Hard Times: the economy and some quick suggestions

Yes, the economy is crap. We know. And while it's very cathartic to throw poop at the probable causes of our current meltdown, from a big picture pretend-you're-not-part-of-it-for-a-second standpoint, we were way overdue. "New economy" my ass. We were riding a huge bubble and it was awesome and then it burst and holy crap it hurts now that it burst, but while we try to eat our shoes for dinner, let's be realistic about our situation and make what we can out of what we have. That's what crafters and DIYers do, after all, no?

So!

Luxury is out except in very small quantities. If you make $500,000 chandeliers, you might want to work on switching your product line. Think like your buyers: when times are tough, the first things you stop buying are the things that you least "need."

Suggestion of the day, which I am giving away, free of charge:
Be a need!

To be a need, it helps to start off as a more practical product. Soap, children's clothing, dog collars, and chairs are all fairly easy to justify purchasing even when times are hard. But a little creativity can go a long way for making all sorts of things seem necessary; just think of how many people can't live without their daily lattes or Blackberries or personal trainers. Art can be a need because you need to fill that spot on the wall that you just can't fill with anything you currently own and it's turned into a hole in your life that eats away at you every time you look at it. (85% of my apartment is a spot on the wall that needs art, but I'm buying a condo soon and then it'll be a nice lifelong process filling it up! But I know many many people have that nagging wall space.) And if you're flexible about what you're making, try looking for a version of what you do that is considered more "necessary." If you work in glass or ceramics, try more practical but artfully minded cups and bowls and dishes and things instead of huge ornamental vases. You get the idea.
I'm pushing the business card sized envelopes because it's more important than ever that your particular business card get noticed instead of lost in the shuffle! I just started handing them out to Realtors because Realtors need them because the envelopes are wallpaper and that goes along with the whole buying and selling houses thing. Anybody in the handmade/crafting/arts world needs them becaues they are recycled/handmade and give your business card a memorable, beautiful and artistic presentation that won't soon be lost. Need need need need need!

In cases where the economic downturn means people are more likely to buy from Wal-Mart because handmade is pricey, you've got to market the message hard that handmade lasts and is higher quality so it's actually a better value. If shoppers are on Etsy and cruising handmade universe they already kind of know it, so drive that home right into their shopping carts. You need my product and you need to buy handmade.

I have more things poking about my brain, but that's enough for today.


POST SCRIPT: I started a "Be a NEED: why is your product a NEED?" thread on the Etsy forums as a sort of marketing exercise and people are writing in all kinds of fabulous creative stuff. Feel free to join in the conversation there or post your response in the comments.

productivity, pricing, and why my cousin is the awesomest person ever

My best, most marketable product as of right now is probably my business card-sized wallpaper envelopes. I make my wallpaper envelopes by creating a template on heavy cardstock, tracing it onto the back of the wallpaper sample, and cutting each one out by hand with scissors.

Terribly time consuming.

I'd tried using my Xacto or matknife directly with the template, but always ended up destroying the template and making terrible ugly shredded pieces of crap instead of my near-perfect little envelopes. I tried cutting with the scissors around the templates, but I couldn't hold them still propperly. The fastest thing that yielded up-to-my-standards results seemed to be the "trace a bazillion and then cut a bazillion while watching a movie or listening to This American Life podcasts" method, which was particularly annoying for the envelope shapes that I then had to go back in with Mr. Mattknife and make slits for the top to fold in.
I do these in orders of 50 at a time.

Because my process was so slow, it was never worth it to me to sell them for less than $1 a piece. Anything below that and I was in "screw it. I'm not making them anymore" territory.

This is going back to my whole Econ 101 shtick. Once I've made the envelopes, my costs are sunk and any money I get for them is better than having them sit there forever. But because generally make them to order, I can refuse to make more for any less than my time is worth (in this case, $1 an envelope). In theory the best price for me to charge would be some number that maximizes profit where supply meets demand, blah blah blah, but!!!! having to charge over $1 a piece means that if that magic theoretically shiny perfect pricing number is under $1, I can never reach pricing utopia. Oh the horror! The theoretical econ horror! And, more practically, the getting priced out of ever doing wholesale horror!

Enter my cousin and metal artist/blacksmith extraordinaire, Joshua Gilbert. He's pretty awesome and insanely talented and rescues mangy one-eyed evil cats he thinks are sweet and actually makes a living as an artist/metalworkerperson. In exchange for a bunch of the business card sized envelopes with "thank you for your patronage" cards (that's what he wanted), he made me metal templates in two sizes, plus metal folding templates (something I never even imagined) that make folding the envelopes up into nice right angles much quicker.

Quick crappy photo of the templates and current work in progress on my floor. You get the idea.

Now, I can take my Xacto and whip out a complete envelope, folding slit and all, in the time it used to take me just to pencil trace. Oh, brave new world!

I wonder about all those template cutting tools now, like the Fiskars Shapecutter, if they'd be even faster and better than me and my Xacto, or if they even work on negative image templates...If you know, please comment! Please please please!

Back to the econ question: will I lower my prices? No. Because people don't gasp in horror when I say they're $1 each. $1 seems about right. But wholesale orders and bulk orders? Finally. We can do business. 100 doesn't have to still be $100 to be worth making. So how much would you pay for 100 of them? 1000? A gazillion? Life is exciting.

sweet, sweet trading

I'm trading 50 of my business card sized thank you notes with wallpaper envelopes for the motherload of bath and body products from Mirasol Farm: one rosemary mint lotion, one lavender lotion bar, one sweet eucalyptus soap, one orange clove soap, one kitchen soap, and one double mint soap. I'm very addicted to handmade soaps and like to try new shops all the time, so when she approached me about a trade and wanted up to 50 cards I was a kid in a candy shop. For those of you who've read my past soap-related posts, you know how much I love all things rosemary; Mirasol Farm's kitchen soap is rosemary orange, and since she uses all the natural ingredients instead of fragrancey crap, this strikes me as a completely brilliant innovation. We'll see how long this bar lasts in the kitchen or if it has to migrate into my shower and/or be permanently installed in my nostrils.

BUT!

Because it's 50 cards and I asked my usual "do you have any preferences" question (i.e. love/hate plaids, florals, damask, the color pink, etc.) and she mentioned liking blue and orange, I decided to make a whole bunch of fresh envelopes yesterday in blues and oranges. And then I found I had some wallpapers with what look like sunflowers ("mirasol" is "sunflower" in Spanish) so I had to include a bunch of those...

BUT BUT!!

now I'm stopping myself.
I've made enough.
No more.

Because these all have the "jillhannah.etsy.com" stamp in them, and I'm trying to switch my universe to the Off The Wall Greetings branding, which can commence very soon (my clever business deal will likely be the subject of my next post).

SO!

Now I have to finish up this batch by folding them all, take my photos and make the listing for mirasolfarm, and ship whatever 50 I end up deciding make the most sense in blues and oranges and sunflowers but still get some others in for variety.

And then my sweet, sweet soaps and lotions can come to me and I will be delicious.

I need to do a post on the importance of trading in this economy. Maybe later.

Carnival WINNER!

Congratulations to Wehaf Urchiken, winner of FOUR thank you cards with recycled wallpaper envelopes. Since there were arguably 22 valid entries, 22/5 is a little more than four, so one of her envelope/thank you cards is the 4 1/2" x 2 3/4" size bigger minis (makes more sense when you see the photo). Also, she said she liked paisley, and lucky for her, I've been very paisley lately, so it's a whole paisley collection! In fact, I love damask, but I'm waiting for paisley to show up as its sister everywhere pattern. It seems like I'm not the only one. Let's get a trend going here, people.

Didn't win? There's more in my shop, and I'm always happy to take custom orders for any number and any general paper request. I have palm trees, rocking chairs, and deer heads. Right now I'm just trying to get more general ones listed and umph my visibility, but maybe some weird hunting scenes would do that, too...


A little endnote here: there's something terribly anti-climactic about a random number generator. It takes less than a second and then that's it. It's the fairest way (you should see all the statistical analysis stuff about the way they did the Vietnam draft because of how they didn't properly mix the drum of numbers), but way less exciting than if I had lottery balls flying around a glass vat or a big sparkly light board or models holding briefcases.

EtsyGreetings Blog Carnival Giveaway Spectacular

Step right up and see the Amazing Flexible Giveaway!
It's EtsyGreetings Blog Carnival time!
I don't normally do blog giveaways (and by "normally" I mean "ever"), but this one's for the team and I'm making it special.
Leave your comment to win anywhere from two to 15 business card/gift card sized "thank you" cards with recycled wallpaper envelopes!
Here's how it works: Leave a comment on THIS blog post to enter. One entry per person. I will take the total number of entrants and divide it by FIVE to determine how many card/envelope sets go to the winner, so tell your friends to increase the prize! Total prize will not be less than two sets or more than 15.
If, in your comment, you tell me your favorite wallpaper envelope (one from my shop, the photo, or something general you hope for like "pink floral" or "red plaid") I will do my best to include it in your bundle should you win!
Then head on over to everybody else's carnival booths and see how much EtsyGreetings goodness you can fit into your life.
Contest open to all earth addresses. Yes, I will ship outside the US. No, I will not ship into space. Contest ends 11:59 Central Time Thursday, November 20, 2008 so I can RANDOMLY select a winner (random number generator is my friend) and post Friday. Entries insulting my mom will be counted. Entries that are blatant ads for other crap will not.

Can't wait to win 'em? Buy 'em!

Eveloped in Wallpaper

I have wallpaper envelopes coming out of my ears.

A few weeks ago I started making a new version of my "screw email" cards with recycled wallpaper envelopes. People liked them a lot. Some people said they loved the envelopes and the feel of the cards but wished they had a different message, so I designed some cards that said "thank you" to fit in the same envelopes.

Find more photos like this on Indiepublic

Then I was at a favorite local coffee shop and noticed they had gift cards with crappy envelopes that didn't fit right. Lightbulb went off in my head right away. I talked to the shift manager and left some of my "screw email" cards and envelopes with the suggestion that I make specialized gift card sized ones with or without cards that said something giftcardy or the name of the coffee shop or something.
I was back a week later with a handful of envelopes in perfect gift card size and cards with the messages "thank you" and "don't spend it all in one place," the latter being my idea of funny.

That particular coffee shop owner still hasn't gotten back to me despite much cheerleading on my behalf from several of his managers (he went out of town for a week and I've stopped by a few more times, c'est la vie), but on Wednesday a different coffee shop expressed serious interest, and everyone I show any of my envelope/card combos to gets really excited and thinks they're the greatest things since sliced bread. It's all pretty exciting and flattering.

Find more photos like this on Indiepublic

And the latest exciting news and my real inspiration for writing: one of the people to whom I gave some of my cards/envelopes was my therapist. After all, much of what we talk about is me being sick/demi-dead (really no secret after my last few entries), and this was something I could do/make even on my demi-dead days. She loved them and asked me if she could show them to a friend of hers who sells high-end jewelry. I said of course! She was a little concerned about the confidentiality and what to say if the friend asked how she knew me, but again, I don't think it's such a shameful thing to be in therapy. As long as she's not telling her friend what we discuss, a connection is a connection, and why is a therapist any different from a dentist or a personal trainer? Ideally, if time and money were no object, everyone should have one. It's healthy. You don't want them talking about your particulars, like your gingivitis, flabby arm muscles, or recurring sexual fantasies about gorilla suits, but we're all human and imperfect and seeing specialists to work on things to better our lives is positive. Not shameful.

That being said, my therapist's friend is having a jewelry show on Thursday and loved my cards and wants to feature a display's worth of them for sale! So now I have to come up with a way of displaying them that is

• ●portable (so I can drop it off with my therapist on Wednesday)
• ●classy (I've been doing farmers markets and craft shows, but this is high-end jewelry, which has a different feel to it)
• ●self-explanatory (I won't be there to say "the ones on the top are $1.75 or 6 for $8 and you can choose your own card and envelope combo, blah blah blah")

I'm thinking of going to Target or JoAnns and getting a big cloth bullitin board/frame thing or two and then using cards of the two sizes as "signs" to say "cards my size are $_ and come with the envelope of your choice"

If you have any other ideas/suggestions, I'm more than happy to hear them. Keep in mind I don't want to spend more than about $15-$20, since my profits aren't that high to begin with.

Also, if you own a business and want some gift card envelopes and/or cards, let me know! It's a sliding price scale based on how many you want and if I ever find a faster more efficient way of making them (still working on that...I'm up to about 10 an hour, which is ass-slow but I can watch a movie or listen to audiobooks or have a migraine at the same time, a major plus).

I've been making envelopes for days. Plaid, floral, solid, weird, paisley, stripes, you name it. And they're coming out of my ears. Let's just hope they do well selling Thursday, on Etsy, and in the universe.

Angry Head, Crafty Heart

My head is misbehaving. I was supposed to have a table at the Handmade Market today, and while I tried really hard to go, I couldn't stay vertical long enough or deal with the sun without too much pain to function. I've been like this more or less since Wednesday, and it's not good. I'm having trouble keeping up with life. I want to be a real person, and when I'm feeling ok I do all these real person things and get frustrated by my own hesitancy to do more and make specific plans with hard deadlines and wonder if I'm just being a big fat chicken-butt. But then my normal daily mild migraine morphs back into Evil Death Migraine and I'm useless. I try to be productive and do productive things, but I can't think straight and I screw up my work stuff and can't concentrate long or hard enough to do the things I need to, anyway.

So no Handmade Market today. And I have all these cute envelopes and mini-cards I want to list on Etsy, but right now I'm just not up to it. I'm only even on the computer because I put it on my nightstand so I could use it from my bed, and I keep having to close my eyes and type blind because the glare is bothering me, but lying around doing nothing all day was getting old.

Let's be businessy about this: anybody who is interested in some of my new screw email or thank you cards (they're just like the screw email ones, but in a different font and they say "thank you") with wallpaper envelopes, if you comment or convo me or email me, I will send you a grab bag at $1 a card/envelope set instead of the normal $2 each (plus shipping). You can request color schemes, florals, paisley, plaid, stripes, etc. if you want. You just have to be nice and know that they may get mailed tomorrow and they may not get mailed for a week and I just can't deal with lighting my lightbox and photoing and whatnot to make an Etsy listing, so you're getting them on the super-cheap.

Sorry I'm so fussy. Constant blinding pain makes me fussy.

Why isn't my acupuncture appointment until Wednesday?

*Photo Light and Time by sevenbridges available on Etsy, and such a wonderful illustration for a migraine