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✨ Supplies for Project

⇢ 405 Munbyn Dual Color Thermal Printer
⇢ WeCreat Vista Laser w/Rotary (Save $50 with Code: LASERLADY)
⇢ Rainbow Plated Tumblers
⇢ Slate Coaster
⇢ Clear Boxes
⇢ Crinkle Paper

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Starting a business with a laser can be overwhelming! Where do you even start? What are you going to make and where are you going to sell it? Well, I’m going to cover, step-by-step, everything you need to know to give your laser business the best head start possible! Let’s dive in!

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My son just finished Highschool, so he figured he’d start making some money of his own. And, since finding a “traditional” job has been such a major struggle, his first instinct was to start a laser business. (I wonder where that came from.) So, let’s get him started!

What Will You Make First?

When you are figuring out what to make, consider your areas of expertise, training or hobbies.

I sat down with my little dude, and I asked him some important questions.

“What do you like? What are you good at?”

Yup, pretty grueling first step! Turns out, he loves funny t-shirts, cats, coffee and tabletop gaming. We thought about what pairs well and are sticking with coffee and tabletop gaming.

We thought of 5 possible products having to do with the theme and can be made with a laser. Drink stirrer, Tumblers, Coasters, Tabletop Gaming Terrain, and Funny Coffee & Gaming Quote Keychains. The terrain and keychains don’t have as much to do with actual coffee, so we scrapped those.

Since we are starting with limited funds, we settled on just Tumblers and Coasters. Well expand the product line once we get some experience points in the field.

So, we are going with a drinkware business! He will be designing matching tumblers and coasters for a gift set initially. They could be sold separately, but we’ll focus on a high ticket set to get started.

Branding

He came up with a business name, “The Mimic’s Mug”, and I told him to get me a logo ASAP. His mission now is to get designing!

Getting to know your branding look and feel is a great place to start and will help you stay “on brand” with future products and packaging! Which is surprisingly important!

Did you know – 72% Of American Consumers Agree, That the Product Packaging Design Influences Their Product Purchase Decisions.

Which brings me to the sponsor of this video, Munbyn. This thermal printer is going to be the only other tool we need for this new business, besides a laser, of course.

Slow and steady is the name of this race, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to hit the ground running with professionalism. Even though this will be a craft-oriented business, we can still come off like this business owns the 37th floor of a New York skyscraper.

This new thermal printer by Munbyn, the 405B, is a powerhouse. If you’ve seen my other post about my “5 Top Tools for laser businesses”, you will have seen me with another Munbyn printer that I use every day for package labels, and what’s even more fun, little happy stickers as a treat for my customers.

This printer can do all that BUT! It has a function unlike any other thermal printer and that is it can print in 2 colors! With either this special blue and black or red and black print capable thermal stickers, we are going to make our packaging stand out from the rest!

85% Of Customers Say Color Is the Main Reason That Urges Them to Buy Any Product.

So, let’s give them color everywhere we can! For the front of the packaging, let’s design a label with our logo. The app has a zillion and one fonts and images to use. Lot’s of templates, too! And, you can import images, so let’s start there.

I had separated the logo for the 2 colors we want to print. Using the app, I have the ability to find an awesome font and curve it just right to perfectly fit in this space. Select which type of the 2 color labels you are using, and assign that to your images and text. We are ready to print some colors!

Let’s print out one with the blue and black thermal printing, and another in the red and black. It’s easy to switch out the many types of thermal stickers they have and adjust them to size.

Now that we have a sample of each, let’s see which one the boss likes? Red is the winner! Let’s print out a few so we have them handy. Super quick! No time to waste!

Here’s one of the boxes we are going to try with the packaging. We can put the logo sticker right on there. And since we won’t be needing the shipping labels just quite yet, as we plan to research what the people want before we start paying for a website, (more on that later).

Let’s use the shipping labels as a bit of an “about me” section of the box and let’s throw in a coffee recipe, too!

As a fun bonus, let’s make an extra little logo sticker that we’ll hide in the box as a little thank you and surprise! We’ll be doing that once everything is made.

If you want to add a pop of color to your packaging, make fun little sticker presents for your customers AND print your own shipping labels ~ I have a link down in the description and the pinned comment for this 405B Printer! So, check that out!

We’ve got even more plans on how the final packaging will come together, but first, we still need to think about what designs we want to make!

Designing

We brainstormed what type of designs would appeal to other tabletop gamers. We’re thinking dice sets, like that would be used in Dungeons and Dragons. He likes skulls, which seems pretty on theme for this and other things, too. And swords! Always with the swords…

The reason we are just focusing on 3 designs themes is because we don’t want to go nuts. This is going to be a slow grow business. We don’t know if it will work. We can’t drop everything, money included, to dive headfirst into this.

We are in the discovery phase.

If it fails, the worst of it will be we have a lot of new cups and coasters. Then we can regroup and pivot. Maybe we just need to refine the designs or start from scratch!

He spent some time with the designs and now we need to engrave everything!

These tall and skinny tumblers are perfect for engraving and are bringing more of that color customers crave!

They do take a bit of time to engrave on this WeCreat Vista 10W Diode laser. If this takes off, then we’ll see if we need to upgrade. Until then, work with whatever you have. I know you need to spend money to make money, but let’s not go nuts! The goal is to make a profit.

These slate coasters engrave pretty well, especially after you give them a bit of a clear coat. They are also solid and heavy, which gives the customer confidence that it is a quality product.

Let’s talk about the customer a little bit more, in fact.

Finding Customers

We have a little bit of an idea of who the target customer is. It’s quite easy when it’s yourself, or my son, in this case.

But, in order to give ourselves as much possible success as possible, we have to figure out where these people go. We aren’t worrying about a website, and we all know Etsy is super saturated, which means constant price wars.

So, where else would they go and buy a cool tumbler? A gaming convention is a little too big to start off with. A craft fair would be too broad.

So, my tiny genius said, “What about a game shop?”

Perfect! Research is easy. He’s been to every one in town and knows which have local crafter merchandise in store! We just need to figure out if they do consignment. Why we’d prefer that over wholesaling is that we can then keep an eye on what is selling, and how fast.

Consignment is where the shop selling your item takes a cut of the sales price. It’s usually somewhere around a 60/40 or 70/30 percentage split. So, if you are selling something for $10, the store keeps $4 and you get $6.

If everything does great, but none of the sword designs sell for example, we can examine whether it’s the design people aren’t responding to, or maybe the location of customers, as to why it’s not selling. It’s all part of the research!

With this in mind, let’s think about how much we want to be selling these for.

Pricing

I’ve done some major deep dives into how to price your products. There are major calculators out there that help you figure out costs, like the materials, all the way down to how much electricity was used.

Here’s a quick rundown. Find out how much the materials cost and estimate the highest amount of money you could sell it for. And make sure you still make a profit after the consignment cut.

These tumblers cost $4.12 each. The boxes were about $1.25 each. And the coasters were $1.22 a piece. So that is $6.59, but let’s round that up to account for the stickers, and things like that. $7.

I think, for where we plan to sell these, like the literal location of the store in the town we are in, Let’s start at a $35 price tag. Might seem high, might seem low. It really does depend on where you are.

I had called the first tabletop game store, and they actually do 70/30 for consignment, which would mean our takeaway is 70% of $35 which is $24.50. After the $7 cost to produce, that leaves $17.50 in profit! Not bad!

Next up, let’s get these packaged up and ready for sale! You are about to see why packaging is so important!

Final Steps

I had gotten these clear boxes on Amazon, and they were a bit generous with their sizing claims. These are too short to close, so let’s improvise! I’m going to turn these into little gift bag looking things with a hole punch and ribbon.

We’ll work on getting new packaging once we reach stage 2. And stage 2 would be things like assessing what sells, how often, what people are saying, and introducing new products based on what’s working, and such things.

I made a little cardboard piece to keep everything from moving around in there out of the Amazon box the cups came in.

Using this lifetime supply of crinkle paper stuff, that hides it a little bit and gives it some more visual interest.

The labels really make this thing look like a product, right!? You can even put a little barcode on the back. I have too much fun with this printer. I’m going to hide that little thank you sticker in the tumbler and there you have it!

We have 2 of each design to take to the first store, and they are expecting us! I’ll have my son take the wheel when talking to the store person. I’m stepping back from here!

We’ve got things set up at the store and now we wait! In the meantime, he can work on the designs that are made already, make new ones and start calling other shops in town!

It’s a lot of legwork to get started. But when you boil it all down, here’s really the only thing you need to do to get started – make something.

A good niche is going to make things easier to sell. Knowing what your customer likes will help determine where you should focus your efforts, so read this video next.

And, if you are ready to add some colorful branding and super quick stickers and labels to your new laser business, check out all the thermal printers Munbyn has to offer in my links below!

Happy Crafting!