Why I Moved Away From Disney
The reasons that I decided to focus on my own original designs, and why some days I regret falling into the magic a little too much.
I realised the other day that I hadn't actually really gone into detail about why I stopped doing Disney inspired products in my shop. So for anyone interested, I thought I'd share my thoughts and experiences of running a small business selling products inspired by a fandom, and how I am where I am today.
I started this business technically in 2018 (I'm actually currently writing a blog post on the history of HJDS!) when I designed a print for myself as we (my husband and I) had recently gotten married, and there wasn't really anything out there I liked. And as I am an illustrator and designer, I thought why not just do my own!
Around the same time, we had just come back from our honeymoon to Walt Disney World and I decided I wanted some prints of both the Disneyland Paris and WDW castles for our home, but I wanted something a bit less colourful and more minimal (you wouldn't think looking at my work and home now), so I drew the two castles as line art illustrations. I posted these on my instagram at the time, and got really positive responses to the Disney prints, so when I launched my first full range of products in May 2019, I included the two prints in my shop, alongside botanical drawing and personalised typography prints.
Obviously I was just starting out, so sales were slow, but particularly once 202o hit, sales of my Disney prints increased as people wanted some magic at home as they couldn't visit the parks. So I decided to draw some more icons from the parks, and it kind of just escalated from there.
I ended up doing notepads, which then lead to bookmarks, foil prints (which have been my biggest product success to this day) and more, and I also started doing HP inspired too (the wizard series, not the sauce...)
Now, it was largely to do with the HP products that were part of the reason that I ultimately decided last year to move away from Disney.
I'd gone full time with the business in March 2021, and grew my following on social media, and at this point, pretty much everything in my shop (not all) was Disney (or HP) inspired and that was pretty much all I was marketing. Don't get me wrong, I loved doing it, loved designing and making these products.
