If you’re a small business owner or artist looking to get into commission/ custom work then this week’s episode of the S.O.B. (Small Owned Business) Marketing podcast is for you!
We have JessC from Southern Curiosities on the podcast to talk with us about what she has learned over the years on how to navigate the complexities of custom commissions.
Learn where to find Southern Curiosities in our Related Content section down below.
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Chapters:
00:00 Southern Curiosities Introduction
03:14 Introduction to Custom an Commission Work
10:00 Finding Your Niche in the Market
14:12 Managing Customer Expectations
28:00 Understanding Pricing and Value in Art
35:08 Balancing Custom Orders and Product Inventory
47:19 Marketing Custom Work and Customer Engagement
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JessC: I had to try to figure out how to make all of that balance. So I have now started special order Saturday, SOS, and I will only do special orders on Saturdays. But say I work on a rat for somebody, I can skin it and mount it on that Saturday, but it wouldn't be ready for its next step anyway until another week or two. So it kind of works to my advantage that I only have Saturdays for it because it won't be ready until Saturday anyway to do anything. So it gives me the whole week to work on other projects.
However, as it gets crunch time...
*Intro*
Chelsea: Hey everyone and welcome to the S.O.B. Marketing podcast. Where we celebrate to S.O.B. you are, and if you haven't figured it out yet - we mean Small Owned Business, we don't mean S.O.B...
Vivian: Listen, we know that as a small business owner you are working hard on the daily to keep your business fully operational while trying to promote it. And while some days it may feel like the business is owning you, if we're being honest with each other I bet you would admit that you wouldn't give up the insanity for anything.
Chelsea: Our commitment here at the S.O.B. Marketing podcast is to give you the real talk, what works when it comes to advertising, marketing, and promoting your business. And then what doesn't really work.
Vivian: And Chelsea and I promise to always keep the conversation real.
*Beginning of Episode*
Vivian: We're back. I'm trying not to be creepy, but I kind of want to make it a little creepy today. You guys, we have a very special episode for you today and we cannot wait to dive into this conversation. Topic wise, we're going to cover all the things about custom and commission work. We have a very special guest with us to speak to that, which I'll let Chelsea here introduce in a second. But before we get into it, please, just a friendly reminder, if you have not subscribed, what are you doing? Go ahead, hit that subscribe button, you guys. We also have 150 something episodes for you to go and listen to today. So if marketing is your jam, if you want to just figure out how to promote your business better in 2026, go listen to a few of those episodes for us. But Chelsea, who's our special guest? Drum roll.
Chelsea: I can't do a drum roll sound.
We have JessC, Southern Curiosities back again. Very popular episode. So we had to bring her on a second time. We're so excited to have you back on.
JessC: Thank you for having me back. I'm excited to be here.
Chelsea: Yeah. So for those of you that maybe haven't listened to that first episode, for one, go listen to that episode. But two, Southern Curiosities is whimsical taxidermy. So think rats on stripper poles or, you know, we got-
Vivian: Rats on motorcycles...
Chelsea: Motorcycles or on unicorns and in teacups. A lot of very cute stuff.
JessC: Yes.
Chelsea: So today the reason that we have JessC on here is because we are talking about commission work. Now, JessC is yes, great at creating some rats on stripper poles, but she also does custom work. She's actually creating some custom work for me. She has a piece she's working on for me, which we can absolutely talk about because Bri, my best friend who is going to be graduating from vet school does not listen to my podcast.
Vivian: I would love it if this is like one episode she listened to and the surprise was spoiled.
Chelsea: I know, right?
Vivian: Now, JessC, I have a question. Is-
JessC: It's always different in person, so it'll be fun.
Vivian: Yeah, that's right. Well, so what would you say is like the makeup of your selling? How much of it are you creating stuff beforehand, product beforehand and selling online and then what percentage of it is this custom work that you do?
JessC: So I actually did the math this morning on my little handy dandy spreadsheet because I was curious myself. So the majority of my work is created typically for upcoming events. It takes so long for me to create my pieces that I have to allot a large amount of time. The next one I have coming up is the Oddities and Curiosities Expo. It's taken me eight to nine weeks to try to prepare for that event. I do take special orders in that time, but pretty much all of my inventory is always allotted for that. Then whatever's left over is what goes to my website. So it is, yes, it is created prior to going to the website. My special orders, it ended up being 6% of my sales of last year. I thought it was closer to like 20, 25% to be honest, because I felt like I had a lot and I did, but because of the amount of pieces that are really going to the markets and stuff. It was actually only 6% of my overall sales of the year were custom commission work.
Vivian: I think that's really where a lot of the small businesses, if you're out there, you own a business where you can start to take on some of this custom work or commission work, you're probably thinking, great, I can actually charge more for that, but it also requires a little more of a process, of planning. Also a little more of headache because people are, you have to communicate with people really, really well and probably over communicate with them for these projects. But would you say, JessC, is that mainly some of the stuff that, do you remember your first commission piece?
JessC: No, I don't, honestly. I've been doing this now for six years as a business. When I originally started, it was kind of just like Etsy sales and stuff. So it wasn't really like custom territory yet, but I would have a few people that I'm like, yeah, you've got a bug you want to bring to me and you want me to frame it? Sure. I didn't really have the system that I have now. So. I have no idea what it was. It was a bug. I know that much. I'm sure it was a butterfly in a frame, but I don't remember who it was, what it was.
Actually, I could tell you one of my reoccurring customers, she's been wonderful. She's a friend of mine from years ago and she moved out to California and she ended up purchasing a bunch of bugs and had them shipped to me and wanted me to custom frame all of them for her. I would say that was probably my first big project that somebody asked me to do that I can vividly remember because it was a box of all of these really cool bugs I'd never worked with before and she trusted me. She had an aesthetic that she wanted me to go with and I kind of just ran with it. But again, this was also prior to a lot of the processes that I have now and the questions that I know to ask now. But she was still really happy with it and she continues to still buy from me. So we still have a wonderful relationship, which is great.
Vivian: Obviously she had a really great experience.
JessC: Yeah, I would hope so.
Chelsea: Well, I think the conversation today, we want to focus this conversation for people who want to get into custom work. But I do want to point out that what you're saying is it kind of, you didn't start out saying, this is what I want to do. You didn't start out saying, oh, I'm going to do custom work. It's something that you fell into. I think sometimes people need to maybe focus on the business first. So my first bullet point is finding your niche because really that's the most important step for any small business, no matter where you're starting. If you want to do custom work or if you don't want to do custom work, you need to know who your target audience is and who you are. Are you doing digital art? Are you doing physical art? Clay versus metal? You can't be everything for everyone.
JessC, what I want to ask you is, I know in my introduction I describe your work as whimsical. I've always wondered, was that on purpose?
JessC: No. I just make what I make, whatever my brain comes up with or whatever I'm inspired by. It's really, I think my obsession with Disney movies and wanting everything to look like it came from that world, very anthropomorphic. So I was doing that kind of work. I think it was just somebody at a market that had said, "oh my God, it's so whimsical". I was like, yes, it is. I really loved that, and I felt like it was a really good way to kind of describe my work in a whole. So I ran with it. It just took somebody saying it. Now I hear it often. People come to my booth, they're like, "my God, everything's so whimsical". Thank you. That's what I was going for. So it kind of just happened. It wasn't intentional, but it worked.
Chelsea: I want to bring it up because you have really found your niche in the market because a lot of taxidermy creators, it's very dark and edgy and moody. But you have really found your space in creating something that I don't want to say whimsical again. But like you said, it's very unique to you. My second point in this conversation is building a portfolio. When people say Southern Curiosities, if they know who you are, they know what you mean, right? They know and they can imagine the type of design that you're creating. That is something that's very important. That's something that's very important when you're trying to start out as a small business and even custom work as well because you need to build a portfolio, so people need to recognize who you are.
JessC: Right, just because I do insect art or just because I do taxidermy doesn't necessarily mean that I'm the artist for you. If you want that dark and gloomy to a point, I can pull that off, but that's also not my vibe. So I'm also going to try to take somebody's idea and kind of give them feedback as to how it would fit into my world and how I can do the best that I can do for them as the artist that I am. So it's not always a perfect fit because I like to think that I've created an artistic voice for myself and you're coming to me because you want that style of some sort.
Vivian: One of the ways you do this so well is if you guys want an example of how to incorporate or what it looks like to incorporate custom orders into a shop, go to SouthernCuriosities.com because you have a custom order request, a link on there where when you click on it, it will pull up, it links to like examples of your work. So it gives people an idea, this is what I do, this is the style I create. Then you also have a link to the FAQ section, right? Where they could get a lot of information. But what I loved and thought was super well done was your form. It is so detailed. As far as the questions that you're prompting people, like you said, it's kind of like meshing their imagination with, they know the style that you can create, but you ask them so many good questions that it, I'd imagine it helps move that conversation along so that you guys can see if you're the right fit.
JessC: Yes, it's taken me years, honestly, of just tweaking it because I found myself, I get that information and then I kind of go over it and I come up with a game plan of how I'm going to answer that customer. I found that I was repeating a lot of questions consistently. So I realized it was something that needed to be added or wording needed to be tweaked because people didn't quite understand what I was trying to say. So it has been a work in progress. The current form that I have I'm really happy with because it kind of, it kind of gets me on the right track of this is kind of what the person wants to do and then I can again take all that information. Do research on my end to see how much getting the accessories maybe that they requested would cost so I can kind of incorporate that into how I'm going to respond to them about a rough quote and a turnaround time. Kind of taking their ideas and explaining it into a way that I can create that piece as well because sometimes they don't even know what they want. I kind of need to tell them what they want and so that I think kind of checks a lot of the boxes of, okay now we're on the same page now we can move forward kind of thing.
Vivian: Well, what strikes me as interesting here too is you are very much an artist. Like the work that you do, it's artwork. When you talk about anxiety ridden, I would get so much anxiety if someone was like, hey, Vivian, can I pay you to create this for me? I'd feel like, I have to kind of like satisfy whatever thing they have in their mind, which is what your form does. You're basically trying to pull out of them like, hey, what is your vision for this piece? Can I create that vision in my own style and what I'm known for? I mean, kudos to you because as an artist, I don't even know how people do this.
JessC: You know, I ask my husband that all the time because he's a tattoo artist and literally all of his work is custom orders. It's all commissions all the time. And his is permanent. So that stresses me out just knowing what he has to do. But think him doing that for so many years has been really helpful in how I approach it. He's actually helped a lot also with making sure I get deposits because in the beginning I didn't and I was really bad at that and he's like, what are you doing? I'm like, okay, you're right. So he's helped me kind of streamline it with him having so many years of experience doing it. It is stressful and it is full of anxiety because trying to understand again, like you said, pulling out of their head, what they want and managing their expectations of what I can pull off for them is a tricky balance. But I will say as stressful as it is trying to do something totally outside of my norm, doing something that I didn't think of that they thought of, I have gotten a handful of really good ideas from these custom orders that I have now implemented into my regular rotation of stuff that I make because it got such a great response that now I have to make it all the time because it did well thanks to their ideas.
Vivian: I love it.
JessC: It works out sometimes and then other times I'm just like, this is not, this isn't it. But we get there. It just might take a little bit longer.
Chelsea: Kudos to both of you because I will now have gotten custom work from both you and your husband. Your husband did my sleep token tattoo. His process, amazing, very simple. He managed to pull out of me what I wanted because I had no idea. I had a vague idea of what I wanted.
Then the form that you had on your website was very useful because again, I had somewhat an idea of what I wanted to give Bri. Love that you gave me in your response to my form, to my email. You gave me multiple options. You said, hey, based on your budget. Here are things that we can do, and you described in detail all of the options and you said, let me know what you want to do.
Vivian, it's going to be so cute. It's a rat, right?
JessC: I'm really excited about it. It is really cute.
Chelsea: They're going to have a little lab coat and it's going to have her name. then what are the letters? What is it? DVM?
JessC: It's D-V-M because you said DMV and I was like, that's not right, I don't think. I was like, I don't think that's what they're called.
Vivian: As a vet, she would have been so mad if she got this and it said DMV on it.
Chelsea: God, no. Okay, yeah, no. With the right correct letters and her last name. It's gonna have a cat, a little toy cat on a leash.
JessC: With the cone of shame.
Chelsea: With a cone of shame, I didn't think of that. I would never have thought of that. But she gave me those options. So, kudos to you. I love that you're giving people options. You're saying, hey, here are a list of things that we can do. Let me know what you think. Love that.
JessC: I really appreciate that feedback because it's, never really know like on the, I try to look at like my form sometimes as a customer, like, does this make sense? If I were to order something, how would I fill it out? So hearing from you that, you know, it went smoothly on your end, thank you for that. I try to do that with everybody is with their budget. I can kind of try to pull off what they want. If it's not where it needs to be, or if it's above, then I can give them extra options, you know, so I'm glad to hear that that worked. It went well. So thank you.
Vivian: Well, and highly recommend that all of you go check out the website, southerncuriosities.com, because even the flow, not just the questions that you have in the form, but even the flow with you putting at the very top, the links to your portfolio and then also your frequently asked questions. When I went in there and I clicked on it, it made sense to me that you would list those at the top because it's almost like, Hey, here's the stuff I want you to review before you fill this form out. So that way the questions or the input, the information you give me is going to be all in there, right? Because a lot of your FAQs were so helpful in someone who has never asked anybody to make a custom order for taxidermy. You know, I think there are probably a ton of questions for someone who's never had that done. Once they kind of review that, it's like, okay, the next logical step is for me to get to actually talk to the artist, to the person that's gonna be doing the work for me, potentially.
JessC: Yeah, and I've actually had a lot of people recently, because you'll notice on my form there is an option to either provide the specimen or not provide it, because I have a lot of people that are looking for pet memorials. Apparently, there is a shortage of people that will do your pet hamster or your pet mouse or... And so I've had a lot of people that are actually preemptively reaching out to me wanting to know what they need to do when the time comes because it's what they want to do, they want to preserve it in a anthropomorphic way, if you will. They found me, which awesome. I don't know what I'm doing with my SEO, but it's working. They found me and they filled out my form and we went ahead and kind of already discussed how they need to handle it when that time comes. Also kind of getting an idea of already having that in motion so we have that information and can get them started on the right page which is pretty cool.
Vivian: Well, and that way they can preserve it, right? Because I'd imagine that's the biggest thing for you is actually getting a specimen or something that you can work with.
JessC: That's definitely the hardest part. I've been trying really hard to stick to work hours and not answering my work emails after a certain hour. However, I have been getting some forms of people that are like, hey, my hamster passed and I want to get it done. So I have to immediately be like, let's talk about making sure that it's wrapped, double-bagged, frozen and here is a PDF of how it will need to be shipped to me. Make sure that these are all things that you're open and willing to do, able to do. If so, then we can go on to the next step of filling out the form. But it's always just like, please make sure it's frozen immediately. Make sure it's handled properly. Otherwise, it's not a possibility. So that's generally the only time that I'm like, let me hurry up and answer them because they need to know so that it's handled right away. So it is a tricky art form comparative.
Vivian: Yeah, well, and I hope everyone that's listening to this, that that's a big takeaway for you. In any industry that you're in is what JessC has done is, you have taken what you see popping up reoccurringly and instead of continuing to answer that or sit there and type out the full thing, you're like, hey, let me put this in a PDF.
For one, I have to be able to get this to people quickly. I'm going to save it on my phone so that way I could just attach it from there if I'm answering it, wherever I'm at. It's one of those things where you're making the process easy on yourself too. That way you can very easily, because the other part of it is not every person that's going to reach out to you is necessarily going to decide to move forward with the custom work. You also don't want to dump all of this time into someone that potentially might say no. I know that sounds bad, but it's, you also have to be cautious of your time.
JessC: Absolutely. It's definitely a part of it because when it gets to a point like, okay, we're having the conversation, we're on the same page, you're ready to move forward. Here's the link, pay the deposit. That puts you on my active list of like, okay, now we're actually talking and I can move forward. But a lot of times I'll end up getting to that point of like, hey, here's the deposit. Then it's crickets after that. Or six months later, I'll randomly get a sale and I'm like, what is this? It's someone paid it, and I'm like, oh, well, let me go find that email and we can have that conversation again. But there is a certain level of work you can put into it. Here's my spiel and after that, now it's time to move forward and put you on my active list.
Chelsea: Yeah. I'm curious, JessC, and you may or may not have an answer for this. How did you pick your deposit price? Because I know this is something that people sometimes struggle with, deciding how much is the right amount.
JessC: Yeah. It's definitely different for everybody. I have fellow artist friends that will take 50% deposit upfront or like a percentage based. I kind of just have two very basic ones. I have an insect deposit and a taxidermy deposit. So I've just got a $25 and a $50. That really just ensures that I know that they are committed to moving forward, as well as I know that that will kind of cover any upfront expenses that I may need to start their project. I've just done it long enough that those felt like good price points that work for me. But depending on your art form and what you kind of feel comfortable, because some people I think get stiffed on custom orders, I'm very fortunate that that has not happened to me yet.
Chelsea: Yeah, knock on wood.
JessC: I think because they're so involved in the process too, it kind of feels a little bit more personal for them. So they tend to get pretty excited about it. I've been very fortunate. But I think depending on your history with it and what's worked for you or hasn't, again, it's different for every artist. Hell, I know some people who have been like, pay 100% upfront and I'll get it to you when I get it to you. Those prices just work well for me.
Vivian: Yeah. Well, and I think the other part of this is you guys, she's letting you know what she had to evolve in. Like she said, her husband was instrumental in getting her to get some of that, you know, the deposit upfront. Great. You're listening to this interview. Now you guys know if you're going to start doing commission work, you don't have to go through all that. You just know, hey, let me go ahead and from the beginning, just start to collect a deposit because it does let you know that somebody is serious about moving forward with a bigger project. Because some of these projects, depending on what type of work you're doing may take a couple months, maybe it'll take a couple weeks. You want to be sure that someone has skin in the game and definitely knows, it's something that, that you're not going to be spending six weeks doing, and then you're going to be out all this money.
Chelsea: And time.
JessC: Right, the money and the time. Yeah, absolutely. But I did recently add a lot of disclaimers also on my deposit when you pay it. It's non-refundable, as well as if you don't pay the invoice when it's finished and I send you all that information and it's all done within two weeks, then it goes back into my inventory. So that kind of gives me a little bit of... I don't know what the word I'm looking for is.
Chelsea: It gives you ownership of the project. I mean, it's your piece of art.
JessC: Yeah, right. So it kind of locks it in. It's version of a contract, I guess.
Vivian: It's almost like when someone says, due in 60 days, due in two weeks, due in 15 days. Like y'all got to pay your bills.
JessC: Yes, and it holds everybody accountable.
Chelsea: I also am wondering because I know a common problem that people have is having to justify their prices. I feel weird about it. I don't, I feel like if you're an artist, there are times, if you want the piece, if you want my art, then I shouldn't have to justify the price to you.
But there are times where people do explain like, is why my pieces are priced like this and whatever. So I want to say, if you're starting out, can justify your prices. You don't have to. Do you, JessC explain your pricing to people? I didn't ask. I'll pay you anything.
JessC: I don't because I know that the back end that I do to price my pieces, I know that it's justified. I know that I do it in a smart business way. I'm not trying to overprice anything. I'm not trying to underprice anything. I'm confident in that and I don't feel the need to have to explain that to people.
It's tricky because I could fall down the rabbit hole in a conversation of just like, well, this is how I price my pieces and this is how the algorithm that I use, but I don't feel the need to do that. I hope that my work speaks for itself and you know what you're paying for.
I think a lot of the people that want you to justify it are also the type of people that want a deal or they want it at a cheaper price. Unfortunately, that's just not something that I offer. I'm very proud of my pieces. I put a lot of work into it and it's really hard. So and I think that can go for any business, small owned business, whether you own a massage studio or whether you're an artist or whether you're a chiropractor, I don't know, but whatever your field is, I think as long as you're not trying to like screw people over, you don't need to justify your pricing.
Vivian: Yeah. One is definitely they're paying you for the skillset, right? None of you better contact me about your hamster passing and me doing anything with it because I would not know the first thing to do. It's an art form. I think that's where people understand that when, like when Chelsea wanted a gift for her friend and this gift was going to perfectly align with her celebrating being a vet now and all that, I think there was nobody better. For her, she knew artistically you could, you can create that and bring it to fruition. But the other thing I want to say that's really weird is you guys, sure, JessC's doing the whimsical taxidermy, but you guys, this even my husband does right now, he's doing flooring. He does custom woodworking too though. The man has had people pay him. He did a job one time, it was a dining table that converted into a card table, a gaming table, because they would invite friends over to play games. He created this all by hand. The couple paid upwards of $20 for this custom build because of the amount of time and effort he took into it. I say that to remind you guys, you're running a business. Not everybody is going to be your ideal customer, nor should they be. Do what JessC has done, do what every other small business does, which is you know who you are, you know the type of person you are making something for, and then sometimes people will contact you and they're just not the right fit and that's okay.
JessC: And that is okay. To your point about the table as well, it's not just about his skillset, but like all the tools he has and the years that he's put into figuring things out and maybe doing them a little bit quicker than maybe he used to. It's interesting because obviously I've made a lot of friends in the art field and the vendor markets and things like that. The amount of customers that come up to all of our tables and they'll do that little whisper of like, "hey, so-and-so can do this for way cheaper". Can they? Do they have all the tools already in their possession? Are they going to have to buy all of those as well? Or do they have the years under their belt of getting it to that quality? Maybe, probably not. I love when people say it at my booth. I'm like, you're going to skin a rat? Okay.
Vivian: Right? Or even something as, okay, so for you, if you guys have not seen, when you look at her portfolio, you do these beautiful framed butterflies. The amount of delicate work, like I'm pretty sure I would probably squash that poor butterfly in like two seconds.
Chelsea: She would, 100%.
Vivian: But there's just so much, so delicate, so much care and attention to it. Like you said, like, good luck. You can probably find someone else to do it. It's not going to look the same. You know, you have a vibe, you have a certain style. You've been doing this now for, many, many years, but I think that's the part don't... like JessC said, she doesn't feel the need to explain her pricing. We promise you guys, maybe at first, if you're just starting out, you might feel the pressure to do so, but there is nothing. You know, we're all grown adults. We all have money in our pockets and we get to decide every day how we go about spending that money. Don't feel like you have to spend an hour trying to convince someone to spend money with you. If they're for you, great. If they're not, that's fine too.
JessC: Well, and that's just the thing. I would hope that my work speaks for itself in that, on that level of, I always feel like I want to explain like, well, you know, I hand sewed this jacket and it took me four hours to create this little velvet jacket for this rabbit. I do, I'm not gonna lie. I do end up like telling people one, not because I'm justifying the price, but because I'm just really excited about it, but it is hard not to.
Vivian: Yes. Well, the fact that you made a little jacket that could go on a very little animal, that is the cutest thing.
JessC: He's right over here. Actually, I have him behind me. I don't know where, but can you see him? He's a little white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland.
Vivian: I love it.
Chelsea: I'm telling you, I'm so excited, Vivian, to see this rat.
Vivian: Well, so speaking about work in progress though, because it is a work in progress. How do you, what's your approach to like tracking or your process to kind of keeping, if you have multiple projects going on, because you're still creating stuff to take out to markets to be able to sell, how do you kind of balance that with the custom work that may take you weeks to do.
JessC: So it's a blessing and a curse with taxidermy is the amount of time it takes to not only create it, but for it to cure. One of my absolute favorite things in the whole wide world is my spreadsheet and she's beautiful and she's got, she's color coded. Like for Chelsea, I have the date that she paid her deposit and I have a running tally of how many days she's paid it since I've started this project. I have all of her notes. I have all of her information, all of her requests with it. She is green because she is active.
I had to restructure how my work week looks because it got to the point where I was getting so many custom orders or special orders, but I would also have a big expo or a big market on the horizon that I was preparing for and my special orders always get pushed back because the market is just like coming and if I am invited to attend an expo or a market, I want to bring my best foot forward and have as much inventory as possible to have a great showing for both myself and for the show runners. So I had to try to figure out how to make all of that balance. So I have now started special order Saturday, SOS, and I will only do special orders on Saturdays. But say I work on a rat for somebody, I can skin it and mount it on that Saturday, but it wouldn't be ready for its next step anyway until another week or two. So it kind of works to my advantage that I only have Saturdays for it because it won't be ready until Saturday anyway to do anything. So it gives me the whole week to work on other projects.
However, as it gets crunch time, like right now, before I go to the Oddities expo in Charlotte, my special orders are not at the top of my list because I'm also so behind where I want to be. So I'm only getting like little accessories done at this point, knowing that I can take a whole Saturday and just like knock out a handful of them when I get back and it'll still be within the time frame that I quoted them. So also knowing kind of how long things take, I take that into consideration when I'm contacting the customer and I stay in contact with them as well and let them know like, hey, this is where we're at. This is the status of it. I try to make sure to stay in constant contact with them so that they also don't feel like they're just like, well I gave you a $50 deposit two months ago and I haven't heard from you. I promise you'll hear from me in that. You'll get steady updates as well.
Chelsea: I feel, really quick, Vivian. I also feel like kudos to you. You're very upfront in the beginning of the process with how long, how much time you're going to need.
JessC: Yeah, I try to over do it. So that way when it's done sooner, it's like, surprise. But it also gives me that grace period of like, hey, I'm behind. I'm still within my window. So it's been doing it for years at this point enough to kind of know that. I think just starting out, it's going to be hard for somebody to know unless they don't really have a lot of stuff they have to create for something and they have all the time. By all means, you know how to do your business. Like I said, I've just done it long enough at this point where I have an idea of a good general turnaround time for most people.
Vivian: So this is interesting. I noticed this on your website and I want everyone to get the full grasp of everything JessC has going on at Southern Curiosities. Okay. You have your online shop. You do markets like the one you just said with the oddities. My understanding is this oddities one in Charlotte is huge, correct? This market's big?
JessC: It's insane. It's insane. I did it for the first time last year and I was blown away. At that point, I had only done local markets. I had never done anything at that level. I had done one tattoo convention, but it was during a hurricane. So it wasn't like a great expectation of what oddities might be. It's overwhelming in the best way possible. So it's something that I definitely prepared way more than I did last year for because now I know what to expect, but they're huge and amazing. I am so beyond grateful to be part of it.
Vivian: Okay, so online shop markets like this big one, and then you also have the commission work. So what I noticed on your website was I saw that your online shop is available until February 1st of 2026. Does that mean that you've decided to maybe not put some of the product on your online shop? Are you closing that up or is it just a pause for you to be able to go to the market and then maybe afterwards, throw inventory up on the shop.
JessC: So yeah, I basically just kind of make a lot of my items hidden. I don't actually like delete them from my site or anything before going to a big expo so that I can kind of finalize my inventory before I go. I am a bit type A when it comes to my spreadsheets. Everything is itemized. Everything has got the prices, the quantity, I print that out, I make all my price tags, I'm like double checking everything constantly. I want to be able to know exactly what inventory I have, what I can pack, because the last thing I want to do is sell something on my website the day before an event where my van is already packed up and that piece is at the bottom of a box that I'm going to have to unwrap. So I find it best to just take all of the inventory, like physical inventory off of my website prior to a big market so that I can just prepare to pack it and bring it. After the show, depending on how long before the next one, my shop just kind of stays in a bit of hiatus. I try to keep like my stickers and my t-shirts and stuff that I know that I have plenty inventory of up there because that's not really going to mess up anything. But the physical pieces, because everything is one of one, I can't really ever re-, I can recreate something but it's never going to be exactly the same. So it's not something I can just like have a print up and leave it up, you know?
Vivian: What I love about this is for one, we're specifically talking to small business owners here. JessC doesn't have a team of 10 people that are sitting there putting stuff on her online shop and all this she's doing it herself. What I love about this is you found a system that works well for you where you're able to integrate all three parts, that online shop, the markets, and also this commission work. You also know the nuances in, like you said, well, I need to take my full inventory out there and then I can regroup. It's already online. I just have to make them visible and it's quick, but it also allows you to track everything. That's the part where, I think as small business owners, we probably, if you can rub some of that type A personality off on us. That'd be great, JessC, because that's what everyone needs to do. If we could all track this stuff, we talk about tracking for marketing purposes all the time, but inventory, that's a big, big deal. You guys spend so much time creating these beautiful pieces. Be sure that you're setting yourself up for success by organizing yourself enough to where it's not going to feel like chaos.
JessC: Yeah, it's just really helpful on the back end for me, both when I'm selling because I can also kind of do random inventory checks during big expos that are really busy as well. I can check my physical inventory spreadsheet and I'm supposed to have this particular frame or this particular taxidermy. I know I didn't sell it and it's also not out here. Could it be a theft problem or it also just helps when kind of tracking everything, what sells well and things like that. I think I overdo it a little bit, but it is helpful for me and it makes me not crazy. My goal though for this year is I would really love to be able to have an online shop inventory that I just leave at home and that I don't take with me. So I don't, that way I always have a shop available because I do give out a lot of business cards at these expos and I do get a surge in my website traffic and I don't have anything to sell because it's all with me. So it's always just, well fill out a custom order form. But that can also be a little daunting because it does have so many questions. People are like, I didn't sign up for all of this. So it's kind of finding that balance of making everybody happy. So my goal, again, is just try to have like inventory that I can just keep up there all the time. But like you said, I am a one man show minus my unpaid employee, my husband who does a ton for me. Other than that, it's a lot of work. So trying to kind of have everything moving without having to constantly stay up on it would really be great.
Chelsea: Well, I was going to say, I also noticed something that you post a lot on your social media is that you don't take pre-orders exactly for this reason, because everything is one of one. You don't want to set anything aside for somebody. So they have to show up to the event.
JessC: Yeah, because it takes again so long to create everything. I have a list of goals of like how many rabbits I'm going to be able to get done in this time frame. How many rats, how many mice, how many possums or raccoons or anything else that I might have, like bigger pieces. Because of the time frame, if I were to just pre-sell everything that people showed interest in on social media, I would have nothing to bring to oddities. Again, I want to have a good foot forward at these events and have a nice display for people to shop because not only did I pay to be there, but so did the guests that are attending. As much as I would love to just like take the money today, like, sure, I'll sell it to you. Sure, I'll ship it. I committed to something, so I have to hold everything back.
Vivian: Yeah. Well for one, I love that you're so particular about just the markets and because that is such a venue or it's just a way that you go out and you promote your business. I think it's nice that for one, you've mentioned now a couple of times that you think about the impact it has on the actual market, right? How you show up there and then also the impact that has on the people that come out to the event because you want to be sure they have a good experience. I encourage anybody. JessC, I know you're on Instagram and TikTok and I believe maybe Facebook.
JessC: I'm on all of the socials.
Vivian: Okay, so you guys go check out her stuff, especially on TikTok. I love the stuff that you post on there, but seeing your setup.
JessC: I feel like I'm really bad at that one.
Vivian: No, it's so good though. Seeing the setup and everything. I think it just kind of plays into, we were talking about how whimsical is just one of the words used to describe your artwork, but even your setup kind of gives people that feeling. So I just want to say from a marketing perspective, I think your type A personality has definitely helped because I feel like you are so detail oriented that you think about how cohesively you're tying all these elements in together. Whether it's through the custom orders that you take or the way you're showing up in the market and the material that you're bringing out there to sell. Just kudos to you. Definitely fan girl, girling over here. Cause I love every part of that.
JessC: Thank you. That means a lot. I feel like I'm constantly tweaking my market set up because it's never good enough or it's never right. Hearing from a marketing person that it flows well is always nice to hear.
Vivian: It's beautiful. It's a very impressive setup.
Tell me the conversation that you have in terms of marketing and advertising for your custom work, is that something that you purposefully promote? Like when you're on TikTok showing your work or anything, do you mention that you take on custom work or is it just something that naturally comes up in the discussion when people see the artwork?
JessC: I'd say both because when I push or when I promote pieces that I've already finished, when I put this was a special order, this is what the customer asked for, do you have an idea, fill out my form. So I do promote that along with my social media presence. Then of course, with it being on my homepage, I feel like that's kind of a big promotion in itself. There's a lot of people that don't take on customs all year long, whereas I do. So I think that's also something that I like to kind of let people know is I can always have the conversation. It doesn't mean we have to move forward. It doesn't mean that we're gonna be right for each other. It doesn't mean that it's within your budget, but we can have the conversation. I also, I think it comes with a lot of artists. There's always people that are like, "you know what you should do". So you're always going to have people come up and they're like, "I see you do rats. You know what you should have a rat doing is da da da da". I'm like, okay, that's a great idea. If you want me to make that, then fill out my custom order form and I'll make that for you. I push that a lot at markets as well as, I give them my card and I just, whether they talked about it or they didn't, I always try to say like, I also take customs all year round, so feel free to fill out my form. Do I get a lot of them? I mean, I get a decent amount come through my website, but like we spoke about earlier, a lot of times they kind of fall off or people maybe realize that it's either not within their budget or it's maybe we're not on the same page or they just for funsies wanted to fill it out and that was that.
Vivian: JessC, thank you so much for talking with us. I think this was a very productive conversation. I think all of our listeners are going to really enjoy it. Can you let everyone know where they can find you if they want to get some custom work done?
JessC: You can find me at SouthernCuriosities.com. You can find me on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. It's at Southern Curiosities on all platforms. You can also fill out my custom order form that is on the homepage of my website. You can also find it directly on my link tree that you can find in the bio of all of my social media platforms.
Vivian: Love it. You guys, highly encourage you go check out her website, go connect with her on social media. Also if you guys have a topic that you want JessC to talk about in the future, go ahead and drop it down below. I'm sure we could probably convince her later in 2026 when she's not at these big markets or doing custom work to pop in and talk and share her experience in other areas of business.
Chelsea: So, yeah, go be the best SOB you can be.