What a busy Christmas-time I had, so much so that it's taken me til now to review my Christmas sales and sit down to blog. It was busy for so many reasons; my new notonthehighstreet shop went CRAZY over the Christmas period, my baby demanded as much attention as ever and her first Christmas was my best Christmas ever, by miles. I also braved a trip to London for the BUST London craftacular, which was about 500times more busy than any craft fair I've ever experienced and packed with really lovely people, I had such a great timr (despite spending my first ever full day away from Rose and managing to slide her into every conversation and cooing over all the babies at the fair/on the tube!).
So, the Christmas period in review:
- NOTHS went great but because of limited time with a baby constantly attached to me next year I'd like to start stocking up from August; I had to set my delivery time to 10-14 days by early December in order to cut off Christmas orders early, so could have sold more if I'd had the capacity to make more
- BUST craftacular was worth it and a brilliant experience, again I'd like to stock up for longer next time and would concentrate on less designs if I did it again - I had to get out a load of old stock to fill the table and this makes my work harder to navigate for a customer. I got loads of inspiration from other people's work/presentation.
- My packaging for NOTHS, I box both brooches and puppets in a small brown box, use a ribbon or red wool, and label the box with both y brand name and product name, makes my work more expensive to produce but it totally worth it - I'll offer boxed sets of puppets at future fairs.
- By making products to order I don't end up with loads of unsold items, and can focus on a smaller range of designs which should give me a stronger brand image.
- Folksy got in touch to encourage me to list some items (my last listings were years ago) because they were doing a feature on craftacular sellers, so I've re-joined. But only one sale so far, but disappointing.
Because of my plans to make designs to order, and focus on less designs, I'm flogging a load of sale stock on etsy and folksy. Fingers crossed someone will have a spree.
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