Today we’d like to introduce you to Kacie Desabla And Rebecca Weisenhoff
Hi Kacie DeSabla and Rebecca Weisenhoff, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
We both relocated to Austin from the east coast in spring of 2022 and connected through a Facebook group for girls new to Austin after discovering that we were originally from Maryland and had a shared interest in art. Kacie studied fine art and art history and now works as an art specialist for an auction house helping clients buy and sell, and Rebecca studied graphic design, branding, and marketing and is now a design lead at a tech startup. We love taking art classes in our free time and are currently enrolled in a hand sculpting class at Laguna Gloria. Through this love of art and art classes, as well as a desire to help fellow transplants connect through art, we came up with the idea for our business, Sip and Swirl. While we teach all manner of classes at different businesses, the majority of our events are hosted by local apartment communities who are trying to engage their residents, including The Vaughan and The Prospect. Through these classes, we’ve helped foster new friendships and a renewed passion in art and working with your hands. We love bringing people together and sharing our passion with others, and partnering with small businesses to boost awareness of the places we love.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The biggest struggle has definitely been finding time to support our side business while working intensive full-time jobs. Also, the “business” side of running a business – while we were excited to teach the art classes, we are also handling the financials, resource procurement, marketing, and the other aspects that go into making our business legitimate. Financially, we funded our business entirely, and starting required seed funding that we had to provide. Beyond those struggles, there has been a strong appetite for wine and paint art classes, and local businesses have expressed continued interest in partnering with us. Our classes generally sell out and we often rebook due to their success.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Our biggest differentiation is that we are a mobile business – we offer classes in Pflugerville, Cedar Park, Round Rock, Georgetown, and the entire Austin area, which allows us to expand our customer base and partner with a wider range of businesses. We also don’t only teach canvas painting classes – we offer an assortment of class types. One of our recent classes was an all-ages class where we painted flower pots and provided succulents to plant in them. We work with the businesses to come up with the best artistic activity that will appeal to their customer-base, ensuring it will be both a success and a good time! We take pride in the fact that people are always excited when they leave our class – we help them work through insecurity when it comes to their art, and while some people initially get frustrated, we always make sure that they are happy with what they created and had fun doing it. Also, we’re very proud of being a women-owned small business.
What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
We are both very outgoing and enjoy being around people, which helps us make our classes more engaging without needing a lot of preparation or pre-existing artistic skills. We also both have an art background and are artists ourselves, which helps us teach easy-to-use techniques that attendees can take with them should they choose to create art in their own time.
Pricing:
- Our pricing structure varies depending on the venue and the space, as well as number of expected attendees. Our ticketed classes (which we typically offer through Eventbrite) range from $25-$45 per person, depending if drinks are included or not. For businesses that want to host free events for attendees, like apartment complexes or corporate events, we charge $25 per person with a minimum spend of $350. We provide all materials, except for alcohol, although we usually offer discounts or one free drink depending on the agreed upon partnership with the location.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://sipandswirlatx.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sipandswirl.atx/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61560565558966
