Sparkling success story
Charlottetown woman says some hard lessons learned en route to launching multi-million-dollar company Deep Space Sparkle
Charlottetown native Patty Palmer, 55, has two big pieces of advice for entrepreneurs — be passionate and be prepared to fail in the early going.
The former elementary school art teacher went through many of the same struggles business people do in the years after she graduated from Charlottetown Rural High School in 1982.
But eventually, she found her niche and is now the CEO of Deep Space Sparkle, a multimillion-dollar company that operates out of Santa Barbara, Calif. It’s an online resource for art teachers and parents. The company provides art lesson plans, curriculums and support materials through their membership site.
GO ALL IN
“My young days as an entrepreneur in P.E.I. taught me there are some things you do as an entrepreneur that most people aren’t willing to do (and that’s) go all in,’’ Palmer said in a telephone interview this week with The Guardian.
Her company was the subject of a feature by Forbes magazine earlier this month.
Palmer attended Ryerson University in Ontario after she graduated from high school, studying fashion design, and returned to P.E.I. to start a business in 1985 selling beachwear. She did that for about five years before moving back to Toronto, working with other companies in the fashion industry.
In 1990, she moved to California, created a business selling golfwear and working for a company that made swimwear.
She and her husband, Neil Cutcliffe, then decided to have a family. Palmer stayed home with the kids and volunteered in the school system, which led to teaching art.
Eventually, she wanted to get back into the swing of things. Someone mentioned to her that a school was looking for an art teacher, but since she didn’t have any teaching credentials, they offered her a stint as an arts specialist.
CREATED A BLOG
“That’s when this whole business got started. I started working as an art teacher and I did that for a couple of years and
I realized what the kids were doing was incredible, so I created a blog to share with parents what the kids were doing in the arts class.’’
Problem is, parents weren’t all that interested in her blog.
In fact, some didn’t even know what a blog was but through the magic of Google, teachers began finding her posts and started asking questions.
“I would teach all day. I would take pictures of the students creating the art. I would go home and create a blog post. And I started getting all these questions.’’
Teachers began asking her for lesson plans. So, she figured out how to create a PDF and sold them for $5 each. They were “one-off’’ items, she said.
“It was meant to support a group who wanted to know what I was doing and it was fun. It was really fun communicating with teachers and communicating how to teach art to kids.’’
Her customer base grew to the point where she was creating hundreds of lesson plans every month. Then, a publisher asked her to write a book on how to teach art so she did.
“So, I quit my job as an art teacher in 2015 and that’s when I went all-in with writing the book and went all-in with putting my attention into the business.’’
DEEP SPACE SPARKLE
Palmer did everything herself the next year before Neil jumped in.
As for the name, Deep Space Sparkle was inspired by a box of metallic crayons she purchased for her kindergarten class one day. She asked each of the students to identify the colours and all were impressed when she hauled out one called Deep Space Sparkle.
So, instead of naming her blog something generic like Art Class with Patty, the colour of that crayon came to mind.
But life as an entrepreneur wasn’t always sunshine and lollipops for Palmer.
That first company she launched in the West Royalty Industrial Park in Charlottetown when she was 21 years old wasn’t a huge success.
“The truth was it was a struggle. I was 21 years old. I didn’t know a lot. When I ultimately had to close that business I felt really bad about it, like I had let so many people down and that I had failed.’’
Her message to young startups in P.E.I. is that it was just a stepping stone for Palmer. It wasn’t a failure. Yeah, it didn’t work out exactly like she had hoped but she asks herself now what right she had to expect anything else.
LEARNING TO RUN A BUSINESS
Back then, she had five to 10 employees. Products were not sold on that thing called the internet. Her cashflow was done on a spreadsheet in pencil. “Everything was hard . . . (but) that gritty work? Those were the magical moments — learning what it takes to run a business.’’
Palmer said everyone wants to run a successful business and become a millionaire. Who wouldn’t.
But, she said people have to get into business for the right reasons.
“I started this business with the intention of not being an entrepreneur, not making a million dollars, but to serve a population of which I really enjoyed being a part of. I really loved being an art teacher and I loved teaching art to kids. It brought me a tremendous amount of joy.’’
Palmer said entrepreneurship is all about knowing the product, knowing the market and serving the customer in the best possible way. And, entrepreneurs have to be prepared to fail and be ok with that, just not enough to give up. They have to know when to let go.
And, as much as it’s a cliché to say, the passion has to be there.
“I still work hard and I love working hard. Neil and I get to learn new things every single day, challenge our brains. We get to push ourselves outside our comfort zone all the time.’’