Brittany & Debbie Travis recently launched a premium craft & gift company B+D Custom Crafts
Hello! We’re Brittany and Debbie Travis, a Minnesota mother/daughter duo, who recently launched our premium craft and gift company B+D Custom Crafts.
What started as a conversation in the car about our lifelong love for creating personalized gifts, quickly turned into a dream to help others easily do the same.
Centered around the power of personalization, B+D Custom Crafts exists to help our clients easily turn aspiration into reality with crafting kits, customized gift sets & hand-made decor that can be tailored to their unique needs.
Designing and sourcing only the best materials we’ve tried and tested in our own homes, our full line of products are suited for everything from home and office to holidays and special events.
Brittany & Debbie recently launched a premium craft & gift company B+D Custom Crafts!
What is something you found MAIA to be useful for?
The MAIA database has been a wonderful resource for us as we look to find new and local partners to work with in sourcing our crafting materials and new gift set items. Whereas I used to have to spend hours, sometimes days, sifting through search results and misc. websites, I can now simply find a curated list of women-owned businesses in my area in a matter of minutes. They’ve truly made it easier for us to support fellow badass women in our community!
What is one important lesson you learned?
One piece of advice we received right when we started that has stuck with us is ‘No one is going to care about your business as much as you do.’
To us, that means it’s up to us to show the world why what we’re doing matters and to actively pursue new opportunities rather than wait for permission and approval from the outside.
It’s our job to bring our passion and our vision to life with relentless commitment, and so far, that outlook has helped us grow beyond what we thought was possible in our first year.
Imagine you can choose how your future in 5 years looks like. What is it? Why?
In five years, we aspire to be known as the leader, both locally and nationally, in making premium DIY and customized gifting more accessible.
We’ve found that our clients love the idea of adding a personalized touch to their gifts and decor and are swimming in inspiration from social media, but don’t quite know where to start.
What we’ve done is look to make it as turnkey as possible for our clients to have fun bringing their unique vision for a premium gift or piece of decor to life from high-quality goods & materials that we've tried, tested and, often times, designed in our own homes.
We want to bring a joy and ease to customized gifting with the option to choose each and every premium item that goes into your gift set while allowing our clients to both stay within budget and tailor that gifting experience to the recipient.
We’ve just opened our first retail space within Fourpost at the Mall of America and have aspirations to expand to additional locations in addition to growing our wholesale retail partnerships with makers around the country.
On a product level, we’re always actively listening to our clients to find ways to bring their aspirations with crafting and gifting to life. We continue to add new products, including high-quality goods from local makers, to our gift set and crafting lines all in an effort to become the one-stop-shop for all things customized.
We're only 14 months out since launch, but in that short window, we've been able to create a unique brand that's built on strong customer service & creating a positive, memorable experience for our clients.
What do you think about company culture? What are some of your tips on being a good leader?
How we define our culture sets the tone for all we do as a business.
For us, company culture is holistic and goes beyond just how we interact with our employees internally, but how we engage our clients and partners, present ourselves to the world on a daily basis and sort which opportunities to chase.
We believe it’s the foundation from which all brand interactions need to sprout, and it should paint a clear picture of who you are, what you stand for and conversely, how your employees should then interact & engage with clients, partners, etc.
We intentionally say our employees and partners are working with us not for us, because we believe that we need to be a cohesive team, each leveraging our individual areas of expertise to collectively bring the business forward.
In leading by example, hiring to our values and then consistently living by those values, we hope to create a culture where everyone feels engaged, accountable and empowered to contribute.