Binding Success

“That’s the beauty of selling online,” she says.

Wong-Kleinjan calls her company La Paperie & Cozy, and makes hand-bound sketchbooks, albums and journals to sell online at www.etsy.com. She describes the website as similar to ebay, but all things sold on the site are handmade. “It’s a full time job, but it doesn’t feel like work,” she says.

Now that she works at home, she wouldn’t trade it for anything. “I knew I wanted to work from home because it would give me a flexible schedule to do my volunteer work. I spend three and a half days a week book binding, and the rest of the days in volunteer work.” There are other advantages too, she says. The most obvious is it saves on gas money, since there is no commuting involved. By being her own boss, it gives her the ability to be creative and have control over how she runs the business. “Since I'm a planner and need organization this is perfect because I can set my own routine and stick to it strictly and I'm not at the mercy of coworkers' or a boss' time table,” she says.

Wong-Kleinjan also says with the peace and quiet of her own home, she finds it easier to concentrate on her work.

Like everything else, however, there are disadvantages. “You’re always at-work because it’s your home, so you always feel like you can’t really escape work unless you actually leave the house. I go a little stir crazy sometimes.”

She says the best way to combat it is to create an area separate from the rest of the house devoted to work, and not use the kitchen or living room as a makeshift office.

It’s also easy to get distracted while at home as well. “There’s housework to be done, and there’s other things that could be done. It takes a lot of self discipline to work from home,” Wong-Kleinjan says.

It all comes back to planning however, and she adds a good schedule is vital for working at home. “Of course, it all comes down to loving what you do. Whether you work from home or in a office, if you’re not doing something you enjoy, where you do it probably won’t make much of a difference.”

It took Wong-Kleinjan about a year to teach herself how to bind books, appropriately enough by reading books on binding. The thought of selling them didn’t occur to her until after several people asked her to make one for them. “It started from me wanting to make books for myself, because I love to write and I go through a lot of journals. I was spending a fortune on journals and thought there’s got to be a cheaper way,” she says. She adds with a laugh “So it all started from being a cheap-o.”

Once she started selling them, the business took off. Now she sells between 60 and 80 books a month. Most go to the United States, but some have ended up in the UK, Japan and India.

Wong-Kleinjan says handmade items like hers are popular because they are something that is unique and one-of-a-kind. “Handmade items are made with care and attention that is the result of skill and often-times painstaking detail and craftsmanship, something that is absent in the world of mass-production manufacturing,” she says.

She also says buying handmade is more eco-friendly, since few resources are used for storage, transportation and packaging. “It’s a win-win situation!”

Wong-Kleinjan is part of the Trans-Canada Etsy team, a group of Canadian artisans. Their team website is located at transcanadaetsyteam.blogspot.com

Her direct website is lapaperie.etsy.com