Getting up at 7am, making a coffee, then opening her laptop, Bailey Faulkingham used to go right to her agenda for homework assignments to get done for the week. Starting in June 2020, she is opening her laptop to her seller dashboard where she goes to see the orders that she has to fill for her Etsy shop, Ginger and Madison.
Everything is done by herself. The beginning of Bailey’s day is spent creating inventory, making what the store currently has fabric key fobs, polymer clay earrings, and stickers. The packaging is all handmade, from the boxes she has to put together to writing small personal thank yous. The second half of the day is more marketing, posting on Instagram and Tik Tok as well as dropping off orders at the post office. Then in between running a small business on Etsy, there is also the post graduation job search that has been tampered by the pandemic.
Bailey Faulkingham is part of the Class of 2020 that had their senior years taken away from them. A recent graduate of Endicott College, she got an international and marketing business degree. Bailey was also the president and Campus Correspondent for Her Campus Endicott. She now lives in Hampton, New Hampshire with her family.The Etsy shop’s name comes from her dog’s name whose name was Ginger, and Bailey’s middle name is Madison.
Her post grad plans in February 2020 were, “Something with marketing probably in Colorado I would have thought. I may have worked in Boston. I’m not sure. But definitely something marketing, and international business related, totally not small business. I never thought I would do that.”, Bailey said.
Now thought, at the dining room table in her home in New Hampshire is a shelving structure, a Cricket printer and her laptop, that is the Ginger and Madison headquarters and factory. This operation didn’t start out like that. First, Bailey was like anyone else in the month of March – stuck inside and doing all these crafts. Her mother taught her how to sew. Then, she started making key fobs, which are the smaller kind of lanyard that fit on your wrist made out of thick fabric. Clay earrings were also the first things to go live on the shop with the key fobs, which she just learned how to make herself.
Endicott may have not prepared her on how to make key fobs, but the marketing of her company was where she is now getting the most out of her degree. Starting a new small business, Bailey knew to get all the aesthetics and look of her company ready before launching.
“Not a product but a company” was something taught in business classes at Endicott that became Ginger and Madison. “I wanted to make it like an actual business that could be turned into its own website, like to stand alone in the future.”, Bailey said.
There is a lot of independence for sellers on Etsy, the online marketplace. Making an account is free, but a part of your sales are given to the company. But coming out of graduation, a small paycheck and a feeling of accomplishment was better than submitting resume after resume.
Bailey noticed on social media, especially Tik Tok and Instagram, that there is a community for Etsy shop owners. Small businesses buy from small businesses then will promote each other on social media. Shops are not in competition with each as it might be in real life if they were on the same street. The Etsy community is a positive one that supports each other.
That community helped Ginger and Madison gain a bit of fame, which helped the initial opening of the shop in June. Bailey posted a Tik Tok of how she makes the key fob including a certain fabric that caught people’s eye. The 60 second video got 25K views and that one fabric key fob made 75 sales. Because of her marketing degree, she is hyper aware to make sure the logo is in her shot of a Tik Tok because the randomness of the For You pages reaches the widest audience than she could just do on Etsy alone.
“Tik Tok is the reason I grew, and it’s kind of scary because of all of this stuff about the app being taken away.”, said Bailey. Tik Tok is a Chinese owned brand that the Trump Administration has named an American security threat. Every week there is now the threat of the app being banned in the United States. Now small business owners have to worry about their audience being taken away.
Ginger and Madison does have an audience now of females from the ages 16 to 23 that is the audience for Tik Tok as well. Some buy key fobs for the new car keys and new license, and some buy their college’s stickers for their laptop. Bailey Faulkingham, now a post-grad, is selling on Etsy to her past self things that she would have wanted in high school and college.
Follow Bailey and Ginger + Madison
Instagram – @gingerandmadison
Tik Tok – @gingerandmadison