Isabelle Sugden is an artist and illustrator with a passion for creating art that celebrates the joys of nature and the everyday.
She creates original artworks, limited edition prints and unique hand-painted homewares, as well as offering art commissions and hand-painted stationery design services.
Isabelle's Re:Create Story
Having launched her business in 2023, Isabelle applied to Re:Create to improve her marketing knowledge and skills and to diversify and grow her income streams. We paired Isabelle with branding expert and business mentor, Laura Mulhern, to help her achieve her goals. She worked with Isabelle to hone her brand identity and define her business offering and story.
“I found the mentoring incredibly helpful, especially with regards to marketing and helping to pull together a formal marketing strategy which I now have in place to action… I also found it helpful having someone to critically review various elements of my business strategy, helping me to consider short and longer-term goals and realistic milestones.
I now have a marketing strategy with various tasks that I am actioning over time, including website changes to make my e-commerce more user-friendly, the creation of a monthly newsletter to help engage with my audience and capture their attention and the creation of sales incentives.”
This process has given Isabelle a boost in her business skills: “I am now more clear and confident when talking about my business to new people and when trying to sell my services,” she said.
Networking with Re:Create
Alongside the 1-2-1 mentoring, Isabelle leveraged the opportunities to broaden her network with other creatives on the programme. Commenting on the Re:Create networking event at Somerset House for creative businesses she said:
“I found this event incredibly useful – I made a number of connections with other creatives and I have met up outside of the programme with one or two, to share ideas based on similar work practises”
Alongside the benefits of knowledge-sharing in her new network, Isabelle discovered promising work opportunities from people she met at the event.
“I now feel more confident to reach out to other businesses, where I believe there could be a strategic alignment, via promoting each other’s businesses, offering them one of my services or benefiting from their client base.”
Heading into the new financial year, Isabelle has a clear path and confidence to deliver, capitalising on the skills and experience gained on Re:Create. She fully expects to see increases in her income as a result.
