Unfinished Business Podcast Episode 6 Part 3: How to Scale a Handmade Business Without Losing the Human Touch

In Part 3 of Unfinished Business Episode 6, bespoke jewellery maker Fairina Cheng shares a dilemma shared by many founder-led businesses: how do you grow when your personal relationship with your customer base is a core part of what customers are buying?

In this post:

Scaling a founder-led business
Balancing growth with personal service
When to introduce systems and support staff
Pricing founder expertise appropriately

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In Part 1, hosts Anaita Sarkar and Samantha Brett discuss the value of finding a genuine gap in the market and using customer research to shape a product. In Part 2, Anaita and Samantha debate how business owners should respond when sensitive information becomes public.

In this final part, Anaita and Samantha explore semi-custom offers, separating business models, refining systems, training team members, tiered access and pricing that reflects the real value of time and urgent service.

Growth is never simple

Founders know that the theory for growing a business sounds simple – sell more, hire more, expand, repeat – but in practice, scaling is complicated. Especially when customers are buying more than a product.

That's the challenge brought to the Growth Hotline by Fairina Cheng, founder of Fairina Cheng Jewellery, in Episode 6 of Unfinished Business.

When the founder is part of the product

Fairina's business didn't begin with a love of traditional jewellery. In fact, she found most jewellery traditional, predictable and – in a word – boring.

A jewellery-making course revealed a different possibility. Instead of purchasing existing design, she could create entirely new pieces that tell their own stories. That discovery led to a love of bespoke jewellery and a business built around custom design.

“I get to design something completely new with each person that I work with.”

Today, she describes her customers as "rule breakers and story makers", people who want something distinctive and deeply personal.

The emotional experience is part of the product

But it’s not all smooth sailing. Fairina tells Anaita and Samantha she’s finding it difficult to scale her business.

“I've been doing this for about 14 years now and grew quite slowly.”

Her customers come to her for handmade, bespoke pieces and rely on her experience to make it happen. As an example, she shares the story of one client who commissioned a colourful gemstone ring using materials and stones to represent important people and animals in her life. The customer later used the ring as a source of confidence during challenging personal situations, helping her overcome difficult times with courage and optimism.

This story illustrates something important. Fairina’s customers aren't just purchasing jewellery. They're paying for design guidance craftmanship that interprets emotional connection into a physical object that has a deeper meaning.

For businesses like this, the experience of working with the founder is an inseparable part of the experience.

Choose what you refuse to lose

Fairina's biggest challenge isn't production. It's personal connection. After 14 years of business growth, she still enjoys knowing her customers by name and working closely with them throughout the design process.

During the discussion with our podcast hosts, an interesting pattern emerges. Whenever the conversation focused on bespoke work, the hosts noticed that Fairina became visibly more enthusiastic. Whenever it shifted towards mass production, she appeared far less animated.

The hosts made it clear that – as a founder – Fairina needs to identify what she absolutely refuses to lose before committing to a growth strategy. And her reactions have effectively answered her own question.

Option one: differentiate between custom and repeatable services

Samantha proposes a model that supplements the custom work by creating a second business arm that offer repeatable products, structured choices or guided customisation.

The concept resembles "build your own" product experiences found in many industries, where customers select from predefined options rather than starting projects from scratch. This approach allows for increased sales volumes over time, but at the cost of personalisation as a standard offering.

Importantly, Samantha stresses that this effectively creates two separate business models, each requiring commitment and operational focus.

Option two: scale the background work

Anaita offers a different perspective. Rather than changing the customer experience, she suggests scaling the systems behind it.

This approach focuses on:

better processes
delegation & administrative support
using technology to enable workflow improvements

The goal isn't to remove the founder from customer relationships. It’s to refocus the founder’s time from low-value tasks to more value-adding activities.

Train others to provide the service

Another idea discussed is a tiered service model, where the service you receive is priced according to the work required and the provider involved. Anaita compares it to a hair salon, with apprentice cuts costing less, while the head hairdresser charges more for their time.

This acknowledges an important reality. Founder time is limited and treating it as an unlimited resource results in a growth ceiling, whereas treating it as an asset creates flexibility.

Treat founder access as an asset

One of the strongest insights from the episode is the reframing of what Fairina's business actually sells. While the jewellery is the drawcard, the consultation, trust, and one-on-one relationship is what the customers want to receive, not just the jewellery.

As Anaita points out:

"You're actually a service business that happens to sell jewellery."

Many founders underprice themselves because they focus only on the physical output. But many customers value the expertise on offer even more than the product.

Create a white-glove option

The conversation then shifts toward pricing. Anaita shares her own experience of handling urgent packaging requests that require late nights and accelerated timelines. Samantha is shocked to learn that Anaita offers this service without charging a premium rate.

Together, they propose a white-glove service tier that charges more for:

faster turnaround
additional founder involvement
greater responsiveness
higher service intensity.

The principle applies far beyond packaging. Businesses delivering urgent, personalised or premium experiences may need pricing structures that reflect the additional effort involved.

Higher prices can increase perceived value

Samantha expands on this idea by noting that customers often associate premium pricing with premium value. That doesn't mean increasing prices without justification. It means confidently charging when customers genuinely receive:

more expertise
founder access
faster delivery
greater personal attention.

The value being delivered should be clear and the pricing should reflect it.

The commercial reality still matters

The episode concludes on an honest note. In business, passion alone isn't enough, and material concerns should play a part in setting a fair price.

If a founder loves the bespoke model and the business generates sustainable cash flow, doubling down on that model may be entirely reasonable. If the numbers no longer work, however, adjustments may be necessary.

But gearing for growth doesn't always mean mass production. Sometimes it means better systems, smarter pricing or introducing a new tiered offer.

A decision framework for founder-led businesses

If you’re finding yourself agreeing with Fairina’s situation, you might be in a position where the question of growth versus personal involvement is relevant.

Before making a growth decision, it may help to identify the activities involved in running your business that add value to your experience as a founder. Answering these questions may reveal a clearer path than pursuing growth for its own sake.

1. Which business activities must remain personal?

This is a two-pronged question. On one tine you have activities that add value to your customer’s experience. This is what they’re paying for and removing it as an offering would hurt your bottom line. On the other tine you have activities that you genuinely enjoy. Losing these interests would actively harm the enjoyment you get from running your business.

2. What work is genuinely repeatable?

Are there tasks that are common enough that they could be automated or outsourced? These aren’t tasks identified in the first step – those are your reasons for existing as a business – but are more mundane and exist in every business. Think invoicing, email reminders, social posts. Can you make these happen in the background?

3. Can a trained team member deliver value?

Another two-parter, this question aims to get you thinking about tasks that are value-adding but couldn’t (or shouldn’t) be automated or outsourced. Remember the hairdresser analogy Anaita talked about? That’s relevant here. Trainees and apprentices can help take on simpler, less demanding work while growing their skills. At the same time, skilled support staff like receptionists and personal assistants can help handle the tasks that keep your business running, freeing you up to focus on the must-haves identified in question 1.

4. What aspect of the business deserves premium pricing?

Speaking of question 1, what parts of your business would benefit from the inclusion of premium assistance? In Fairina’s case, her work is bespoke, personal, and crafted by the founder, making the entire experience of working with her worthy of charging a premium for. In Anaita’s case, the supplies and the service can be standardised for most customers, enabling her to scale. When a customer has more demanding projects, that’s where a white-glove service becomes viable. This is for customers with exacting requirements, tight timeframes, and custom delivery needs. They don’t have an option, they need a premium service, and they’re willing to pay to get it.

5. Does the current model support the business you want long-term?

This is the crunch question. Drawing on your answers to the previous questions, is your business in the shape you need it to be for it to be viable into the future? If so, you’re probably all good! But if there are gaps between how your business operates and what you can see you’ll need in the future, this can be a sign that some things could be worth changing.

Key takeaways for small business owners

1. Define the human value your customers are buying

The relationship may be as important as the product. What part of your business is offering the most value to your customers?

2. Will you deepen bespoke or grow semi-custom services?

Bespoke means keeping things personal. Just you and the customer. Semi-custom lets you systemise a lot of the work and lets you scale but loses some of the personal touch. A split system lets you operate both services at the same time letting you keep the personal element while growing but also adding a layer of complexity to running your business.

3. Systemise background work

Find the repeatable tasks and automate, delegate or eliminate them where possible.

4. Consider tiered access

Founder availability doesn't need to be unlimited. You’re one person with limited time. Treat your time like the asset it is.

5. Price services deliberately

Time, expertise and urgency create value. If a service is simple, rely on scalability to offer value. If a service requires more complex execution, develop a price point that reflects the value your service offers.

6. Growth takes many forms

Scale isn't limited to volume or mass production. It can also take the form of charging appropriately for the value you provide as the founder.

7. Make decisions that are commercially sustainable

Passion matters, but so does profitability. You can’t run a business on joy alone. Make sure your activities as a founder pave the way for a viable business in the future.

Thanks for reading Part 3

That's it for Part 3 of our Episode 6 recap.

You can revisit Part 1 for Samantha Brett's lessons on product differentiation and international growth, and Part 2 for practical insights into digital mistakes, communication and business accountability.

To hear Fairina Cheng's full Growth Hotline discussion, watch or listen to Episode 6 of Unfinished Business, proudly published by Vodafone Business.