Introduction

It’s taken me a long time to put together this post. This isn’t just because I was trying to unpack all of the reasoning behind deciding to close my small business but also, because I was worried about any potential negative feelings or backlash. 

I’m not really sure that this is the type of thing other people would find interesting as it’s so unique to my own situation. However, I still wanted to write this as closure for myself and a way of closing down the chapter that was being a small business owner – all while also providing a perspective that is often omitted when reading about closures. I’m going to try to format this post in as easy-to-follow of a format as I can and hopefully, something readable will come out of it.

About my business

I started House of Callaway back in 2016. It was an online store selling reusable cloth menstrual pads. Initially, my passion came from the whole subject feeling like a well-kept secret. I’d struggled for a while with allergic skin reactions to disposable sanitary pads and was thrilled to find another option. My business was a way of sharing how amazing cloth pads can be (for the user and the environment) with the world. It was also the beginning of my love of discussing all things taboo as a way of destigmatising subjects like menstruation.

House of Callaway was home-based, meaning I created all of the products myself at home (i.e., no big factory to help) and, besides some occasional help from my partner or mother, I did everything myself. Originally, the business was a partnership between myself and my partner, but we dissolved this at the end of the 21-22 tax year as it no longer benefited us to remain in that status. On 31 March 2023, I closed the shop for the last time.

All of the reasons I decided to close my business

This section will be a series of subheadings tackling each issue, one at a time. When I told people that it was far more complicated than just ‘the economy’, I wasn’t making it up!

It lost its spark for me

For the first few years, I loved being a business owner. I even loved calculating the taxes and that’s something you don’t hear very often in the world of business. However, so many things changed over time despite the business remaining static. Throughout House of Callaway’s existence as an ecommerce store, I graduated university, moved back home, qualified as a FAM instructor, got a full-time day job (and changed that 3 times), bought a house and did what felt like a million DIY projects on it and finally, started learning web development via this blog. The shop was a source of stability for me but I couldn’t help but feel over the years that it was losing relevance in my life. I no longer identified with the woman I was when I submitted those first HMRC registration forms. I also couldn’t run from the fact I was finding it increasingly more challenging to run a business alongside full-time day jobs and running a house. With all my heart, I wanted to remain firmly committed to what I had started but I couldn’t stop myself from falling out of love with the fantasy of doing it for the rest of my life.

It ran its course

As an extension to the above point, there were also several limiting factors that meant I couldn’t bring House of Callaway out of its state of stagnant stability. I was often inundated with requests to provide wholesale orders to various large organisations. The problem was it was always just me. Me and my mortgage and day-job. It wasn’t feasible for me to take on personal loans to upscale to hire help nor was it possible for me to attempt to meet the order quantities requested when I was running out of hours in the day most days. 

Another glaring issue was the fact I was never able to ship to the US. The FDA states that cloth pads are a ‘medical device’ and therefore, I would have needed to pay the registration fees relating to the sale of this category of product. These fees are several thousand. If I didn’t pay, I’d risk fines of similar magnitude.

I also decided to disable the option to ship to EU countries following Brexit as the uncertainty of customs and regulations was something I just didn’t have the headspace to navigate. There was also very little information out there for businesses of this nature. 

One evening during lockdown, I was on Zoom to some old friends trying to tell them why I was thinking of bringing things to an end. After the initial shock, they began to understand and one of the girls took the words right out of my mouth when she said it had ‘run its course’. It truly had, there was nothing more that I could have done that would have made a difference or not impacted me negatively on a personal or financial level.

The ugly truth about finances

Contrary to popular belief, a business closing does not immediately mean they ‘went broke’ and this was no different for House of Callaway. Cloth pads are one of those products where, if you’re a good enough maker, you shouldn’t see customers returning to you too quickly – past customers messaged me after the notice about the closure to let me know that their stash was still going strong after a long time. The business made enough to pay all the related costs with a little extra for me.

The issue with the ‘little extra for me’ part was that it was never enough that I could reduce my day job’s hours or quit altogether to grow the business. It also wasn’t substantial enough to cover chunks of any household bills. For a long time, I was running the business out of passion rather than it being a high earner for me. As I mentioned before, my passion slowly started to recede over time.

No longer special or interesting to people

In 2016, people considered House of Callaway unique. Of course, it wasn’t, there’s always been a whole community of cloth pad makers and resellers out there, but it wasn’t exactly mainstream. After making it into the national media regarding all the hate we’d received, business blew up and we continually sold out of stock week after week. As with all things, the hype died off over time, but we still did well for a few years.

But cloth became far more mainstream with bigger names joining the scene. Customers began to favour more easily available options (big online or brick-and-mortar stores as opposed to my small, relatively unknown website). Also, there was the factor of the novelty wearing off for many as it was no longer a new and exciting concept. Further to this, I believe there was a small number who potentially had tried other, possibly poor-quality options out there too where they had had a bad experience so had no desire to seek out smaller, independent makers. 

What I’m focusing on moving forward

Moving on from all the House of Callaway-specific topics relating to the closure, I wanted to touch on what has held my interest in recent times and what projects I’m focusing on for the future. 

Me time

Since the business’ closure, for what feels like the first time in my life, I no longer feel an immense amount of pressure to comply with a particular lifestyle. Before, I had fitted myself into the box of ‘responsible business owner’ and, not that I’m giving up being a sensible, responsible person, but I now feel like I can be whatever type of person I’d like to be. I feel free from needing to act a particular way online or in person because I’m no longer representing an entire brand all by myself. This creative freedom has allowed me to think about all the projects I’ve put off over the years due to lack of time. Whether it’s a long-forgotten DIY project, writing poetry just for the fun of it or spending time on basic self-care, I’m really enjoying this different pace.

Heading back to learning

While I haven’t started this yet, it’s a goal of mine to delve more deeply into web development and take a few online courses. I honestly believe that starting Stories of a Millennial was one of my best decisions in recent years as it’s really opened a whole new skillset for me to explore. In my school and uni days, I was somewhat of a try-hard but struggled to find mainstream subject matter enticing enough to want to go deeper. Web development, currently, feels like a whole new world just sitting there for me to explore. 

Embracing my love of writing

Right now, I have several writing projects on the go. I already released a new short story and poetry compilation book and have placed in a few local writing competitions that I’ve entered. I’m really enjoying heading back into this long-term love of mine and I’m eager to share some of it with the world as and when I produce things (I’m currently publishing on a Wattpad account). I’ve also been working on a memoir where I’ve written about the longer-form life lessons I’d love to share with others that might have been a little too long for a blog post.

Conclusion

I’m really hoping that this post helped to clear the air on why I closed my business. I wanted to provide clarity and remove any assumptions – like something bad had happened for example. I also wanted to write this as almost a self-reflection activity – for a while, I struggled with the idea that I’d ‘failed’ but nothing in life is forever and this was a decision I made myself to move on.