5 Skills You Need To Start A Vinyl Decal Business

When I first started my business I had absolutely no clue what I was doing - I had never owned a business before, I hadn’t made products to sell and I didn’t really know if I was going to succeed, but thankfully I did and these are some of the skills I feel helped me or things that I learnt and improved upon as I grew my business… 

Continue reading below … or watch the video …

The content below contains affiliate links and we may earn a commission if you shop through them, however this won't cost you anything, it just helps us to keep the site running for free. For more information on affiliate links, see the disclosure here.

#1 Patience

I get told off all the time for being too impatient, I’m really bad for it, so with my business, I’ve really had to make a conscious effort to get better at it. Machines can sometimes decide to play up and make random incisions in your decals so you have to start again.

Sometimes Cricut or Silhouette decide to update their software on the exact day you had planned to get up early to complete a load of orders - that has happened multiple times to me!

Deliveries of vinyl or packaging can get held up and you’re left waiting to complete things until they get there. Basically so much can happen that is out of your control, unless you’re able to be patient you’re going to enjoy this job a lot less. 

Image by Ralf Kunze at Pixabay

#2 Basic design knowledge

In order to make decals you really need very little design knowledge to be honest, especially if you’re just doing name or label decals, as all it takes is choosing a few pretty fonts. But to level up your business it is really helpful to develop an understanding of design principles, what looks good and what is appealing to customers.

I’ve got a couple of graphic design books (Graphic Design School and Know Your Onions) that I’ve flicked through, and have watched some YouTube videos on the subject. But to be honest, the way I’ve honed my skills is just by doing lots of designing and learning over time about what does well and what kinds of fonts and designs are popular with customers. So it’s very much an ongoing process.

#3 Ability to spot trends

Kind of leading on from the last one, the ability to spot trends is really important for staying ahead of your competitors. As I’ve mentioned in a previous video (that one was all about finding a niche, I’ll link it here if you’re interested), if you’re just copying exactly what other people are doing and using the same fonts as them, you’re already too late to the game. The best thing to do is to keep an eye on what is popular on Instagram or Pinterest, or in fashion, or interiors and try to look ahead to see how you can offer decals that might go alongside that.

For instance, a few years ago I noticed I was seeing more and more pictures of really minimal decor and block writing being used in weddings on Pinterest, so I added a whole new range of minimal style wedding decals and they’ve been really popular so far. 

#4 Attention to detail

This is really important for decals as it’s so easy, especially when you’re doing smaller decals, to end up with a letter out of place or a dot of an ‘i’ missing, and it’s little things like that, which make the difference between a good and a bad quality product. It’s another thing that you will probably become better at with time too the more you make decals. 

#5 Customer service & being nice to your buyers

This one is the most important in my opinion.

You could be amazing at the last four but without good customer service, your business is going to crash and burn. I’m not going to lie, sometimes I shout at the computer if I’ve got a bit of a difficult customer, but they would never know it as my replies are always sweetness and light. That’s not to say you should just have to deal with extremely rude customers and let people walk all over you, but there’s a way to handle them that means you’re less likely to end up with a bad review and an even more annoyed customer. 

Your business will grow much quicker if you are prepared to go above and beyond for your customers, which in turn is more likely to get you personal recommendations.

Image by Maddison Oren at Unsplash

All of these skills you can learn and improve upon. Anyone can sell decals if you are passionate enough about it and want to make money with your Cricut or Silhouette machine. 

I hope this was helpful, please remember to ‘Like’, ‘Follow’ and ‘Subscribe’ if you would like to learn more.