Mamas Rock: Shannon Barnes
Filed Under Mamas Rock | February 15, 2008
This month for Mamas Rock we’re profiling Shannon Barnes of Flaunt Handmade Correspondences. Her card collection – which started locally and can now be found across North America and Europe – features an adorable array of fuzzy animals (as well as the odd handbag and pair of shoes) and is all handcrafted by local women using mulberry paper, coloured fabric paint, ribbons and shiny trimmings. Kind of like your four-year-olds handmade Valentine’s Card, but with way more style.
Flaunt grew out of Barnes’s upbringing, where greeting cards marked special occasions and thank you cards were de rigueur. Initially she made cards for family and friends who encouraged her to test the waters of the retail market. At the same time, she was running her own marketing company. She decided to uses Flaunt to prove her marketing prowess, but then the cards took over the rest of her business. Barnes laid the base for her business by “working like a DOG for a few years” before she had kids. Now mother of a two-and-a-half year daughter, with another baby on the way this April, Barnes has the business down to a manageable, flexible 15 – 20 hour workweek.
Barnes runs Flaunt out of her basement. She has a nanny four mornings a week to carve out some specific work time, but as her business is very cyclical, she’ll fit in more time during the evenings and on the weekends when things are busy.
For Barnes the rewards of running her own business are manifold. She take pride in creating something that has garnered recognition in the greeting card industry in Canada, the US and Europe. She also loves being able to spend lots of time with her daughter without feeling any loss of sense of self. As she herself says, “The bottom line is that I live my dream.”
Find out more about Flaunt Handmade Correspondences at: www.flauntcards.com
Entrepreneurial Tips:
We always ask our entrepreneurial mamas for a tip for other mothers running their own businesses. Barnes came through with some great ones, so we’ve decided to go a bit long today and share them all:
- If you’re starting out read Mommy Millionaire. It’s US-based but fabulous and a great step by stepper.
- It may sound a little cheesy, but humbling bumps along the way need to be looked at as learning opportunities.
- Always ask for, and get, the money you deserve. Barnes says, “This was, and still can be, hard for me, because I was too nice and felt awkward about asking for money, but the reality is you have to be profitable. This has to be a black and white issue and emotions have to be checked at the door.”
Looking for other entrepreneurial mamas who rock that we’ve profiled? Just put “mamas rock” into our search box and they’ll all come up.
Leave a Comment
Let us know what you think or share your great finds with us so we can share them with other Vancouver mothers!
