The Evergreen path continues

The process of starting up Evergreen Sewing continues and is going…smoothly? Weirdly enough?

I’m all certified (🥳) for domestic sewing machines now. I have an accountant (local! woman-owned firm!). The (local! woman-owned firm!) graphic designer is working on gen1 of the logo. Evergreen has a business account at the local credit union. The sewing shop downtown has agreed to be my dropoff/pickup location so randos won’t be showing up at my house, but we still need to work out the details of that.

This week—aside from holidaying—will largely be online tasks: learning & starting to set up Odoo, taking product photos so I can start getting these refurbed machines out of my garage, maybe iterating on the placeholder website to add more information and maybe an email signup form. The timing of this works well, since it’s going to be very chilly in the garage this week and I’d rather not spend all day out there.

I’ve started telling more people about it, and thus far they’ve all been very supportive if surprised at what appears to be a sudden turn. OK, fair. Y’all aren’t in my head, so to the outside world it does seem like all this came out of left field when, in truth, I’ve been thinking about it for a few years now. The last time I was unemployed I started considering options I might pursue outside of the tech world. Some of them—like sewing machine repair/resale–I even researched fairly extensively. It’s something that’s adjacent to something I enjoy (fiber arts) without being and therefore ruining that thing. It’s also something for which there’s a good market in the region, which every sewist I’ve spoken to lately has vehemently confirmed. And finally, the opportunity to make a small environmental and cultural difference by keeping machines and clothing out of the dump resonated deeply in me.

When this latest layoff came around, I was therefore somewhat prepared to start the shift from tech to small business owner/operator. It wasn’t my first choice, but the longer I stay on this path the more appealing it feels. I’m still utterly terrified by this massive change, but an increasing amount of evidence is convincing me that it may work.

Despite that, in January I may still put out a call for small consulting/advising projects. Tech still pays oodles better than Evergreen ever will, and at this stage in the business’ development it’ll be very helpful to have a thousand dollars or so coming in from elsewhere every month. I’m realistic about this, though. I’d like to have that little safety cushion, but I don’t expect it’ll actually appear…and it certainly won’t if I don’t put myself out there.