Alyson Beaton, creative director and founder of the Lille Huset, spoke to the UMBC community about her successes and failures in launching her business.
If you missed this informative and exciting Speaker Series be sure to listen to the unedited audio of the Speaker Series available below. Also below is the slide deck Alyson used in her presentation.
Alyson started off the talk introducing herself and her background. She is trained as an architect and a designer. She started her company Lille Huset, after creating a slotted dollhouse for her daughter’s 6th birthday. Seeing how much fun her daughter had with the dollhouse, she decided to build a collection, to teach kids about architecture, design and the love of home.
Alyson then went into how this Speaker Series will revolve around the successes and failures she has experiences while establishing Lille Huset.
“If you are willing to try and fail, and as a result work even harder, you are going to succeed in all that you do.”
She explained how you get through the failures by loving what you do. You want to find your inspiration first, then decide if it’s a worthy business opportunity. She went on to say that “experimentation is a way to find your passion.”
Her experimentation in dollhouse making involved making many different shaped dollhouses, out of many different materials to find what worked best. She landed on a simple design that was made out of a combination of wood and paper. She then held a small exhibit in her house displaying the different dollhouses to her friends, family, and neighbors. When the event was a hit she decided to pursue the business idea.
Alyson started going to farmers markets in order to learn more about her audience and to find a way to market her product. She also used this time to test out displays along with new designs. After solidifying some ideas she launched a Kickstarter to get her product out there. After a successful Kickstart campaign, Alyson decided to take her product to tradeshows. Tradeshows allowed her to sell her product in bulk to toy companies and other stores.
After struggling through the design and launch of her product, Alyson learned her first lesson, which involved letting go. She visited one of the dollhouse displays at one of the toy stores and found that the paper was warping, the wood was out of place, and the overall look of the display wasn’t up to her standards. Even though she felt defeated, Alyson learned to let go and decided to recreate! She went back to the idea of having an all paper product and redesigned the packaging to portray a different message.
In the face of this failure, Alyson decided to take ownership and fix what was broken. After fixing these issues she was happier with her product and customers responded.
“Sticking with it brings opportunities you never would have imagined”
The final lesson Alyson had for the audience was that sometimes your perception of failure sends you off track. Is what you’re doing a true failure or is it just not up to your standards? It’s important to distinguish between the two and know when you’re being too hard on yourself.
