Now that I am "officially" launched my business with friends and family, I get asked all the time - where did the name Heidi's Nest come from? Well, here is my story.
It all started about 4 years ago on a long drive to Amarillo, TX. My husband and I were driving up to Amarillo from Austin to visit some friends for New Year's Eve. That year, I had made tons, tons of scarves for everyone for Christmas gifts. It was a big hit, something personal for everyone (we have a lot of aunts/uncles/cousins) that didn't cost me a fortune. While on our 8 hour drive as I was making another scarf, I talked with my husband about opening an online store to sell scarves, quilts and other such things. My husband is a computer person and he would create a website for me to sell things. At the time, I believe Etsy was around but I had never heard of of it before and it wasn't as big as it is today.
As we continue our long drive, we decided that my new store would need a name of course. I didn't really want to use my name in the store at all but couldn't come up with something generic that wasn't corny also. A few months early that year on our honeymoon in Germany, we went to a botantical garden in Frankfurt. They had a place there called "Heidegarten" and on the sign they translated it as "Heathers Garden." Since then, I started using the name Heidi online. We both thought Heidi would be a good name for the store and then went down the list of shoppe, shop, boutique, store, place, etc until we settled on nest. A few google searches didn't pop up anything and the name Heidi's Nest was born. So after all I really did the name the store after myself, but kind of translated it sort of, but not really into German.
My husband started working slowly on a website and I started to do some research on products and got my mom aboard to sell some of her things. She would make what she wanted and I would charge a small fee for the business end of selling things. The business never really got going as I was finishing grad school, then got pregnant, then had a child and didn't have much time for me or to or course make anything.
In August 2010, I decided to start selling Thirty-One. At the time, it was a newer direct selling company that nobody had heard of so I thought it would be a good opportunity to get out of the house, interact with other women and make some money while staying at home. Little did I know I would join Thirty-One and then it would take off - they had something like 500% growth last year. I felt this new thing I was doing became way to saturated way to quickly it was hard to really push the stuff. In December 2010, I did a little craft show selling Thirty-One but the whole time I was seeing other people sell what they made and I decided while sitting their bored out of my mind for 4 hours that it was finally time to launch Heidi's Nest.
Of course you can't launch a business overnight with no inventory or plan, so in January 2011, my mom and I met and hatched at a business plan. She would make quilts and I would make some quilts, scarves, hats, blankets and other gift things like crayon rolls, car rolls, blocks, etc. We would create a facebook page and etsy shop to sell our good and occasionally do craft fairs too. from January-September 2011, we both worked on creating some inventory to launch with and my little sister who does graphic design created a logo and banner for our shop. We officially launched on Facebook in September and I launched the Etsy shop in October 2011. We have sold a few things at a craft fair and I had done a few custom orders and now will be waiting for the first Etsy sell. We have about 30 items ready to go but I am slowly retaking photos and posting them on Etsy and working on making more things too.
Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/heidisnest
Etsy store - http://heidisnest.etsy.com/
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