How It All Began, Part Two: The First Table

Every business has a moment where it stops being an idea and starts being real. For Cobb Cabin Crafts, that moment came with a phone call from a friend.

She was organizing a vending event at Fayette, a school I had previously taught at and still held close to my heart. Proceeds would go toward a school trip. Would I want a table?

I said yes. And then I did what I always do: I thought about it too hard and decided if I was going to do this, I was going to do it right.

That meant a vendor's license. A website. A plan. If I was actually going to chase this down, I needed to treat it like something real, not just a hobby with a table.

Sometime around 2022, on a weekend away with Adam for our anniversary, I pulled the trigger and opened a Shopify store. And oh, the growing pains. Item listings. Photography. Descriptions. Pricing. There is a learning curve to selling things on the internet that nobody warns you about until you're in it. My first product photos were taken outside in natural daylight and bless their hearts, they showed it. I now have a lightbox. The photos are better. And for the record I don't use AI to enhance my images, and I don't plan to. What you see is what I actually made.

We did more events. Some we loved, some we did not, and that's all I'll say about that. But what those early vendor events gave us was something you can't buy: real feedback, from real people, in real time. Someone picks up a bar, smells it, puts it back. Someone else picks it up and doesn't put it back. You learn a lot standing behind a table.

At first we handed out samples and stickers just to get products into people's hands. Now we have a following, people who come back to our table specifically because they like what we make. That shift, from "here, try this free thing" to "I've been looking for you," is one I don't take lightly.

I knew we were onto something when customers started asking us to put items in our shop so they could order between events. Another learning curve. A good one.

We're currently in four shops, three wholesale and one consignment, and we do farmers markets and vendor events throughout the year. The events we love most are the ones where our booth fee supports something local: a community organization, a church group, a shelter. It just feels right to have the work go further than the sale.

And that's where we are today. Our online presence continues to grow, and we're grateful for every order that comes through the shop. But if I'm being honest, our local community is the heartbeat of Cobb Cabin Crafts. The farmers markets, the vendor events, the familiar faces that find our table year after year, that's where it feels most real.

One unexpected gift of this journey has been the community of makers we've fallen into. I love talking shop with other vendors, comparing notes on formulas and ingredients, and yes even swapping items. There's a generosity in the handmade community that I didn't anticipate and genuinely love.

We don't have a grand five-year plan. What we have is our hands, quality products, and good people around us. For now, that's exactly enough.

Jen Cobb is the maker behind Cobb Cabin Crafts, a small batch handmade soap and skincare business rooted in intentional ingredients, slow processes, and the belief that the best things take time.