Making It-The unlikely merger of high tech and home crafting has led to the creation of a whole new Web business

Jennifer Perkins has come a long way from fishing-tackle earrings.

The Austin, Texas, resident got an early start in the jewelry-making business selling earrings made out of fishing lures during garage sales in junior high. Design problems abounded — the sparkly earrings often started out covered in "slimy bait juice," she says — but the bug for craft-making had bitten.

By ERIN SCHULTE Wall St. Journal

Today, Ms. Perkins, 28 years old, is part of a new generation of crafters making a living off the unlikely marriage of high tech and home crafting. Her Web site, NaughtySecretaryClub.com (http://www.naughtysecretaryclub.com), specializes in original resin and revamped vintage jewelry, whose designs are decidedly more sophisticated than fishing tackle.

Ms. Perkins, a former secretary, had only dabbled in online sales until this summer, when one of her products was featured in Bust magazine, a general-interest women’s magazine with a feminist voice that often features do-it-yourself craft projects. A flurry of orders from both retail and wholesale customers inundated her inbox afterward. "It got out of control," Ms. Perkins says. "I had to give three days’ notice at my job" to fill the crush of orders.

Since then, she has expanded offline, selling to boutiques in the Austin area and around the country, and demand has been good enough that she never had to go back to working the switchboard and typing memos.

"I’ve always liked to make stuff, and it’s better than sitting at a desk answering phones. It’s something I made, and I get to be much more creative," says Ms. Perkins.

Whether for economic reasons or as a way to express their creativity, more 20- and 30-something crafters — knitters, sewers and jewelry makers among them — are coming out of the craft closet and taking to the Web to buy and sell original products, swap tips and brainstorm. While their mothers may have given up domestic pursuits in favor of the fast track, the Internet has helped some of these new crafty types forgo the typical corporate careers to pursue home Web businesses.

Web Makes It Easy

Tina Lockwood, 26, says the Internet gave her an affordable entry into the difficult and risky world of small business. The Austin resident says her Internet crafting business, SparkleCraft.com (http://www.sparklecraft.com), vaulted her to a place where she was able to quit her full-time job at a marketing company after only a few years.

"There’s an ease factor," she says of her online venture, whose offerings include homemade purses and guitar straps in fabrics like zebra-stripe and camouflage. If the Internet "wasn’t available, it would’ve taken a lot longer to get started, and with a store, you have to have a lot of money upfront for rent and utilities and fixtures and whatever else is involved with a storefront."

Her virtual shop costs about $15 a year for the domain-name rights, and $10 or $15 a month for the Web-hosting service, she says, plus the price of materials. She taught herself Web-page programming, so she was able to build the site herself, saving even more. Her site offers myriad links to other crafting sites, creating a virtual mall of homemade clothes, jewelry, purses, accessories and home decorations. While Ms. Lockwood says she eventually would have started the business had the Web not been an option, the site makes it easier to catch the eye of out-of-town retailers — and customers.

For instance, clothing designer Amy Sperber could shop in her pick of any big-name clothing store when she steps out of her office on New York’s Fifth Avenue. But Ms. Sperber, 27, says she finds the most original baubles and bags when she goes shopping online. One-of-a-kind jewelry, homemade purses with embroidery-hoop handles and other treasures she digs up on the Internet make her the envy of her fashion-savvy friends.

"My girlfriends are always wanting to steal it," Ms. Sperber says of the jewelry she snapped up from Ms. Perkins’s site.

Crafty Cachet

Those who hawk their wares on the Web are bringing increased visibility and cachet to the production of home goods, industry watchers say. They also are helping fuel growth in the craft and hobby materials industry, which saw sales up 11% in 2001 at $25.6 million, according to the Hobby Industry Association in Elmwood Park, N.J. Craft purchases are on track to increase again in 2002 in spite of the slowing economy, with $27 billion in sales between July 2001 and June 2002. A recent study by the association also found that 63% of crafters look for ideas online and 27% look for craft products to buy online.

More than 2,000 discussion groups on Yahoo are devoted to crafting. Of those, 419 are about knitting — one of the hottest crafts right now. The largest group, Socknitters, has more than 4,000 members, as does Knittingnews, the second largest. (Socknitters also has its own Web site apart from the Yahoo group.)

Getcrafty.com (http://www.getcrafty.com), a Web site dedicated to crafting, has seen its message boards explode in popularity during the four years it’s been up and running. The site has about 225,000 unique visitors and a million page views a month — twice as many as it did a year ago. Online craft retailers who get a mention on Glitter, Getcrafty’s family of message boards, say they see a quick and definite uptick in sales.

David Rodgers, an analyst for Cleveland-based McDonald Investments, says craft-material suppliers are benefiting from a "cocooning effect, the nesting effect of people staying home more" as well as the recent housing boom and subsequent flurry of decorating. "They’re focused on the home, their families, and perhaps that has to do with the [downturn in] the economy," Mr. Rodgers says.

Callie Janoff, 31, a free-lance business manager in New York and avid crafter, says a driving force behind the renewed interest in crafting is that women of her generation — as opposed to those in the 1960s and ’70s who put down their knitting needles and flocked to the workplace — may feel freer to spend their time crafting, a sentiment echoed by many in the business.

"People were more interested in becoming more neutral in terms of their gender activity, and that involved a lot of corporate work," Ms. Janoff says. "What’s happening now is like third-generation feminism: I feel empowered to do whatever makes me happy. I can do whatever I want. It’s post-post-feminist."

Crafters find satisfaction outside the workaday world, where "you go to work and you do your work and someone gives you a dollar. It has nothing to do with real accomplishment or your self-worth or what you can do," she adds. "When you craft, you are doing something that is so satisfying. You can knit this scarf. And when you’re done, you are done and you did it all by yourself."

Joelle Hoverson, 35, owner of the upscale yarn store Purl, in New York’s trendy SoHo neighborhood, agrees with Ms. Janoff’s empowerment theory. "Our generation says, ‘We can own a [craft] business, it’s not a conflict to do both.’ There used to be a perception that it’s not a real business. This is a viable business."

Ms. Hoverson’s store is a testament to that, crawling nightly with women in search of luxury blends like cashmere or silk.

While some may write off the resurgence of interest in handmade goods as a fad, many in the crafting world think it’s a trend with staying power. "I do think it’s a trend, but it’s not going to go away tomorrow," Ms. Hoverson says. "Half of crafters get really into it, and if you’re really into it, you’re going to stay into it."

–Ms. Schulte is a staff reporter of The Wall Street Journal Online in New York.

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