For many small business owners, the inspiration for their company comes from a desire to use the skills and experience built up in their working life in their own venture. That was the case for Ayshea McCormack, who launched her e-commerce business, The Small Home, in 2014 after a 20-year career in fashion buying. “I craved something more meaningful which would also work around my young daughters,” she explains.

The Small Home sells apparel and homewares, with a focus on sustainable handcrafted products from independent makers. The inspiration, McCormack explains, came from a pair of handmade sheepskin mountain moccasin slippers that her 18-month-old daughter received as a gift. “I looked to source the same slippers but found it hard to find the quality or aesthetic I wanted,” she says.

She decided to manufacture the slippers herself, sourcing the materials and working with traditional makers based in the Tatra Mountains in Poland. “This is where my fashion buyer experience kicked in,” she says. Remaining faithful to the business’s brand values is, she says, more important than speed or scale.

“We are an ethically minded small business and go to great lengths to make our products as sustainable as possible,” says McCormack. “As we expand, we stick to our high standards of craftsmanship and remain committed to our original vision of working with makers and protecting traditional techniques.”

Here are five lessons she has learned from growing her business and selling to international customers.

Although she didn’t set out to target international customers for The Small Home, having a strong Instagram presence meant that international customers found the business anyway. It’s therefore important to be prepared if you want to capitalise.

“We started shipping internationally from the start, but we’ve never actively targeted an international customer,” she says.

These days, around 41% of the company’s website visitors come from outside the UK, and it has customers all over the world. “We have many happy customers in the U.S., Japan and across Europe who share posts of themselves in our slippers on social media,” McCormack says.

One way to engage international customers is to provide an alternate language version of your product descriptions and frequently asked questions (FAQs). However, this can be costly, and the investment may not be worthwhile for smaller markets. But even a small gesture can make a difference with overseas customers, as McCormack discovered after a Croatian social media influencer mentioned The Small Home on Instagram.

“This resulted in a swell of new Croatian followers to our Instagram account,” she explains, “so we wrote a welcoming message in Croatian and posted it.”

The Croatian content was also followed by a flurry of sales to customers in Croatia. “We always find that Instagram posts made by international influencers result in an increase in sales from that country,” McCormack adds.

Instagram has been a key part of The Small Home’s growth since its launch. “[It] has been a very powerful marketing tool for us; it is something that we have dedicated time to nurture right from the beginning,” McCormack explains. “We’ve built our following organically which has resulted in high engagement. We put in the time daily to speak directly to our followers, always responding personally to comments.”

Growing a business on Instagram also requires high-quality content, so McCormack invests in professional photography. “Every month I have regular product and lifestyle shoots with a professional photographer to create original content for The Small Home website and Instagram,” she says. “As our family home features as the backdrop for The Small Home, I am always rearranging and refreshing it to keep imagery fresh, painting walls and furniture or styling shelves.”

This pays off; McCormack says there is always an increase in sales after a product has featured in an Instagram post. But it requires plenty of creativity, too. “One thing to note is that our Instagram followers are always on the hunt for new things, you must always be inventive and creative with your product and how you present it,” McCormack adds.

International shipments can be impacted by delays that are beyond your control, plus there could be customs payments to consider. Whatever strategy you decide on for this, make sure you communicate clearly with your customers.

For example, McCormack says many EU-based customers of The Small Home did not realise, after the UK left the EU, that they would have to pay tax and duty on their purchases. “Make sure that your terms and conditions are very clear on your website, so customers do not get any surprise bills,” McCormack says.

“And use a reliable carrier that offers good customer service, so it is easy to sort any problems that arise.”

The Small Home began as a one-woman business, with McCormack doing everything from researching new products to storing stock and packing orders from her Londonbased home office. “I split my business into four sections, which of course overlap,” she explains. “There’s the product range, marketing, operations and finance. For many years I did all these things myself, but I’ve realised that continuing in this way will limit our growth.”

Recognising that her strengths are in the product sourcing and marketing sides of the business, McCormack brought in a head of operations to manage the day-to-day running of the business.

“[She] has streamlined and improved our customer journey,” McCormack says. “She’s analytical and she gives me regular updates if the numbers are trending in a particular way so that we can react quickly.”

The Small Home has also started working with a fulfilment house to manage orders, as well as working with a content creator to develop content for the business’s website and social media channels.

“Having a strong and committed team in place frees my time to focus on the direction and expansion of the brand,” McCormack says.