Author: Nadia M.

Blacksmithing is one of the oldest traditional crafts – it dates back millennia. Owen Phillips puts a present-day spin on blacksmithing and brings it online for the world to see, buy, and learn.

Even though blacksmiths are rare nowadays, Owen was keen to make his business stand out. Gate Foot Forge is positioned as a one-stop blacksmithing solution. The business offers artisan metal handicrafts and homewares, repair services, and blacksmithing workshop packages, all available to book online. 

Owen had had previous experience with different hosting providers and found Hostinger just before starting his own business. It was the perfect opportunity – this way, he could build and scale a website with the right provider from the beginning. 

The First Ember

Before Gate Foot Forge, Owen was a graphic designer for the event and hospitality industries. He had also built websites for his clients. 

“This is a hobby that got out of control,” Owen explains when asked how he got into blacksmithing.

As an outdoor person, he wanted to make a bushcraft knife for himself. It turned out he enjoyed the knifemaking process. 

“I learned from some really good books for beginners. There were also quite a lot of very old, traditional books. They’re freely available online, or people have compiled them into very cheap, fat books full of stuff from a hundred years ago,” Owen elaborates. 

He continued experimenting and made more iron and steel works with the mini forge he had built. Meanwhile, other blacksmiths contributed significantly to his learning process.

“The blacksmithing community is fantastically helpful. I could just message them, and they’d draw diagrams and send me pictures or videos to explain how to do things,” Owen says. “In this field, there are no secrets.”

A few years ago, after Christmas, Owen started to take this hobby seriously. A couple of people mistook the trinkets he’d forged for them as presents as products from his new business venture. He had put little printed tags on them, making them look like commercial products. 

His family and friends’ reception to the gifts made him wonder: “I’m self-employed anyway. So I thought, why don’t I spend a couple of days a week blacksmithing, then see how things go?”

And that was what he did.

Feeding the Fire

Gate Foot Forge’s rise coincided with the emergence of the pandemic. A lot of graphic design projects that Owen worked on got canceled. He pivoted to the hammer-and-anvil path – what started as a hobby became his main source of income.

Owen’s background in web design and development helped him kickstart the marketing of the business. He started by designing the logo and brand identity. After that, he created a WordPress website, set up social media channels, and set up an Etsy account. 

“The first sales were through Etsy,” Owen remarks. “It’s a huge marketplace for people looking for handmade stuff. So it was good for starting out.”

He shared his products and working process on social media, which helped spread the word about his works. This went hand in hand with the positive word-of-mouth from Owen’s satisfied customers.

Additionally, Owen set up Google Business. Now, when someone searches for a blacksmith in his area, Gate Foot Forge will pop up as a result.

“I find it interesting because when people walk in, I never quite know what that job will be. Sometimes people would just come in with all kinds of broken things. In a society that’s too quick to throw lots of things away, it’s nice to be able to fix stuff and extend products’ life span.” 

The cooking tripod for campfires has been Gate Foot Forge’s most popular product so far. “My friend from Wales originally requested it, and now I’ve sold almost 500 of those. I’ve shipped them all over the world, from Singapore to the USA,” he says. 

Shaping Online Success

Even though Gate Foot Forge had a website from the get-go, Owen realized only later that it’d be better to focus on making sales via the website. 

His main issue with Etsy was the sizable commission. Owen understood that selling directly from his own website would make him entitled to the whole revenue.

He also noticed the other things that a website could do, including better branding opportunities. “It’s better to have ‘gatefootforge.co.uk’ than a link to my account in a long URL with slashes written on the side of my pickup. It’s easier to remember. People can go and buy stuff from there,” Owen explains. 

The website also makes it easier to connect with his customers, as people come to the website specifically for Gate Foot Forge. There’s also more space for stories about blacksmithing and what he’s up to – his audience loves them. 

Most importantly, the website helps Gate Foot Forge stand out. The blacksmith community is mostly offline, so taking the business to the internet increased its brand awareness.

Setting up the Gate Foot Forge website with Hostinger was easy. Owen stresses that he didn’t need to talk to customer support once – everything was running like clockwork.

“The process was fast. I could manage the hosting, domain name, and SSL certificate in one place, which was really refreshing. The migration process was pretty straightforward, too,” he smiles. 

Forging Ahead

Moving forward, Owen plans to expand his workshop. As he also accepts commissions, he wants to take on bigger jobs like sculptures and gates. He hopes to start using bigger machines soon to diversify and increase production.

“At the moment, I’m doing everything by hand. Nothing will make you fall out with your neighbors like installing a power hammer next door,” he laughs.  

He’s also keen to teach blacksmithing to the younger generation. He’s noticed there are a lot of children who are interested in handicrafts. Owen wants to do talks and blacksmithing demonstrations at schools, which, he feels, have forgotten a lot of traditional crafts.

“People thought blacksmithing is a dying trade, whereas there are about a thousand working blacksmiths in the UK. The scene is actually quite busy because there’s a lot of work going around that’s only shared between relatively few people. There’s a shortage of blacksmiths here.”

He aspires to help fill this gap. For now, Owen does that by offering blacksmithing and knifemaking workshops through his website. He wants people to see that everyone can take up handicrafts – either as a hobby or for a living. Especially with the power of the internet. 

“Doing what I do now would probably not be viable without the website. Or at least it would have taken me an awful lot longer to get going. If you’re hoping to take a craft hobby and turn it into a successful business, just get cracking,” Owen laughs.

The post Gate Foot Forge: Ancient Craft, Modern Approach appeared first on Hostinger Blog.

The ecotourism agency VaiViver was born from Cecilia Fortunatti and Mayumi Kurimori’s passion for traveling. The company’s trips are not only about the destinations – they’re also about connecting people with nature, history, and the native communities of Brazil.

VaiViver arranges trips to Brazil’s natural wonders almost every weekend all year long. Its mission is to encourage people to discover Brazil’s natural and cultural diversity.

Ceci and Mayu believe it’s important to immediately establish an online presence to spread your message and optimize business growth. They created VaiViver’s website using WordPress. With the combo of Hostinger’s services, Tutorials, and Customer Success team, they’ve been running the site without fuss.

From Campus to Everywhere

Ceci and Mayu were engineering students at the University of São Paulo. They dreamt of traveling the world.

The two best friends had always loved exploring new places. It was only natural they’d soon know every nook and cranny around their campus and beyond. They went on adventures while juggling all study responsibilities, which impressed their peers at the university. 

One day, the pair decided to share their traveling experience with some friends. They organized a collective trip, sharing the costs among the participants, and just had fun together.

It turned out that people loved the way Ceci and Mayu organized such a different, engaging, and affordable excursion. The word spread, and there were more and more people interested in such trips. That was when the duo noticed a business opportunity.

Ceci and Mayu established VaiViver in 2016, with an initial capital of 14 reais (around 2,7 USD). The money was for promotional posters and cups of hot chocolate as the first trip’s complimentary drink.

Connecting People With Nature, History, and Local Communities

There’s one main reason why Ceci and Mayu focus on ecotourism. The idea of connecting travelers with nature and local communities deeply resonates with them – and it makes the trips themselves mean so much more.

“It’s an honor to work with local communities, like the Brazilian natives Quilombolas, and show the value these people have for society and culture preservation. We’re glad we can connect travelers with these communities. They are important parts of Brazilian history,” says Mayu.

During VaiViver’s trips, travelers discover a new destination, learn the culture and history of local communities, and discuss topics like how to preserve the forests. Mayu explains it as “an eye-opening experience.”

“Ecotourism transforms life on both sides. Travelers can reconnect with culture and history while bringing income to the communities. It results in a very positive impact overall,” she adds.

They’re especially proud of VaiViver’s Chapadas do Brasil Project. With it, the agency invites travelers to explore the majestic landscapes of the chapadas, Brazilian flat-topped tablelands, and get to know the culture and livelihoods of the indigenous people living there.

As it seeks to maintain the harmony between people and nature, VaiViver also applies sustainable travel practices. It offsets 100% of carbon emissions generated by its trips by engaging in partnerships with social and environmental projects.

Taking Root Online

Once Ceci and Mayu started the business, they realized they needed to build a solid digital presence as soon as possible. They knew it was essential for a brand to have a website to help spread the word.

Ceci and Mayu also noticed that many tourism companies do not have a proper website. This made them sure that creating a website would make VaiViver stand out from the competition. 

Thanks to recommendations from friends, Ceci and Mayu discovered WordPress, the perfect content management system for their goals. They found out about Hostinger in a blog post – it came highly recommended. In 2017, the pair began building the VaiViver website themselves on Hostinger’s web hosting. 

“Hostinger’s Customer Success team is so helpful. I also read blogs and Hostinger Tutorials. This made building the site easy. We enjoyed it. It was a good learning experience,” Ceci elaborates.

In addition to attracting an audience, the website also helped Ceci and Mayu streamline their business processes to facilitate the company’s growth. Before, VaiViver’s booking process was painstakingly manual. Clients would book via Google Forms – this involved back-and-forth messaging and manual payment checking.

Since VaiViver integrated the online booking function in the site, they can quickly check orders and payments via the WordPress dashboard. This made business operations much more manageable.

100% of VaiViver’s sales are now handled via the website.

“We don’t have any physical sales channels. We’ve always lived digitally,” says Mayu. “Now, we are present throughout Brazil. Additionally, we can live wherever we want, travel anywhere. That’s the magic of running an online business.”

Conquering the Difficult Path

To get where they are now, Ceci and Mayu had to overcome a number of challenges on their business journey.

One of them was when VaiViver’s site went down during Black Friday. The company wanted to make the most of this shopping season, so it launched a promo campaign. At that time, the company was still on Hostinger’s entry-level plan.

Ceci and Mayu didn’t expect the campaign would attract such an overwhelming amount of traffic. They learned that the downtime was caused by insufficient resources. Since it’s possible to upgrade Hostinger plans anytime, they did just that, allowing the site to handle the increased loads.

Another hurdle to overcome was the lockdown – a tough time for everyone, the tourism industry especially. Ceci and Mayu had to tell their local partners the harsh truth that they weren’t making any sales.

However, they persevered and, after seven barren months, the economy started to recover, and the sales picked back up.

“Between 2020-2021 we made around 1 million reais, while between 2021-2022 we reached 2,3 million reais through our website,” Ceci says proudly. “We consider this a success, especially considering our small scale.”

She also acknowledges that VaiViver was able to double its annual revenue because her team now has a better understanding of how to improve sales and optimize the website. Their efforts involve applying SEO practices and other digital marketing strategies.

“Our recommendation for anyone who wants to start a business is to get online as soon as possible. Create a website, and make it easy for people to find you online. It will support your work, enhance the business’s visibility in the public eye, and help grow the brand,” Ceci sums up.

Beyond the Horizon

Now, the company is staffed by 7 internal team members and 8 guides. But what are VaiViver’s plans for the future?

For 2023, Ceci and Mayu aim to grow VaiViver’s revenue by 30% compared to the previous year. 

They’re confident the company can reach that goal thanks to a growing demand for ecotourism services. On top of that, VaiViver has a very active social media presence and a thoroughly informative website. It contains all the necessary information about travel packages and provides a user-friendly booking process.

Ceci and Mayu are also getting ready for the introduction of VaiViver’s new services. “We already have online physical conditioning training to prepare for trail trips. In 2023, our focus will be to expand personalized services to more customers, also covering the corporate sector”, elaborates Ceci. 

The conditioning training was born from the idea that ecotourism should be for everyone. As such trips usually involve long hikes, Ceci and Mayu want to make them more enjoyable, even for people unfamiliar with nature exploration.

“We like to see travelers faces light up once they put their feet on Brazilian soil,” says the pair. “The glow in their eyes after the trip – that’s what fuels us. The money is a nice consequence.”

In fact, the name of the business, ‘VaiViver,’ is Portuguese for ‘go live.’ And Ceci and Mayu are doing just that, encouraging everyone to live their lives and passions to the fullest.

The post VaiViver: Honoring Brazilian Nature and History Through Ecotourism appeared first on Hostinger Blog.

Sureshot Brewing is a craft beer brewery on a mission to bring good times back to the table. Despite it being a new kid on the block, the brand is run by some of the top figures in the UK craft beer scene.

Having been founded online, Sureshot relies on its website as the main sales channel. To cater to both home consumers and trade partners, the brewery employs multisite to provide optimized experiences to both audiences. 

Sureshot has been a Hostinger client from the get-go. The smooth operation of the website allows the brand to keep growing, plan new premises across the country, and begin overseas exports.

Tapping Into the Industry

James Campbell is a household name in the UK beer industry. He’s headed some of Manchester’s most cherished independent breweries, helping pioneer the new wave of British brewing.

Constantly trying to evolve his beverages based on the public’s tastes, James grew to miss the freedom of self-employment. That’s when he envisioned establishing his own brewery.

Sureshot saw its first action in 2020. The brand’s first public appearance was in collaboration with Vocation, a Yorkshire-based brewery. The output – Vocation x Sure Shot labeled cans of double IPA – was sold in Tesco, Britain’s largest supermarket chain, with huge success. 

Still, Sureshot wanted its beers to be more than just cans on shelves in hypermarkets. To this end, James invited other big UK beer industry players at the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic.

Now, Sureshot is 20 people strong. At its core, James has been joined by Michael Ford, an expert in alcohol export-import, and James Leaver, who has handled branding and marketing for several craft breweries.

2022 is when Sureshot revealed its first independent branded beers to the public. 

Brewing the Brand

“It’s a bit of a joke in craft beer that everyone’s called James,” says James Leaver, one of the three Jameses at Sureshot. 

This kind of playfulness is inherent in Sureshot’s DNA. After all, its mission is “to bring happiness back to beer,” while producing craft beers of the highest quality. James leans on comedy, primarily TV shows, as his main inspiration for Sureshot’s branding. He bases beer names and labels on bits that make him laugh, tweaking them appropriately.

This is in line with Sureshot’s belief that the UK craft beer scene has become a tad jaded and cynical. The brewery wants to revive childish excitement and love towards the beverage itself. 

They’ve recently opened Sureshot Taproom in Manchester’s Beermuda Triangle. There, people can taste their beer and enjoy it together with other beer enthusiasts. Right around the corner, other brewers, Track and Cloudwater, have their own taprooms.

Success on Tap 

In less than a year, Sureshot has become a celebrated craft beer brewery. Obviously, delicious flavors and humorous, relatable branding are big factors for their success. But what else does the team contribute to the brand’s rapid growth?

“Experience really allowed us to be successful,” says James Leaver, referring to Sureshot’s core of experienced industry figures. “The market has no more room for playing around with the consumer. They don’t care for the story so much anymore. They want a quality product,” he continues. “And it’s important to follow up on customer feedback.” 

He notes that when any brewery starts, it needs to quickly understand the nitty-gritty of its brewing equipment and how to adapt its recipes. After that, it should improve the beers based on people’s opinions. 

With this approach, Sureshot makes a name for itself as the best in the country for several types of beers, primarily hoppy beers. The brewery also does IPAs and pale ales and has started brewing more lagers as well. They want to keep making beers that people love to drink.

Taking Beer Online With Hostinger

Even after opening a taproom for enjoying a pint of craft beer straight out of the barrel, Sureshot’s website remains the top revenue maker for the company.

“It’s really necessary for craft breweries to have a direct consumer sale avenue,” James explains the logic behind Sureshot’s eCommerce site. He admits that selling beer online requires a different approach to negotiating with off-licenses and pubs, but it’s worth the effort. It enables people to buy beer from the comfort of their own homes. 

Sureshot needed two separate websites to support its business-to-customer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) operations. While the brewery does a lot of B2C business overall, B2B makes up a bigger part of the sales. The Sureshot site is powered by WordPress and WooCommerce – it needed a solution that supported multisite. 

Leaver had previously had a great experience with Hostinger for his personal projects. That’s why he decided to consider it for Sureshot’s website.

He did further research, comparing different hosts. Hostinger’s top ratings and fair pricing influenced his decision to go with the devil he already knew.

James says building the site with Hostinger was easy and convenient. “I don’t think I had to contact the support team,” he recounts his experience. Sureshot’s website was his first attempt at building a site himself – previously, he would contract web designers. 

“I definitely used a lot of those tutorials, that’s for sure,” James continues. Hostinger Tutorials came up quite a lot when he googled solutions to common website problems. He found the content helpful for website-building newbies like him. 

“Hostinger has been super reliable. We’ve pulled big sales off of the back of the website, and consistent reliability has been key. It helped us put a lot of traffic through the site. I don’t think there’s ever been downtime,” James says.

He also likes that Hostinger’s plans are scalable. “Once you’ve chosen something, you want to stick with it, you know? And if the product can scale, that’s great. It makes it easier for us,” he concludes.

The Sure-Fire Way to Happiness

As of today, Sureshot has already produced 60 different beers and counting. Its production capacity has reached around 4,000 cans of every type of brew, so the team is looking forward to expanding Sureshot’s scope.

“I think we want to pursue the premises model,” James explains the plan. The company looks forward to opening bars in Manchester, Liverpool, and Leeds, its neighbors to the north. Sureshot will also start exporting beer to Scandinavia and the Netherlands in 2023.

The brand is aware of the competition in the craft beer industry and the challenging economic climate. The fact that they make premium products might become a challenge. However, Sureshot is confident due to its team’s collective experience.

“Between our product, the way we brand ourselves, and the way we come out and speak to people… I think that has allowed us to differentiate ourselves. We don’t want to be seen as standoff-ish. We want to be the friendly guys in the room,” James explains the company’s image.

With this firm yet friendly vision, it’s just a matter of time until Sureshot can achieve its current dream: to produce 150,000 liters per year and stand side-by-side with other big craft breweries they admire.

The post Sureshot Brewing: Bringing Joy Back to Beer appeared first on Hostinger Blog.

Charlie and Dale, the couple behind Climbingvan, have combined their technical backgrounds with their love for the great outdoors to run an off-grid electrical system business.

Charlie Low and Dale Comley have been living, traveling, and operating their company Nomadic Energy from their campervan full-time since 2021.

As their business is exclusively online, reliable website resources are a lifeline for the couple. Thanks to Hostinger, they’ve been able to grow and facilitate audience demand, all while exploring nature.

Setting Off-Grid

It’s not surprising that Charlie and Dale met on a climbing trip.

“Climbing and van life are kinda synonymous,” says Charlie. “It’s very common to see people bring their campervans to climbing areas and combine the comfort of home with roadside adventure.“

The couple dreamt of converting a campervan into a home on wheels so they could conveniently embark on more climbing trips. They eventually bought Ringo, a yellow ex-DHL delivery van, and started working on it. They planned to take a year off once the conversion was completed for travel and then come back to work rejuvenated.

Along the way, they documented the conversion process on Instagram and set up a blog, racking up a considerable following as the project progressed.

Unfortunately, a week after the van conversion was complete, the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe. The UK went into a nationwide lockdown, effectively canceling Charlie and Dale’s travel plans. With Charlie also furloughed, the couple suddenly had much more free time on their hands.

This ended up being a catalyst for a bigger change for both of them. The couple decided they didn’t want it to be just a year off – they wanted to change their way of living altogether.

Blazing a New Trail

The couple’s hobby presented them with the perfect opportunity: during the van conversion, they found it hard to get reliable, well-researched information. Aware of a clear gap in the market, the couple began writing a definitive guide on converting a campervan themselves.

In April 2021, after thousands of hours of research, they published their book aptly titled The Van Conversion Bible, just as they moved into the van full time.

They didn’t stop there. Knowing the ups and downs of converting and living in a van, Charlie and Dale wanted to help others. They surveyed thousands of people who wanted to or had converted a van. This gave them a good idea of what people found the most difficult: getting the electrics right. Funnily enough, this coincided with their own experience – Charlie’s background in physics and Dale’s as an engineer.

“When people first wire in their systems, it can appear that everything is functioning. But soon, things may stop working, and it’s not always clear why,” Dale says.

Charlie elaborates further: “We call those problems the unknown unknowns. They’re essentially the things you can’t consider because you don’t know about them until they happen. Then you realize that you’ve been screwed over by something.”

Shortly after the book’s release, they launched Nomadic Energy, a campervan and off-grid electrical system design service.

With the information they collected, Charlie and Dale created a clever system that does the math for individual conversion projects. “It’s a bit like a calculator. We can work out things like how much power someone is using or what type of batteries they need based on the appliances they have, and how they plan on using their van,” Charlie explains.

Driving the Fully Online Route

As their business is completely internet-based, Charlie and Dale realized they needed to take their online presence seriously and build a robust website.

Their previous blog could barely handle the increasing traffic. That meant they needed a flexible content management system to improve the site’s SEO aspects and keep all the content in check.

The couple opted for WordPress to rebuild the Climbingvan website. They filled it with more structured and detailed articles, utilizing Elementor to handle the front-end.

At the same time, their new site needed a reliable web host to facilitate the growth they were experiencing. Charlie found out about Hostinger through recommendations and online reviews. The positive feedback for Hostinger’s customer service convinced her to try it.

Charlie notes that whenever they reach out to Hostinger’s Customer Success, the agents are always helpful and friendly, ready to address any issues or concerns.

“We honestly reference Hostinger as the benchmark for our engineers when providing support,” Dale says. “We’ve sent them screenshots of Hostinger’s support, with their little GIFs and stuff like that. It’s so, so good.”

Today, their website handles more than 60,000 visits a month from all over the world. It’s at the core of their business – of the 23,000 The Van Conversion Bible copies sold, 34% were purchased via the site. It’s also the storefront for bespoke Nomadic Energy electrical systems. And since Climbingvan first made its name as a blog, people also drop by for helpful information about van conversion.

“We don’t have any sort of premises, offices, or shops – the website is literally everything to us,” says Dale.

The Journey Ahead

Climbingvan, the couple’s passion project, has grown from just Charlie and Dale to a team of eight. Everyone involved lives vagabond off-grid lives. They also use Nomadic Energy’s off-grid electrical systems, meaning they can work from anywhere. This ensures that their customers get service from like-minded people who really walk the talk.

Now that their business is up and running, the couple has big dreams for the future. They both agree they like being agile and nimble, so they do not plan to take root anywhere anytime soon. Charlie and Dale emphasize that the whole business is about off-grid electrical systems, so it feels almost wrong to have a physical office somewhere.

That said, they dream of building their own off-grid house. The team is also planning to expand to other off-grid electrical systems and regions. The US market is particularly enticing – America is arguably the home of campervans, RVs, and living the nomad life.

And while they plan for the future, the couple remains committed to sustainability. Climbingvan is a member of 1% for the Planet – 1% of their revenue is allocated to applying solar energy to community organizations. Moreover, for every book they sell, they plant a tree with Ecologi, an environmental organization that partners with businesses to offset carbon emissions.

Living, traveling, and working on your own terms while giving back to the world? Mother Nature must be proud.

The post Climbingvan: Powering Off-Grid Adventures appeared first on Hostinger Blog.