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Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Winding Down (and Back Up)

Now that 2010 is winding down, I have some time to catch my breath and really start to focus on next year.

Here's my current list of goals for 2011:
  • As I've mentioned before, I'd really like to streamline my products a little bit. There are certain styles that sell over and over again, so it seems like it would be best to focus on doing variations of those styles. Hopefully then I can actually assign style numbers for groups of items, instead of item numbers for each individual piece, because as it stands right now my inventory spreadsheet has a row for every single piece of jewelry I make. Hopefully the end result will be less time spent on the administrative end of things (especially calulating the materials cost for each item!).
  • Which brings me to my next goal: I need to overhaul my inventory/sales spreadsheet, at least to some extent. It's become unwieldy, and I don't like it. My expense and cash flow spreadsheet are still working quite nicely though!
  • Try to schedule more jewelry parties. They're fun, they don't cost much to do compared to craft shows, and pretty much everyone who shows up buys at least one thing, so it's a good return on investment.
  • Come up with better displays for craft shows, especially my jewelry tags and earring cards. I've been using generic display products, and it just isn't cutting it anymore! I'll continue to use the silver and purple packaging I came up with for online orders, but I want to carry that color scheme into my earring cards and jewelry tags for shows.
I'm thinking that for the tags I'll use the same purple paper used for mailing products. My plan is to print my logo on the paper, then cut the tags out using victorian pattern edging scissors.

Instead of regular string, I'm going to use a thin, silver or gray ribbon. Same basic idea as what I'm currently doing for bracelets and necklaces, but a little more personality.
As for earrings: I'd like to use silver or gray earring display cards with my logo in purple, but I can decide whether I should buy them and print my logo on labels to stick on, or make my own from scratch.
The dilemma I'm facing is this: If I order pre-made hanging cards, they'll have a hole in the middle of the top, like this:

If I use clear labels, I can't put them on the top section, and if I put them on the bottom section the label will be partially covered. But I WOULD be able to use my current earring displays, which look like this:

If I make my own cards from scratch, they'd be completely flat and wouldn't be able to hang on the display racks I have. I'm trying to figure out the best way to display them at shows if I go this route, but I really don't know... Punch holes and push-pin them to a cork board maybe? Thoughts? Anyone??

2 comments:

  1. If you want to make your own cards (or have someone else make them) I have seen these stick on "hangers" that you stick to the back of the card and it is used to hang on displays like yours. Here is an example http://bit.ly/fBx0Fn
    Good Luck!
    Cory
    TealwaterDesigns

    ReplyDelete
  2. Cory, that is a PERFECT solution! Thank you so much!!! :-)

    ReplyDelete

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