At 6pm on Tuesday 10th March, our crowd funding campaign went live.
What’s crowd funding? Well, in short it’s a way for social enterprises and businesses to raise funds, by offering rewards in return for pledges. Put very simplistically, it’s form of pre-selling.
Many micro businesses struggle to expand, being caught in a Catch 22 situation. You need to expand to increase turn over, and until you increase the turn over you can’t expand! With banks being careful, young micro businesses are having a tough time at the moment!
But, by turning to the crowd, there is a way out, and although it’s not for the faint hearted, it certainly offer a way through the problem!
Making large panels, and often having to make 3 at once requires space! As do flat bed kilns! And space has been very much at a premium for the last 2 years.. the Glassification workshop has often felt like one of those games, you know the tile game where you are trying to make up a picture, with one square missing, and you have to move one out of the way before you move another into it? Yeah. That. 🙂
And whilst we haven’t yet had a visit form Health and Safety, it was only a matter of time,…. working with glass and nasty chemicals in a confined space is not conducive to avoiding accidents! But finally, after months of looking, we have found the perfect space.
We’re staying in Ilminster, which is great because it’s such a lovely little town, so the move is less than 2 miles, but moving a workshop doesn’t come cheap! Nor does kitting it out so we also offer glass making workshops! So, with other funding options unavailable to us, we have gone to the crowd and asked for support from friends, family, other glass makers, and absolutely anyone who loves glass as much as we do.. (and that has to be EVERYONE right? 🙂 !)
And the response has been overwhelming! We are totally humbled by the amount of good will that is out there! Liz almost had a little toot at lunch time today, when some one told her she was an “inspirational woman” after watching the Crowdfunder video!
But also it could be because we are offering some truly juicy rewards in return for pledge…. (yeah, that just burst HER bubble!! 🙂
So, if you want to get involved too, and be rewarded by anything form an invite to the Opening Event, short glass making courses or a whole weekend, or discounted vouchers to redeem against any glass, splashbacks, art glass, courses, or workshop hire at any time in the future, then head on over to the Campaign Page and click on a link!
