Selepouchin laughed before adding, "Every time I'm bulking up and thinking I'm ahead, I'm not!"
While retailers are occupied stocking shelves during the holiday season, Selepouchin and other crafters are hard at work in a holidaze, crafting homespun items nonstop to keep up with demand.
Most of Selepouchin's items are purchased through her own website, but she also uses Etsy, an online marketplace for handmade designs, and Supermarket HQ, a curated online outlet for designers to sell their work.
Last holiday season, Etsy's sales jumped from $17.7 million in October to $21.9 million in November. During the final December push, $25.6 million worth of goods were sold, making the holiday season prime time for artful entrepreneurs.
"We really had no clue about the holiday demand that existed when we first started," said Kristen Garber, half of the Philadelphia-based Chicken Noodle Knits, which Garber and her sister Sarah began two years ago. "What we were experiencing had probably been nothing."
Since Selepouchin makes half of her annual gross sales during the year's last quarter, the holidays are crucial.
"The holiday months are the rest of the year on steroids," Selepouchin said jokingly. "If I didn't work the rest of the year and I only worked those months, it wouldn't be all that much different in what I make for the year."
From mid-September to mid-October, Selepouchin sold 1,000 of her diagrammed towels, the most popular part of her houseware collection. On Selepouchin's schedule for the coming weeks are trips to craft fairs in Boston, Baltimore and Brooklyn, N.Y., along with licking envelopes to send orders to wholesale retailers and online customers.
