How Holly Potvin Built and Ran Her Longarm Quilting Business in Connecticut

0:00 Without any further ado, let's get on to talking to Holly here.

0:27 Holly, first of all, what part of the country are you from? Where are you located?

0:34 I'm from the east coast. I live in Wallingford, Connecticut at the moment.

0:39 I had my business in Colchester, Connecticut. That's not like an

0:48 out-in-the-country part of the country, is it? No, Connecticut is one of the most

0:55 populated states. We're kind of wedged between New York and Massachusetts, between New York City

1:01 and Boston. It's very well populated, and you can get from one end to the other in about two hours.

1:11 That sounds like a lot of activity packed into a small space.

1:16 It is indeed. Well, Holly, how long have you been

1:23 quilting, and how long have you been long-arming, or are they one and the same?

1:30 No, they're not. I have been quilting for 43 years. First quilt I made was a baby quilt, so my one child

1:38 is 43 years old, and I've been long-arming since 2003.

1:47 That's a pretty good way to keep track of how long you've been quilting,

1:53 the baby quilt for your child. That's pretty good. So, with long-arming,

2:01 2003, did you start out with a gamel at that time? I did. I bought my first gamel with bonus

2:10 money. I had a pretty successful insurance career. A lot of people who work in Connecticut work in

2:16 insurance, and I was doing pretty well, and it was a good bonus year, and I decided to

2:22 treat myself. So, I bought a freehand gamel at that point in time. Okay, when you said bonus

2:28 money, I'm saying, wait a minute, how do you get this bonus money? So, you had a good year at

2:33 work that year. It was a good year. Okay, gotcha. So, you started out with a gamel.

2:43 Why did you choose to go with a gamel at that point? Do you remember?

2:48 I do. From my perspective at that point, and probably still now, gamel has a reputation of

2:56 being the strongest, the sturdiest, the best. So, I did go to a show initially where you could

3:06 see all the various long-arms, and I was pleased with what I saw, and I was pleased with how I had

3:15 seen advertisement about it. Don't know that I had ever known anyone who owned one before I actually

3:22 went to that show. Got you, and a lot of the people that I talk to that go to

3:29 Quilting with Confidence, or they've seen one of the machines at a show, one of the

3:35 words I hear oftentimes is just industrial strong, and it is industrial, but yet

3:43 at the same time, you can move it with your fingertips. So, when you, well,

3:52 why did you decide to start long-arming in the first place? How did you get it?

4:00 What led you into that? Well, having been quilting for a long time, and trying various and sundry

4:08 forms of quilting, it just seemed like a natural transition to get into long-arming. I had the

4:14 Freon machine for the first five years, and worked pretty hard at it, took lots of classes, practiced

4:22 pretty hard, did a few quilts for others, but in all honesty, Bobby, I never felt I got really good at it.

4:31 Okay, so, but before you did that, all those years that you were doing

4:39 non-long-arm quilting, so how did you get into that in the first

4:47 place? Was it just family, or is it just something that you... Wanted to make a baby quilt.

4:54 Okay, so that was actually the thing that started you in it in the first place.

4:59 My mother was a sewer, sewed her own clothes right into her 80s, so I grew up sewing, but no one in

5:07 the family was a quilter, and I wanted to make a baby quilt, and I just thought it looked like an

5:13 interesting hobby. I thought as a new mother, I'd have lots of time on my hands, and that was

5:18 obviously a very naive thought. But obviously, you liked it enough to stay with it for

5:27 quite some time. I did, you know, I'm from a family that had a lot of hobbies. Apparently it became something you enjoyed doing.

5:35 Yeah, we've always had hobbies in the family, and I tried a lot of other hobbies, but quilting is the

5:41 one that has just stuck with me for 43 years, and I quilt daily at this point in time.

5:48 Quilt daily, okay, yeah, we're going to get to that. So, you got the hand-guided machine.

5:56 Do you still have the same one today, or? Oh, no. In 2009, I switched to a Statler Stitcher.

6:06 Okay. I decided that my employment status had changed. I had a golden handshake opportunity

6:14 somewhere along the line, and I said, you know, I'm retired from real work. Why don't I take on a

6:21 different kind of job? And it was pretty easy to justify the Statler Stitcher from the business

6:27 perspective. So, I did, but I'm still not on the same machine I had then. Okay, one, two, three,

6:38 I think I have owned four Statler Stitchers. Okay, all right. When you first got the Statler,

6:47 did that coincide with us starting a business, or had you already started? I'd already started

6:53 the business to a certain degree. It coincided with taking the business seriously and deciding

7:00 I really wanted to earn some money at it and work hard at it. We built a studio for me

7:09 on the property that we owned, and I decided I was going to be a professional quilter.

7:15 Okay, okay. So, at the time you started with the Statler, did that coincide with you

7:23 retiring from the other job? I'd retired a little before then. Okay, okay. So, that dovetailed

7:31 pretty nicely though. So, fast forwarding, you got into the business there, and

7:43 how long did you have a quilting business? I ran it pretty close to full-time from 2009 to 2016.

7:54 Much of that time I had two Statlers. I had one inside the house and one in the studio.

8:01 Also had a little mini shop, taught quilting lessons to people, and just really was

8:10 working pretty hard at it. And during that time, about how many hours a week

8:19 would you say you were working? By the time I hit 2014, 15, 16, I was working

8:30 at least 40 hours a week. I was doing pretty well. There were not a whole lot of other people

8:37 with Statler's Didgers at that point in time, and I, from the start, promised a two-week turnaround,

8:46 which brought me some good business. Okay, were you able to keep up with that? I did.

8:53 Went back and forth between two machines. So, it was just you running the two machines all the time,

9:00 huh? Correct. Wow. So, do you know how many quilts a year you were making?

9:11 No, I do not have any of that statistical information. I probably produce a quilt a week

9:20 right now. You probably do produce a quilt a week? Yeah, I produce a quilt a week, and that's with no business at all.

9:30 So, yeah. So, there came a point where you retired from your business, and we're going to

9:36 get to that also. But I want to talk a little bit about the practical aspects of your business

9:45 that you were, because you've got experience, and a lot of people watching this,

9:52 that's the value of this podcast to a lot of people, is just getting a unique person like yourself

9:59 perspective on the things, how they ran their business. So,

10:05 when you were running it, were you doing strictly edge-to-edge when you

10:12 had the two statlers, or were you doing any custom? No, I was doing both custom and edge-to-edge.

10:20 There was a quilt shop about three miles from my home, and I established a very good working

10:25 relationship with the owner of the quilt shop. That was a good way to gain business, and I was at

10:32 a phase, excuse me, a phase of life where I could focus on the business. It's not like I had this

10:39 other job from nine to five. I could focus on the business, and I made myself readily accessible

10:45 to customers when they needed it. So, when you first started, did you know that there were

10:55 enough customers, enough business? Did you feel confident in that part of it?

11:04 Good question, and I'm not sure that I did know that. You had to struggle with it.

11:10 I'm sorry, you cut off for just a second there. When you first started, what was the customer,

11:16 did you know there were enough customers in the area? I had a hunch, but I didn't really know.

11:24 You know, I had a core of friends that were quilters, and I think it was quite different than it is right now,

11:34 to tell you the truth, Bobby, because I don't know where other people are, but in Connecticut,

11:41 most of the quilt shops currently have a longarm within their walls, and many of them are selling

11:48 longarms. So, it's certainly a different marketplace right now than when I started.

11:56 Okay, so let's see. When you were, how did you charge by, do you charge by the hour,

12:08 or by the square inch? I charge by the square inch. When I was running the two machines, that

12:15 would have been complicated to figure out the hourly rate. I timed myself

12:23 on a few quilts to help me establish my price, and then there's a, you know, there's a going

12:31 rate, so to speak, in most areas. Can you tell us how much you were charging? I was charging

12:38 two and a half cents a square inch for edge-to-edge, and as you went up, added a border,

12:45 added this, added that, it went up to eight, nine cents a square inch for really complex stuff.

12:53 Okay, okay. All right, so, and you know, some of the people I talk to, I'll talk to people,

13:06 some of them have every little jot and tittle of information about every quilt they've done.

13:14 They can, you know, that question, how many quilts have you done? They'll pull out a big

13:18 ream of paper and say, well, I did, you know, 291 or something, you know, and on the other

13:26 end of the extreme, you know, there's so many people that are just like you, that just, you know,

13:30 just do it, do the quilting, produce the quilts, so I can definitely understand that part. I think

13:37 if I was a running a quilting business myself, I would be your kind of person. I wouldn't be

13:44 able to tell how many I've made. You know, I had records available to me, you know, you need such

13:50 things when you're running a taxable business, but at this stage of my life, I don't need any of

13:56 those records anymore. Yeah, that's gone out. Yeah, I got you, I got you. So, all right,

14:05 2016, is that when you retired from this business? I did. My business was doing very well.

14:15 I was working really hard, and life threw me a couple of curveballs. I lost my mother and

14:23 my husband within six weeks of each other, and took that as a sign that I needed to reassess

14:30 my situation and what I wanted to do with my life, and financially, I didn't need to be working.

14:40 So, I chose to shut down my business and move to be near my one child and his family. So,

14:48 life does that to you sometimes. Well, and I think everybody watching can definitely

14:54 understand that, and yeah, that's a huge curve, you know, losing loved ones, but

15:08 I did pick up on something you said a while ago, that you're still

15:13 quilting seven days a week. That doesn't sound much like retiring to me there, Holly.

15:18 Well, I'm a firm believer that everyone who's retired needs a hobby,

15:25 so I guess you could call this my hobby, but quilting is what keeps me sane, keeps me happy,

15:33 keeps me with friends, and I was able to pick up and move 45-50 minutes from where I was, and

15:44 establish new friends through quilting. So, yes, I just, I'm very passionate about quilting.

15:52 Yeah, and I think anybody watching this can tell that that is a fact.

15:58 That is a fact. Well, if I could ask you just a couple of questions.

16:07 I think people appreciate the fact that you're just being open and honest about everybody's

16:12 got their own story, and you lost two of the closest people in your life to you,

16:18 and that triggered you taking a different direction in life, but you did have the

16:25 business for a number of years there, and when you're starting the business out,

16:36 is there any advice that you could give someone who would ask what was some of the hardest parts of

16:43 growing a business or running your business at that time?

16:48 Well, I think it's always hard to start any new business and grow a new business,

16:52 particularly a service-oriented business. One of the hardest parts I had was when I made a mistake,

17:03 a big mistake on a customer's quilt, and had to apologize up and down and fix mistakes and

17:13 eat the money that I would have received. That's hard. That's a hard lesson to learn,

17:20 but it is part of running a business. Sometimes we make mistakes.

17:24 Can you tell us anything about a particular thing like that?

17:31 If you make a hole in somebody's quilt, from my perspective, I felt I needed to give them a

17:39 significant reduction in the cost, as well as figure out what to do with that hole, and that

17:45 might mean running up to the store and buying a beautiful applique butterfly that went to the

17:51 quilt and sewing that on, but you always had to be honest with the customer, too, that it was your

17:57 fault. I'm just asking you because the people watching, they're going to encounter the very

18:07 same things. It helps them to see that somebody like you has traveled that hard path before them,

18:19 and you survived it. You will run into customers that you cannot make happy no matter what you do,

18:27 and that's not a reflection of you. Really? Are there people like that out there?

18:33 There are, indeed.

18:35 So, yeah, so how would you, if you're dealing with somebody that's really difficult to deal

18:42 with, a customer that you're trying to make something for, do you have any advice on that?

18:48 Well, I would do whatever I needed to do to satisfy them on that particular quilt,

18:55 and then suggest to them that they need to find another long armor.

18:59 But they'll still badmouth you, anyway.

19:04 Sometimes you just can't get away from it, huh?

19:10 Well, Holly, I really appreciate you sharing your story with us.

19:17 That, you know, just the fact of being real with everybody, I know that

19:23 that brings encouragement to a lot of people, you know, because they see that what you've done,

19:29 and you were able to be successful, and they can do it.

19:35 It's a fun business. It's a people business.

19:39 Do you have any piece of advice, like people that are beginning this,

19:45 they're thinking about beginning a journey with a business with their quilting machine,

19:50 do you think that it is something that can still be done in this day and age, and if so, why?

20:00 and if not, why not? Well, I think it's harder to do now than when I started mine, largely because

20:09 of so many quilt shops having their own long arms. Can it be done? Definitely. I personally think you

20:17 need to establish a niche. For me, the two-week turnaround that I established when I started

20:24 was hard to meet sometimes, but my customers knew that I could meet that demand for them.

20:35 Edge to edge is the bread and butter of the business. Being honest with clients, you get a

20:42 quilt coming in that you think should be custom quilted, but their budget only allows for edge to

20:49 edge. You need to give them what they want, what they can afford, and you need to be flexible, and

20:58 in all honesty, the prettiest of quilts are just fine with a beautiful edge to edge done by a

21:04 statler stitcher, of course. Well, let's see, there was something else I was going to say there.

21:13 Do you ever have it when a thought just leaves your head there? Oh, yes. I do have one question.

21:20 Karen is asking, do you have a website or any place? I did while I was running

21:28 the business. I had a website. My daughter-in-law is a high school art teacher and helped me

21:36 create that with, I think it was WIX at the time, and it was a way to bring

21:45 business. I do think social media is very different now than when I started my business, and

21:52 you can gain a lot of business through that, but I got very little of my business through my website.

22:00 Did you have business cards or anything that you definitely pass out? Definitely had business

22:06 cards. I had pens made with my name on it, things like that, giveaways for the best of customers,

22:13 things like that. Okay. It's a people business. Yes. Oh, no, now I remembered what I was going to say.

22:22 You mentioned a niche, and I've heard that from many different people,

22:29 that the exact same thing that you said, probably at least 50 percent of our people mention

22:35 how valuable it is to have a niche that you do. I think it's a lot of

22:43 times it's something that you, like just some little detail that they really enjoy doing.

22:48 We've had people that give out photographs of the quilt or different things like that.

22:56 Did you have a specific niche? I think my niche was the turnaround time.

23:03 Yes, that's quick, and not everybody can do that.

23:10 It was very hard. It was a lot of work, but it was a commitment I made, and I found it fairly

23:17 easy to live up to, but I also was at a phase of life where there weren't a lot of other demands on

23:23 my time. Gotcha, and you're still doing quilting, I guess, for friends?

23:34 I quilt for a handful of friends. Gotcha. I don't guess you still have a two-week turnaround time, huh?

23:42 I do. You do, okay. Oh, Betty was asking that. A handful of friends are very special to me.

23:50 There you go, there you go. Okay, well, Holly, I want to thank you so much for joining us.

23:58 It's been very informative and inspiring to talk to you, and

24:06 I don't know if you have, you don't have anywhere nowadays where the public can get a hold of you, do you?

24:13 Good question. I guess they could reach me. I have a Facebook account,

24:21 so they could reach out to me via messenger, and I would respond.

24:29 I don't have a business card or formal address, but I'm readily available.

24:37 Okay, so if somebody wants to reach you, they can contact you probably on Facebook?

24:44 Yes, that would work. And there's probably not a whole lot of Holly Potvins out there.

24:50 I don't think so. I think that's the first time I've heard that last name.

24:54 Anyway, Holly, thank you so much, and we're going to go ahead and let you go now for

25:02 this episode of Quilting Business Success, and we'll see you guys next time. Take care.