Setting up a business?

**lynseysorefingers** · 15-01-2010, 09:32 AM

Hi! Last january i left my jewellery sales job to get back to making jewellery. i was treating it more like a hobby, making jewellery for friends and family etc. Therefore i didn't register it as a business. It's going well and i want to set it up as a business but don't know where to start! i also have my workshop up the loft of my house and i'm wondering if there will be health and safety issues, a permit from working at home etc. Any advice would be fab

Here's some pics of my workshop and favour place in the house

**Carl Martin** · 15-01-2010, 10:08 AM

Hiya Lynsey, Welcome ..... got to say love the name .

Not sure about permits or the like but working from home would include, business rates of some description. Definately need to advise your insurers ref the propane (?) in the loft. I know with some building societies or lenders if you have a mortgage there are clauses precluding running a business from home.

Anyhow no idea if thats any help at all but welcome anyway.

**mochiandmocha** · 15-01-2010, 10:40 AM

Hi!
Welcome!!
Mocha and I have recently set up our business, too so if you need advice regarding on-line shop, we can maybe help!

Regarding your house and insurance, I must say we still rent our place at the moment but the landlady seems to be very nicely overlooking some aspects of our work ^_^! I know this will be another source of hassle when we actually buy a house but in the meantime, ignorance is bliss.
Ok...right it's not the professional piece of advice you were expecting, sorry...

As for where to start, well, Mocha and I started with the on-line thing and then contacted the local shops when we had a few collections to show. It's also good to ask local newspapers to write a little article about the new business (I don't know if it's relevant to where you live but up here on the Scottish North coast people are really fond of local things and events!)

As for registering, it's really easy, even we (we're French who have been living in the Uk for a few years only) found it a piece of cake (mmm cake!)! You just visit the HMRC's website and follow their help:HM Revenue & Customs: PSE1 - Thinking of working for yourself?
Again I don't know if this really applies to you since you had a shop but I hope it helps!

Well, as Tigger would say, TTFN (Tada for now!)
I hope this helped even a little..Good luck!

**lynseysorefingers** · 15-01-2010, 11:56 AM

thanks for the advice- all very useful!
i live in the west end of glasgow where there is alot of individual characters about who are looking for unqiue pieces, therefore there is plenty shops and boutiques who would be interested, hopefully. i'm definetely gonna try that out! mochi, how did you go about setting up your on-line shop?

Will really need to look into the working from home thing- my hubby and i are discussing building an out house at the bottom of the garden which might be ok.

thankx

**mochiandmocha** · 15-01-2010, 02:44 PM

for the online shop I would really recommend Create a Free Website , Free Flash Website Builder at Wix.com
Believe me, we tried a lot of others!
I would say it depends on what you want/how much money you want to spend/how much time you've got.

Wix is DIY (drag and drop) and very user-friendly. Basically you do everything your way yourself! It's got loads of templates to use if you want a flashy website in minutes, and you can customise/change it endlessly... The website itself is absolutely free , and you can upgrade for a inexpensive premium package which lets you have a domain name, online shopping cart with Paypal etc, currently $16 a month I think), and the best thing is you can start buiding it and only upgrade and start paying (for the online shop etc) when you're happy with what you've done!!!!
We did that, started with something quite basic, kept adding pages, then started paying and got a shopping cart. We started the whole thing in April, and 8 months on i would say the site looks about as good as some "professionally made" sites that cost their owners a fortune...

Some other site buidling tools we used were a nightmare, importing pictures never worked etc. Wix makes it so easy to drag, drop, crop and more.

Go and have a look at our site (Nezumiz) if you have some time, you'll see photo carousels, slideshows, a shopping cart with menus, music, comment and email forms... It's got lots of possibilities for you to play with - or you can keep it simple and clean. If you've got some pics of your jewellery you could have them for sale on a cool website in a matter of hours. Have a look at some of the stuff we've used, and feel free to ask us any questions!

Anyway, that's how we did, the self-made way! (BTW we don't work for Wix!).

Hope this helps

**agent_44** · 15-01-2010, 04:42 PM

Just a couple of quick points, as unfortunately I am in a bit of a rush!

Business rates only apply if the portion of your home you use for business, is used soley for that purpose and nothing else. So, if you have any non business items stored in there, or say the PC is used by the rest of the family, you are exempt from business rates which is good!

As for building a website (I'm a Web Developer) I would be very wary of building your entire site in Flash, especially if you want Search Engines to be able to index your site. If you are admant on building your own site and you aren't skilled in building web sites, I would personally reccommend keeping it as simple as possible, a lot of people like Mr Site, which can get you off the ground without you needing many web skills. A clean, consistent, easy to navigate site, that shows off your work well is far more important than slideshows and fancy effects, which whilst often being technically impressive actually make a website far less usable for a visitor. If you are really serious about your web site it might be worth looking in to gettting one professionally done, wether you are after a static on line brocure or an e-commerce system you can manage yourself.

Hope that's useful, and good luck!

**lynseysorefingers** · 16-01-2010, 06:56 AM

well that 's good news about the business rates- we have a computer up there and the other side of the space is used as a guest room.

My friend has built a basic web site for me. It looks ok but she only put 6 photographs in the gallery page and 6 in the commisions page. Would have liked more, it's no on-line shop.

However it is nicely formated, clean and simple to use.
She said it can be developed further once up and running so just going to go with it, see how it pans out.

Mochiandmocha, fab website. really unique looking, love your green and turquiose enamelled pieces.

**Ominicci** · 16-01-2010, 05:06 PM

Agree with Luce - a lot of us use MrSite. I have set mine up but not gone live with the shop yet as you will see (link below).

I have done the HMRC courses that you can go on after you regeister as self employed - they more concerned with how to keep financial records and do your self assessment tax return but you always learn something useful if only to hear the types of question others on the course have - maybe something you haven't thought of.

I did a thread on general expenses Self employment business expenses

and one on Motoring expenses

And had promised one on what to claim as expenses when using your own home, but I haven't got round to it yet, I'll try and do it soon.

Lucinda also did one on legal considerations HERE including insurances.

**lynseysorefingers** · 18-01-2010, 09:54 PM

thanks! very useful links

**Fi Wilson** · 19-01-2010, 12:40 PM

If it's any help I've just booked the Becoming Self-Employed and the Self-Assessment course with the HMRC via this website HM Revenue & Customs: HM Revenue & Customs Advice Teams I booked them both just before the Christmas period and I received a booking confirmation for the first course yesterday for a course (in my town - hurrah!) in February. Thought I'd have to wait much longer than that.

Fi