for a pair, and I'll round up for PayPal fees and envelope costs. Depending on how rough the USPS is in handling, I may need to invest in a more protective envelope which will raise shipping costs. Or I may offer regular and "protected" shipping side-by-side.

SO MANY COOL COLORS.

Administrivia
On the business side of things, I need to file a DBA with the town, so I can open a bank account with the business name. With that and a separate email address, I can get a PayPal account set up, and then get a point of sale credit card solution in place. I'll also need to explore registering to collect sales tax in MA.

This won't all happen today, but I think all of this can happen relatively quickly, which is both exciting and terrifying.

I'll be madly cranking out notebooks in the next couple of weeks. Don't wait up.