BangOnBlanks is a business that was born out of necessity for my sister and I. The main stumbling block we had with our craft business, BebeMakes, was finding reputable a UK Craft Wholesaler who could provide us with the items we needed at a good price.
We could find items we wanted to use but they were either limited runs of stock or to get a good price we had to buy over 500 of a specific item, which isn’t easy when you are a kitchen table craft business.
We decided to launch BangOnBlanks as a Craft Buy In group on Facebook. A Buy In or Group Buying group is something that is really popular in the US at the moment, and isn’t something we have seen replicated well (there are a lot of scam groups unfortunately!) over here. We are lucky in the fact that we already ran a trusted business on Facebook and were fairly well-known to other crafters in our area from interactions online and at craft fayres so when we set up the group we already had a few people interested in joining our first buy in.
We started off with a buy in for lunchboxes and sports bottles from a UK supplier who needed a minimum order value of £500, we couldn’t meet that minimum on our own but with a group of 15 or so of us it was fairly easy. Through February and the beginning of March we probably did 4 buy ins from various suppliers, and we’re now at the stage where we are able to place much bigger orders more regularly.
We’ve got some really exciting things in the pipeline to expand our business, the plan is to become a proper B2B supplier and start getting our own products manufactured especially for our customers – it’s a big plan but we’re confident we can make it work!