Julia Gauger

I am Julia Gauger and I live in a small city in the Basque Country called Eibar. The project is still in its infancy, I just acquired a workshop to work on a regular and constant basis. I expect to carry out my small business under the name HORMAND during 2022 as well as develop a website to make myself known.

My connection with craftwork is purely vocational and self-taught. After toying with many techniques, since a year ago I am focusing on creating objects with materials produced in my environment, consisting mainly of cement mixed with other materials.

I place an emphasis on the selection of materials, in order to guarantee high quality and traceability. Hence, two main materials, cement and sand, are produced less than 50 km from the workshop. In the future, I hope to introduce recycled material as a fundamental part of the creation process.
The handmade procedures I currently use are moulding and roto-moulding. The parts are air-dried without the need for ovens.

My business objectives are:

I want the workshop to be a place to develop products to be sold and to experiment with different approaches and designs

My learnings from the Crafting Business Programme:

I have learned how to apply creativity, finance, marketing, and commercialisation tools to my future business. In addition, I have come to know the significance of defining the type of customer to develop products based on that. Thanks to the program, I have placed customers at the heart of the process, with the purpose of detecting and meeting their needs.

After the finance lessons, I have noticed the importance of ensuring accounts are planned and evaluated properly, in an effort to achieve a sustainable and thriving business. At the same time, I consider of great importance the idea of setting a minimum fulfilment for which you are willing to continue working hard.

Taking into account the above-mentioned points, the type of customer to whom I want to dedicate my product has changed. Therefore, I have started to develop new product lines that I would not have imagined at first.

My 5 top tips that I have learnt on this journey:

1. Define in detail who the customers are, how they act and what they want.
2. Offer services, not only products.
3. Do not compete on price.
4. Set short, medium, and long term goals. Thus, measure these through indicators aiming to evaluate and redefine them.
5. Collaborate with other artisans.