Rachael's Handmade Designs

Hi All, While it's always good to be tailored to the upcoming and current events with re: to your shop, there is some dispute in my mind about the effectiveness of marketing per holidays. What I mean to say is that if you spend your money buying tools and supplies, not to mention investing your time and effort, to buld a specific project centered around a specific holiday and u get it all finished, and then...it doesn't sell. What then? From a manager's or buyer for a company's perspective, if you purchase items for your store and they don't sell, you're stuck with storing it for another year, then possibly discounting is as "last year's items" because you'll be wanting to create new items by the time the holiday rolls around again. So why should this be any different from our stores, as crafters? Yes, you want to be current with what's happening in the season, but I do not feel that it is imperative to be specific with creating your ite...

Hi All, Like many of you, my shop has been hurting lately. :(Summer is a hard time to weather for small business owners of some trades. It's important to understand that there are seasons for shopping - or at least, I keep telling myself this!  I have been doing research on how to compensate for the challenging summer months; indeed, how to turn it into something useful to further my shop and encourage growth.  I don't usually read the Etsy blog, but I'm kind of feeling blocked, so I decided to. I came across an article that helped me to understand more merchandising approaches. BUNDLES! We all agree that having varied price points in your shop helps to appeal to a wider range of buyers, right? In the retail culture, I was often taught that it's the number of transactions you have in a day, and the size of those transactions. The magic number was three! So, think about it. By offering a bundle, you not only offer the buyer the items that they were looking for...