Written by Jackie Sedley.

We know how daunting it can be to start a new business, especially if you’re disrupting an industry or creating an entirely new one. When there is no path to follow, the biggest question is, where do I start? There is so much to do but before you get ahead of yourself, let’s start at the beginning. To kickstart the process (and ease some of those first-time founder nerves) we’re asking successful entrepreneurs to share their story in our new series, From Scratch. But this isn’t your typical day in the life. We’re getting down to the nitty-gritty from writing a business plan (or not) to sourcing manufacturers and how much they pay themselves, we’re not holding back. If you want to know how to start a business, you’ve come to the right place.

The world of fashion is ever-changing. Just ask Amy Voloshin, the creative director and co-founder of Printfresh; she has been immersed in the world of style and design since early childhood. After studying textiles and fine arts in college, Voloshin took her knowledge of design and her eye for aesthetics and turned it into a stylish and über-successful textile company.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was Voloshin’s design company. While she makes it look easy, putting out fashionable accessories, cozy sleepwear, and beautiful stationery is hard work but Voloshin has mastered the art of leadership through years of experience in her field.

Thankfully, Voloshin let us pick her brain and learn more about how her company came to fruition, what she’s learned along the way, and how important it is to keep up with the constant shifts in the world of business.

CREATE & CULTIVATE: Did you write a business plan?

AMY VOLOSHIN: I’m a planner so I always write a business plan for my new ventures. It helps me think through a lot of the details that I’ll need to tackle to get going. I think it’s important to jot down the basic outline of what you are selling, how and where it will be sold, who will be on your team and what roles you will need to fill in your first year. If you self-fund like I’ve done,  it’s really just whatever will be helpful to you and to those helping. I also use the business plan as a place to store a lot of research—I love researching, so it’s a great place to collect ideas and thoughts on how other companies are executing similar businesses. 

How did you come up with the name? What was the process like?

Our name came from our first business, Printfresh Studio. That business is all about designing prints for the fashion industry.  As that business matured and everyone kept asking us “Where can we buy your prints?” we always had to shrug and tell people we don’t know or couldn’t tell them due to the non-disclosure agreements we signed.  So when we decided to take the plunge and start our brand, we brought the name along. When we started out we thought we could put crazy prints on everything but instead decided to stay focused around our love of textiles - hence all the sumptuous velvet journals.  Now that we are expanding into pajamas, I’m really excited to use more prints in our collections.

What were the immediate things you had to take care of to set up the business?

Getting the name sorted out was really the first part since so much of the branding and design can’t begin until that is set. In this day and age of social media, having a good handle is important for social marketing.  Getting the domain is important too, but with the new suffixes that are out there now, there’s more flexibility than there used to be when everything was only .com. Trademark is something we worked on as well, but that can wait till you get things into the market. Definitely get your website up and a fun splash page and start collecting emails. You never know when things will change with social media, but email has been a really consistent place for us to get information to our customers about new products and sales.

What research did you do for the brand beforehand? Why would you recommend it?

I’m what my business partner would describe as ‘an exhaustive researcher,’  which is funny since he worked in clinical pharmaceutical research before teaming up with me. I sometimes research something to a point that might be inadvisable! But, there is so much product out there and so many companies, so it’s important to find ways to stand out in a positive way. It’s important to answer some questions—is someone out there already doing what I want to do? Is what I’m going to do providing something different and exciting that doesn’t exist already at a good price? It’s also important to know when to stop researching. With all the online resources out there it can be easy to research too much and delay the fun parts like designing.

How did you find the manufacturer/production facility that you use? Did you have any bad experiences?

Being alumni of Urban Outfitters and calling Philadelphia home, we are blessed with a great network to tap into.  We had a lot of friends that were able to make connections to some fantastic factories in India and China. There are so many factories out there but it’s important to find ones that have experience making the type of product we are looking to develop, and that their ethics in terms of labor and environmental concerns are the same as our own. I travel to India and spend a lot of time meeting new partners, working in factories, and ensuring that the partnerships are the right ones. For example, we were able to find a factory for our pajamas that do so many great things environmentally, like use solar power and recycle gray water for use in their garden.  

Did you self-fund the company? Did you raise seed money or initial investment money? What would you recommend?

We self-funded the company and had some help from our family. We’ve always self-funded our ventures—I like the freedom of being able to find our own way. It’s something I’m open to in the future, but I wanted to develop the company independently and experiment. If we pursue investment money in the future, it would probably be to invest in advertising and marketing to help expand the brand and become more known in the US market.   

How much did you pay yourself? How did you know what to pay yourself?

Haha, yeah, that’s a tough one. In my first business, I started, it took about six months to be able to pay myself a small income. We’ve reinvested all of the money that we are making back into the company. Fortunately, we have some real estate ventures that help us live modestly while the business grows a bit bigger. It’s one of those things where it’s just a moment in time and hopefully, through working really hard we will see a return in a few years on our investment of time, energy, and money. 

How big is your team now? What has the hiring process like?

Printfresh is a small team of five and we all work across some of the other companies we operate (like the fashion line Voloshin). We’ve been hiring for over a decade for Printfresh Studio, so I feel like I’ve learned a lot along the way.  One book that helped me figure out how to hire better is The Who Method by Geoff and Randy Smart—it really helped us set up our hiring process and we use that methodology all the time. It’s helpful to have a set way of interviewing for the team to follow.

For a start-up especially, hiring those who have skill sets I don’t have has been important. Also, hiring for work ethic and the ability to finish projects independently has been critical for our start-up. When hiring, I like to spend a really long time getting to know applicants—typically, I’ll meet with them for 1-2 hours and really try to understand why they are leaving their current job, why this company is the right place for them, do our values synch up. I want to make sure that we will work well together since we will be spending so much time together. 

Did you hire an accountant? Who helped you with the financial decisions and set up?

We’ve been using QuickBooks for 13 years and have had our accountant for almost the same length of time.  When we first started, we used the accountant that my grandmother, and then my father, used in their businesses. Then, we got to the point where we needed someone who could come in and review the P&L with us on a quarterly basis. This has helped us really understand the numbers and trends in a way that allows us to make changes as necessary.

What has been the biggest learning curve during the process of establishing a business?

With this business, the greatest learning curve has been really learning to listen to our customers. We have never had the opportunity to work with consumers directly and seeing how people interact with our products and the reactions they have has been really informative. Really understanding why the consumer likes certain items has helped us continue to develop new and innovative products (like our upcoming mindfulness morning rituals and night time reflections guided journals).

How did you get retailers to start stocking your product? Were you told no? How did you handle that rejection?

I decided to take the plunge and signed us up for the National Stationery Show two years ago. We built an amazing booth with the help of our friend Luren and showed up at the show to try and get as many customers as possible. We printed a ton of tote bags and gave them away at the show and it got everyone talking about it. We picked up 30 stores at that show.  But more importantly, we met our real-life fairy godmother, Tara Riceberg, who has this amazing store in L.A. called TWEAK and she introduced us to Karen Alweil, who is now our wholesale sales rep. She’s gotten us into over 300 stores over the last few years. Rejection, though, is a daily constant for anyone in our business. As we go after bigger retailers, we just need to remember that ‘no’ usually just means ‘not now.’

Do you have a business coach or mentor? How has this person helped?

We have had some sort of mentor from the very early stages of starting our business. I’ve learned that listening to the expertise of others can help you avoid making costly mistakes and can also help open doors that may otherwise have taken forever to get open. Early on we used SCORE, which is a national organization with chapters all over the country. We have also used the SBDC (Small Business Development Center) at the University of Pennsylvania with a lot of success. Over the last few years we have been working with our mentor Steve Smolinsky—he has years of experience and a great perspective that helps us avoid obstacles before we even see them.

I was also able to find mentors through doing the Philadelphia Fashion Incubator, which connected me to some amazing industry veterans who have been very instrumental in helping me navigate areas of the business that I lack experience in. I highly recommend having a mentor—it’s amazing to have a life-line to reach out to during some of the challenges that arise when running a small business. There’s lots of information on the web, but not all of it’s perfect or right for your business. Having great mentors with real-life experience and who know you personally can really help you find solutions that you may have not arrived at otherwise.  

How did you promote your company? How did you get people to know who you are and create buzz?

We are definitely still learning! Marketing has changed so much in the last couple of years and I think all businesses are challenged by keeping up with the changing technology and the way it’s being used.  Printfresh Studio is so B2B (business to business) that we never had to market to the consumer. But we are slowly starting to figure it out. We spend a lot of time on getting great photos of our products and try to stay in touch with blogs and people who share our interests. Sending small gifts to people who you want to use your product and have a platform to share them on has been working as well. 

What is one thing you didn’t do in the setup process, that ended up being crucial to the business and would advise others to do ASAP?

If you are sure you have a great product, then getting it out to the media is important. Whether you find the time to do it yourself or you hire a great PR company (like Push the Envelope PR), it’s something that needs to happen ASAP.  We only recently focused our energy on it and are kicking ourselves for not doing it earlier. We didn’t really know how to go about finding the right PR company and didn’t know what to look for.  

For those who haven’t started a business (or are about to) what advice do you have?  

My top tips would be to: write a business plan, read as many books as you can about the industry you’re getting into, figure out how you’ll be different, and get yourself in an incubator or something similar as soon as possible to start growing your network. 

View the new Printfresh collection at printfresh.com and throughout the U.S. in specialty boutiques.