It has been almost a year since I met with my friend Elle at Starbucks and we decided to start a business together called Jam + Toast. We hadn't really thought of all the specifics yet, but we knew that we both loved weddings and making things so we decided that our business would be for wedding paper goods and event styling.
At the time, I didn't really think that I had any graphic design ability to offer (let alone to sell!), so we decided that I would do more of the styling and she would do more of the paper goods. But as time went on, I started to become more and more confident about graphic design and started creating a lot of my own invitations to add to the shop. At that time, we were both working full-time jobs and then also trying to juggle the Jam + Toast business that seemed to be piling up. After a few months of waking up at 5am, working through lunch, and staying up late trying to get everything done, Wes convinced me to quit my full-time job and work on Jam + Toast full time. This was a scary idea for me, but with his blessing I jumped in full force.
We opened an Etsy shop that was gaining followers and favorites daily, and made plans to expand the shop into more than just wedding invitations. We started getting emails from magazines (how did they find us?) asking for samples to possibly feature in an upcoming issue. Recently, Elle and I decided to drop the styling part of our business, though we love it, because it is just really difficult to style an entire event with only two people and we felt that our time would be better spent focusing on paper goods. We had a new site design in mind and plans to possibly try and get some wholesale deals later this year. Sounds good, right?
It might seem strange then that over the weekend I made the difficult decision to leave Jam + Toast.
Sometimes, things don't turn out the way you plan them. And many times, you have to make difficult decisions in life based on impersonal things like finances. Elle and I both want our businesses to be something big enough to support ourselves or even our families some day. What I started to find was that the amount of business we would have to acquire to make this happen was something that was going to take a long time with us splitting our profits in half. It was a different dynamic when we were both providing different skills to the company, but now that we are both designing paper goods, it doesn't make much sense financially. Elle and I are also at different places in our lives as far as goals and schedules, which doesn't cause any problems personally, but brings up some professional challenges. We both have plans to move out of state down the road as well, so having to separate is probably inevitable and it seems smarter to do it now than when things start to become more complicated.
This decision was really hard for me, but I really think that it will be better for both of us in the end. We will both be able to get where we want to be twice as fast, and now when we hang out together, we can just hang out rather than talking about business all the time. Neither of us have any hard feelings and will still be rooting each other on, no matter where we end up living down the road.
So what's next for me? I am in the process of setting up a website for my business with my designs, and Wes has decided he would like to become a lot more involved. At first, I had this weird feeling that I just wanted to be able to do this independently, which now that I'm writing that down, sounds like the attitude of a little kid. I guess I was feeling like him helping me would prove that I couldn't do it on my own, or that I was losing a part of something that was only mine before. Now that I have had time to think about it and evaluate my feelings, I'm realizing that this is going to be really great! We have plans to possibly get a small letterpress machine to make the business more marketable (we have always loved the letterpress process and style), and we are both looking ahead to our future and what this business could become for our family.
I'm sorry this was such a long post this week, but I wanted to explain why things would be changing, and why the little Jam + Toast logo had disappeared from the side of the page (you didn't even notice, did you?). :) Life is about changes, and I'm really lucky to have such wonderful supportive people with me throughout them! Thanks for reading!
