We became so passionate about Crayon Rocks and the benefits they offered children that we began selling them in our little online store and they just took off.
2. How do you juggle business and family?
We’re a family based business, so business is family. Crayon Rocks is run by myself (Jessie), my sister Sarah and mother Debbie. This obviously has it’s ups and downs at times as its impossible to separate. We work well as a team under pressure and being family, as hard as things get there is always a lot of love and care underneath it all, which provides a really solid foundation for what we do.
3. What has been your proudest moment so far?
We’ve just celebrated our first year in business at the end of June which is amazing. It’s the little things that push us to move forward every day. I remember when we first started selling Crayon Rocks, I received a call from one of our customers in tears one day. I thought something terrible had happened but she started to explain to me that her son who suffers from a motor dissability, had just drawn a dog and looked up at her and said something along the lines of “I’ve been waiting my whole life to draw this dog and it’s finally here.”
4. What has been your biggest challenge?
The past four weeks for our business have been absolutely huge. We have done 32% of last financial years entire trade in July alone. This sounds exciting to have such a huge level of growth but it’s stretched every single resource we’ve had and we’ve been up until all hours of the night. We’ve had to do a big ‘rush’ order of stock to meet the demand. We seem to have everything running in a nice flow over the last week which has been awesome.
5. What is your advice to others wanting to start their own business?
You need to love what you do. The WHY behind what you do has to be bigger than anything else, even the financial rewards. You have to love what you do every single day and wake up knowing what you do is making a difference.
You need to be prepared to get something wrong. You need to be prepared to get rejected. Following this, you need to be prepared to keep learning from your mistakes and refining until you get it right.
Do one thing every day that will make a difference to what you do, no matter how small it may seem. Small ripples create a tidal wave.
6. Three words that describe Crayon Rocks?
Making learning fun.
7. What’s your favourite current product in your line?
We only have one product, that’s Crayon Rocks. We do have 16 colours so I guess my favourite would have to be the purple. It’s a vibrant, strong colour and reminds me of the hydrangea flowers in my Grandparents garden when I was little.
Thanks for sharing Jesse, and for making and sharing these wonderful products with us and our children!
