From Retrenchment to Entrepreneurship: How Annice Tan Built a Creative Business and Doubled Her Website Traffic

After being retrenched while raising two young children, Annice Tan turned a creative side gig into a growing sticker-printing business. By learning to market with greater structure and confidence, she doubled her website traffic and began creating opportunities for other independent artists.

Annice Tan runs Mushling Sprout, a custom sticker-printing business offering personalised stickers for consumers, parents, children and independent artists.

Customers can customise details such as colours, characters and fonts, making the service suitable for everything from schoolbook name labels to original artwork and small-batch merchandise.

Alongside the business, Annice works part-time as a social media executive for another printing company. The role complements her entrepreneurial journey by giving her greater familiarity with printing products, customer needs and social media content.

Her long-term goal, however, is to make her own business her main professional focus.

Starting Again After Retrenchment

The decision to pursue entrepreneurship came during an uncertain period in Annice’s life.

As a mother of two young children who had recently been retrenched, she understood the security that a regular salary could provide. Moving towards entrepreneurship meant confronting financial uncertainty alongside the responsibilities of raising a family.

The biggest challenge was not a lack of ideas. It was self-doubt.

“The doubt has always been the thing. Can I do it? Will this really work?”

Annice knew that building a business would require her to step beyond what felt safe. Even participating in her first physical booth took time. Although she had considered it much earlier, fear held her back for almost a year.

Her husband eventually encouraged her to try when they found an affordable booth opportunity.

That experience helped her adopt a different way of measuring progress. A business activity did not have to produce immediate profit to be valuable. It could still provide practical experience, customer feedback and a clearer understanding of what to improve.

Learning to Market with Intention

Annice recognised that posting content without a strategy would not be enough to grow Mushling Sprout.

She wanted to understand how to plan her marketing, use the available tools more effectively and make decisions based on clear objectives rather than hope.

After completing Equinet Academy’s WSQ Social Media Marketing Strategy & Optimisation Course, she began approaching marketing with greater structure.

“I cannot just post whatever I feel like, cross my fingers and hope. I have to learn how to plan and use all the tools at my disposal.”

The course complemented the business guidance she had received through other entrepreneurship programmes. Together, these learning experiences helped her think more carefully about goal setting, scheduling, marketing activity and business development.

Doubling Website Traffic Through Advertising

One of Annice’s clearest results was doubling the traffic to the Mushling Sprout website through advertising.

The result demonstrated what could happen when marketing moved beyond occasional content publishing and became a deliberate part of the business.

Her website remains relatively simple, but it gives customers a place to discover her services and submit orders. Some visitors view the website before continuing their enquiries through Instagram, where many of her orders currently originate.

The experience also showed Annice where the business could improve next. She wants to make the website clearer, strengthen the customer journey and eventually move towards a more scalable ecommerce platform.

Growing Through Personal Connections

Digital marketing helped Annice expand her reach, but much of her business growth still comes through direct human interaction.

She attends networking events, speaks to people about her services and shares the business with friends and professional contacts.

These conversations were initially uncomfortable.

When Annice first started, she felt nervous discussing her business around established entrepreneurs. She questioned why anyone would trust a new business without a long track record.

“I kept thinking, ‘Why should you trust me when I’ve only just started?’ I felt like I wasn’t good enough to be in this space.”

Over time, she learned that speaking confidently about the business was itself an essential entrepreneurial skill.

She no longer expected every conversation to result in a sale. Sharing the business simply gave interested people the opportunity to learn more.

“It doesn’t hurt to share. If they are interested, they will want to know more.”

Face-to-face interactions also allowed potential customers to connect the product with a real person. That trust became especially important for customised work, where buyers needed confidence that their designs would be printed accurately and delivered with care.

Building a Community Around Independent Artists

Mushling Sprout is not only a printing service.

Annice is also developing it as a platform that can support independent artists who want to sell stickers but may lack the equipment, product range or resources to operate their own booths.

Many artists rely on overseas printing services that may require large quantities or produce inconsistent results. Annice offers smaller printing bundles that give them greater flexibility over quantity and quality.

She has also begun organising her own event booths. Her model allows participating artists to submit their designs while she manages the printing, cutting and selling. The artists then receive a share of the earnings.

This approach is especially relevant to other mothers and emerging creatives who may have strong ideas but limited time or resources.

“I wanted it to be fun and community-driven. If I’m running a booth, I want it to help people who are in the same position as me.”

For Annice, entrepreneurship is not only about increasing her own sales. It is also an opportunity to help more creatives test their ideas and bring their work to customers.

Balancing Motherhood, Employment and Entrepreneurship

Growing the business requires Annice to balance several roles.

She is raising two young children, working part-time in social media and developing Mushling Sprout at the same time.

Maintaining that balance demands discipline. She has had to create schedules, set aside time for focused work and stay consistent even when progress feels slow.

Her part-time role remains flexible, and she is discussing opportunities to expand her responsibilities. At the same time, she continues working towards her longer-term goal of making Mushling Sprout her primary focus.

The arrangement gives her space to strengthen her marketing experience while developing the business at a sustainable pace.

Learning Before Earning

Annice’s journey shows that entrepreneurship rarely begins with complete confidence.

Her progress came from acting despite uncertainty, testing ideas and treating every experience as a source of learning.

The first booth did not need to be perfect. The website did not need to contain every feature. She did not need to feel as established as the business owners around her.

She needed to begin.

“Push yourself to take the move. As an entrepreneur, you have to learn a lot first before you can earn.”

By combining structured marketing knowledge with networking, experimentation and consistent action, Annice has moved Mushling Sprout beyond an idea. She has increased its website traffic, expanded its services and begun building a creative community around it.

Her story is a reminder that meaningful business growth does not always start with certainty. Sometimes, it starts by accepting the fear, trying anyway and learning from what happens next.

 

Course Completed

WSQ Social Media Marketing Strategy & Optimisation Course, 2026