The Handmade Marketplace

Must-Have Resource for the Budding Bead Tycoon

I found a book that is an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to sell handcrafts.  It's called The Handmade Marketplace:  How to Sell Your Crafts Locally, Globally, and Online.  Written by Kari Chapin, it is chock full of ideas, hints, and advice on everything you need to start up an online handcrafts business.  The book begins with advice on finding your niche, setting up a space in which to work, and identifying your motivation and goals.  Chapin goes on to talk about branding, pricing your work, collecting money, marketing, and becoming part of a community as a way to find help, inspiration, and spread the word about your product.  There are three whole chapters on using social networks to market your work.  The chapter on blogging was particularly helpful for me, as I had never even read a blog before starting this one.  The next part of the book is about selling your work at craft fairs, online marketplaces, and at brick-and-mortar stores, including wholesale and consignment.  The last chapter suggests ways to diversify your empire, such as doing  trunk shows, parties, teaching courses, and offering kits.  Chapin's advice is clear, practical, and timely, and she gives plenty of examples of how her suggestions might be used by artists of various media, such as jewellery designers, knitters, sewers, fabric artists, painters, and woodworkers, to name a few.  The author calls upon artists in various fields who are running successful businesses to share their advice and experiences (good and bad) with the reader, which they do in a friendly, open and personal way.  Some sections are set up in an easy-to-access FAQ style.

The book is illustrated by Emily Martin and Jen Skelley.  The hand-drawn black and white cartoon illustrations are simple and charming, just like the handcrafts they illustrate.  The headings are clear and relevant, making it easy to find pertinent information again and again, even after you've read the book from cover to cover.  Even the shape of the book is pleasing.  It's almost square. 

I usually hate instruction manual-type books, but this book reads more like a novel.  I read it from cover to cover, and have referred back to one section or another many times since.  I would definitely recommend this book to other budding handcrafts tycoons.

Getting Ready for Christmas

Only 8 days left until Christmas Eve! Funny how when you're a kid you count down to the 25th, because that's the day when you get to unwrap your gifts; when you're an adult, you count down to the 24th because that's your last chance to buy last minute gifts, stocking stuffers, food, wrap, tape, etc. 

Anyway, I'm nowhere near finished my shopping, but as of Friday noon, I'm free for two weeks!  I plan on taking one full day to finish it all up. I'll have to prepare myself like Ernest Shackleton for a six-month expedition to find the south pole, but I have incredible stamina.  The only thing that scares me is not finding a parking spot.

I don't have much to say about the bead world today. My plans for the business over the holiday:

1.  Make more jewelery.
2.  Photograph all of it.
3.  Make more jewelery.
4.  Make an instruction video or photo tutorial.
5.  Download and read Rena Klingenberg's e-book on selling on social networks.
6.  Make more jewelery.
7.  Have a sale!
8.  Make more jewelery.

Watch this blog for a coupon code which will allow you to take 15 % off anything in my shop until Boxing Day. Happy holidays!

The Frugal Tycoon's Money-Saving Tips

Marketing and promotional materials are an essential part of building a small business and getting your name and product out there.  The costs of these materials can be prohibitive to a budding tycoon, though.  Through research and happy accident, I've found a few ways to save money on these promotional materials. 

1.  Make mini cards.  Buy pretty blank cards from the dollar store, and cut them into 1-inch strips.  Using a nice marker, write a personal note to the buyer on these and slip them into the package before shipping.

2.  Make your own promotional literature.  If you don't have Microsoft Publisher, consider investing in it.  I've used it to design my own business cards, flyers, craft booth signs, and e-invites for beading parties.  I printed my own colour flyers, on my ink-jet printer, on normal office paper.  After looking into the price of printing 50 colour flyers at a print shop, I figured that it was cheaper to buy a new colour cartridge just for this purpose.  I got 50 copies, and there was still lots of ink left.  Of course, this is economical only if your printer's cartridges aren't atrociously expensive (mine, thankfully, aren't.)  The flyers look great, and the whole thing cost about $30.00. If you don't want to buy Microsoft Publisher, you can download a trial version that lasts for about a month. 

Jewellery Repairs

It's been a couple of weeks since I wrote anything here. Frankly, I couldn't think of anything to say. But, thankfully, a thought has occurred to me. On the weekend, while I was enjoying the first of my two annual Thanksgiving dinners, one at mother-in-law's, and one at Mum's, mother-in-law presented me with a bag of jewellery that her friend from work wanted repaired. The stuff was inexpensive, and the repairs needed were mostly broken clasps or restringing. Mum-in-law said, "Now, Diana, you make sure you charge her for this!" It occurred to me at that time that I have no idea what a fair price for jewellery repairs would look like.

A Journey of a Thousand Miles

When the notion first entered my head about starting my own home-based jewellery business, I went online and read all I could about starting a business in Ontario, which is where I live.  The very first hurdle was deciding on a name.
 I trolled through dictionaries, thesauri, collections of sayings and proverbs, names of plays and books.  I tried so many names, covering pages of notebook paper, like a lovestruck teenager linking her name to her boyfriend's last name.  I wanted a name that was distinctive, didn't use my name or the word "creations," (I just don't like that word) and that implied a focus on natural materials, which I tend to use in my jewellery.  After settling on a likely possibility, I would Google it, and invariably find it was already in use. I was beginning to despair of ever finding a name, when my friend emailed me a few suggestions.  One was Bead Planet.