White label services, business stationary & packaging, invites, ribbon, bow & backing cards. If you’re in need of a gift we can print photo slates, posters, photo calendars & more.
In 2012 I found myself unemployed, I had previously been a registered childminder. All my charges started school at the same time, so we took this opportunity to move to a bigger house as our family had outgrown our current residence. We were blessed with a quick sale on our house but unfortunately the sale fell through and our house was on sale for nearly 3 years, as it would take up to 8 weeks to get re-registered in the new property, I couldn’t fill my childminding places, so had to go out to work. I applied for what seemed like thousands of jobs, a few resulted in interviews. As a person with low self esteem and a lack of confidence I would get so worried and worked up about the interviews, although they tended to go well on the whole, I never got the job and this impacted further on my confidence and self worth.
I spent hours on social media trying to find jobs or to fill my childminding places, but a year later I was still unemployed. In 2013 I saw a post on facebook asking if anyone knew someone local who could print business cards. As I had made my own childminding business cards, I answered the request and met with Sam from TY Jewellery to discuss options and styles etc. That night I got quite excited I couldn’t sleep and the name L A Ink floated round in my mind. L for Lucy, A for my middle name Anne and ink because I only had an inkjet printer. I didn’t get the business card job, but I was so excited about this new idea I decided to launch my business. I set up in the corner of my lounge and called it my studio, and so L A Ink Printing Studio was formed.
I spent hours networking on facebook, looking into business and craft groups and answering “does anybody do” requests, I took on every type of job I could find, slowly one by one I got orders. I poured lots of time and effort into these orders to ensure customers were happy, word of mouth spread my business and I was soon getting regular orders. Business was up and down, sometimes there were days I didn’t get a single enquiry or order. These days were hard, but I found the strength to carry on, I reposted previous orders, networked and looked for new stock and products I could create.
Most of my orders were custom requests, items that customers couldn’t buy or could only find abroad or could only be brought in bulk, such as sock bands, box frame backgrounds, and banners. Steadily my repertoire grew. All my products I currently offer started off as a custom requests.
As sales were fluctuating I really needed something to bring in a reliable income, it was then a customer requested if I could create the regulation stickers for candles called CLP. I did some research and found there wasn’t anyone offering this service, I did lots of research, read through the weighty legal documentation and eventually found ReachReady and applied to them for a webinar course on how to create CLP. I would love to do the full course but as it was only being offered in the big cities, was a whole weekend course and cost over £1000 I couldn’t afford it, after explaining my case to ReachReady they offered to do a mini webinar for £450. It wasn’t enough for me to be able to create the CLP from the safety data sheets but it was enough for me to be able to offer to create CLP from the information the fragrance companies supplied. The CLP service took off like a whirlwind and I was busier than ever.
