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The holiday season goes hand-in-hand with exchanging gifts with loved ones. It’s also an essential time of year for keeping small businesses, like mine, afloat. It’s not only meaningful, but it’s advantageous to support, spotlight, and cherish all small businesses here in Colorado and everywhere because they have great services and products that many have been missing out on. Shopping locally is more important than you may realize.
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I am proud to run one of the women-led small businesses that are leading the way with online tools, despite being harder hit by Covid. Meta’s recent Global State of Small Business Report found that women-led small businesses have effectively flexed to shift their business online, often more so than their male counterparts. Globally, 57% of women-led small business owners report using digital tools to communicate with customers, compared to just under half of businesses led by men.
Here’s the story of how my business came to be. In February of 2016, I was having lunch in a restaurant with my family when I wished out loud that I wanted a way to make adult coloring portable so that whenever I had a few extra minutes, I could pull a small coloring “kit” out of my purse and color away. Having plenty of colored pencils was important to me, as well as a built-in pencil sharpener. That was the day that COLORpockit became an idea that blossomed into a passion.
Our plan to get COLORpockits into retail stores was interrupted because of Covid and we had to pivot to focus solely on online sales through our website and other online retail sites. We turned to Facebook ads, including video ads, to get our name out to new potential customers and help drive sales. The ads give us the opportunity to invite people who interact with us to follow our Facebook Page.
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We also created a private Facebook Group called COLORpockit Community, where members share their coloring and support one another. I post coloring tutorial videos in the Group and let members know about upcoming sales. I’m excited that so many people are joining our Group and have access to this kind of support and encouragement.
We are thrilled to see that Coloradans are making an effort to shop locally.
My hope is that we can be mindful of the businesses we are choosing when we go to purchase a gift. Small changes can lead to huge impacts down the road. This year let’s think about the ways we are shopping locally and work harder to shop small and choose independent businesses.
Dalaine Bartelme is the Owner and Chief Colorist of Colorpockit – the portable coloring system.