“People started saying, ‘Hey would you make one of those for me?’ And so I created a tortoise-themed Etsy shop and they started selling as fast as I could make them,” she said.
These days, Bradley receives between three and ten orders a day from all over the world – but that’s nothing compared to how busy she was last Christmas.
“I was getting about 20 orders a day,” she recalled. “It seemed like everybody who had a tortoise or knew somebody who had a tortoise wanted to gift them one for Christmas. I was crocheting nine hours a day and taking my yarn with me everywhere.”
During the holidays, Bradley was able to produce about ten cozies per day from her home in east Vancouver. Looking back, she said, that pace was a bit too much to handle.
“Right now, if I can make five cozies a day then I don’t fall behind, and that’s doable,” she said. “The rate at which I was crocheting at Christmas was a little bit beyond what I felt I could sustain.”
In January of this year, with Mossy Tortoise continuing to grow, Bradley filed for a business license with the city of Vancouver. It was an experience she described as “pleasantly surprising.”
“It took about three days to get it (the business license),” she said. “There were some questions [on the application] about how much of the home you use, how much your average income is going to be… It was pretty straight forward. In fact, I had one question and the city got right back to me within 48 hours with an answer.”
With her business license in tow, Bradley said she’s ready for continued growth at Mossy Tortoise. And in an effort to help others find similar online success, she started teaching a local marketing seminar. Eventually, she plans to turn her knowledge into a book.
“It’s definitely important that whatever you make or do is something that you enjoy doing,” Bradley said when asked to offer a piece of advice to other entrepreneurs. “If it goes well you will be doing a lot of it, and you don’t want to start something that you don’t enjoy.”
Bradley sells her cozies for about $20, but prices each design based on how long they take for her to create. She also sells $10 crochet patterns to customers who want to make their own.
You can view all of Bradley’s creations by visiting the Mossy Tortoise Etsy page at www.etsy.com/shop/MossyTortoise.
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