To Makeover or Not to Makeover?

I've been thinking of giving Betty Bow Blue a mini-makeover. I was printing out my own business cards and packaging, but quite frankly cutting out each one got a little old. I ordered new business cards, with a new logo on them, and would like for everything (cards, packaging, Etsy shop, etc.) to be cohesive.

New business cards

I chose my original image because one of my sisters thought that everything should have a 40s vibe to it because she felt that my products evoked that feeling. The newer image is more modern. Which do you like better? Should I stick with the old one or welcome the new? (See poll on the right sidebar).

Etsy banners:

Old

New

Logo:

Old

New

Opinions?

Ring Survey Results

33 people completed this survey:

1. Which size would you prefer?

• The 1 1/4" pom (tan)- 30.3% (10)
• The 1" pom (gold)- 60.6% (20)
• Neither- 9.1% (3)
• Other: "I prefer the smaller one, but like them both... very cute."

2. Which ring base would you prefer? (This question was added later, so there are only 19 responses)

• An adjustable metal base- 63.2% (12)
• Elastic- 15.8% (3)
• Either- 21.2% (4)

3. Which metal ring base would you prefer? (Select all the apply)

• Antique silver- 24.2% (8)
• Gold- 12.1% (4)
• Antique bronze- 27.3% (9)
• Silver- 30.3% (10)
• Any, depending on the color of the pom- 42.4% (14)

4. Solids or prints? Cool or warm colors? Etc.

• Answers for this question were pretty much all over the place, as was expected. There was a good mix of responses for just about all colors and prints/solids. A couple of people brought up some questions/suggestions in this section, which I will address later.

5.  Min/max price range that you would pay for this ring:

• The majority of the responders agreed with the $6-$8 price range that similar rings are being listed for on Etsy. (I say similar rings because I have yet to find any listings on Etsy for a fabric pom ring like this one. The closest that I can find are either cabochons or yarn poms). A few people suggested $5-$7, while others went as high as $10-$15! The lowest suggestion was $2! (Which I'm hoping was a typo, because that is less than it costs me to make these!). 

Someone mentioned to me that they would have liked to have seen an "Additional Comments" on the surveys, which I agree would have been great, however, I was limited to a certain number of questions, and that included the photos. Fortunately, a few responders took advantage of the "other" answer options, or the places where you could type in your response, and used that to voice a few concerns and suggestions.

A couple of responders mentioned "full" vs. "less full" poms. The poms that I intend to make for these rings will be fuller than the two shown. I just whipped up those two in a hurry so I could have photos for the surveys. Another responder wanted to know how I would keep the rings from fraying, which is a legitimate concern. The poms will be sealed around the edges to help prevent fraying, I just didn't waste the time to do that with my sample rings. A third person suggested that I make fabric button rings, using leftover buttons from the bracelets. While this is a great suggestion, if I do make some, then I will probably limit them to craft fairs, as the fabric button rings are everywhere on Etsy!

My bases for the rings arrived last week, so I will probably get started making some soon. I am delighted to say that I have already received an order for a ring! Someone saw a similar ring on a television show recently, fell in love with it, and has asked me to make her one. I will be picking up the fabric on Saturday, (as she has requested a color that I didn't have on hand), and will let you all know how it turns out! (Thanks again, L!)

Feel free to contact me (via email or Facebook) if you would also like to put in a request for a custom order, or if you have any other questions about them. I am headed to the fabric store on Saturday to restock a few supplies, so if anyone wants one in a color that I don't have, I will have to pick it up then. (I don't get to the store often, so I have to get everything at once).

Thank you again to everyone who responded to the survey! All feedback was appreciated.

Earring Survey Results

30 people responded to the earring survey, (and one silly goose who inadvertently skipped it).

Photo/Project Credit: Happy Together

1. Who do you think that earrings like these would be more appropriately targeted toward (Select all that apply)

• Women- 30%- (9)
• Teens- 50%- (15)
• Young girls- 50% (15)
• Other (6): "i would think high school, college, young adults would wear there, very cute!"; "tweens"; "Seniors, too."; "Young women-early 20's"; "Depending on the fabric color it could be for young girls too."; "While I think they would be most appropriate looking on younger girls, they also might not hold up on them."

2. If you were to wear these, or buy them for someone else, would you prefer solid, prints, pearls, beads, cool, warm, or neutrals? (FYI, I had to use this format for the question because I was only allowed to have 10 questions per survey and this one was part of the bracelet survey).

• Answers for this question were all over the place, but the general consensus was that anything would go. Winner of the best feedback response was: "both solid and prints would work for me. again, if it is something like this that is a little out of the box for earrings-i think the women that would wear these would like fun colors and prints rather than neutrals. Pearls are beautiful, but if you had a sparkly tiny button that would be gorgeous too! Love sparkles."

3. The average min/max price range that people said that they would pay for these is $7.50-$10.30. $5 was the lowest price suggested and $15 the highest. Three people claimed that they would not buy them at all.

My MPW suggested the following: wholesale price- $6.54; "safe" price- $11.54; retail price: $13.08, which seems to have underestimated a bit? Originally, I was thinking of pricing these for a craft fair at $4.00 a pair! Seems as though I was underestimating what people would pay, too!

I would like to reply to a couple of feedback comments/concerns that I received regarding these earrings. Actually, I think it's only one comment. One responder who said that they would not buy these, explained, "The fabric looks [like] it will fray, and they look a little gaudy." To which my response is, to each his own. I would personally never wear these either, as I prefer my earrings to dangle a bit, but I know that there are some women out there who would.

The main reason that I was considering making these earrings when I came across them was because there were so many women at my last craft fair who were excited about my pom hair clips, thinking that they were actually earrings. They were disappointed to find out that they were in fact hair clips. I couldn't help thinking first, that the poms were much too large to be mistaken for earrings, (they are 1.5"-2" in diameter!) and secondly, how gaudy that would look, but again, to each his own. But then I started thinking, well what about a smaller version of the pom....

As far as fraying goes, I think that the natural fraying of the earrings in the photo from Happy Together, actually added to the charm of them, except maybe that long bit hanging out on the left side of the photo:

Photo/Project Credit: Happy Together

 However, I believe in selling a product that is going to hold up and not fall apart on my customer, so I was planning to seal the edges of the fabric before constructing the earrings. Which I did, with the second pair that I made:

I actually wasn't very crazy about how these turned out, nor was I satisfied with the whole process in general. Hand-sewing the tiny fabric pieces together was a pain in my tushy, and I am too much of a perfectionist to have them appear sporadically arranged and messy as they did in the original tutorial, (as seen in the blue earring on the far right):

Photo/Project Credit: Happy Together

So, all things considered, I concluded that I will not be making these earrings. I didn't really enjoy doing it, nor did I like the end result enough to want to make more. If I'm going to spend valuable time on an item, then I want to be able to be proud of it, regardless of whether or not I would wear it myself.

Thank you again to everyone for the wonderful feedback! Expect to see the ring and headband holder survey results within the next week, and if you haven't checked out the results for the bracelets yet, check them out here.

The Power of Pricing

If anyone has happened to stop by my Etsy shop in the last day or so, you will notice that I am "On Vacation". I'm not really on vacation, (although after hearing the weather forecast for the rest of the week and weekend, I wish I were), I am making some much needed adjustments, and hopefully improvements, to my shop. Other than taking new photos using my photo box, I am also in the process of adjusting my prices. 

I have been told by several people that they were surprised at how low I have some of my items priced. I have also been told that I am undervaluing myself. I rolled my eyes at them at first, but then I sat down and actually did the math, and after figuring in the fees that Etsy and PayPal charged me, I realized that I ended up losing money on my Etsy sales! Obviously, this is no way to run a business (unless I'm trying to run it into the ground), so I needed to make some changes.

I enlisted the assistance of my fabulously helpful sister, and she directed me to what I will be referring to as the "Magic Pricing Worksheet", or MPW. Some brilliant person out there came up with an Excel worksheet (complete with formulas! No need for fingers and toes!) for dummies like me to help price their items. Prior to this, I was doing a lot of estimating, and basically pulling prices out of my tushy. Sure, I was looking around at similar items and what they were selling for, but basically my prices were guesstimates. (Side note, I find it interesting that Firefox does not recognize "tushy" as being a word, but it does "guesstimate").

Basically, what the MPW does is calculate different prices based on cost of materials, overhead (which for the purposes of my business, includes the cost of packaging, printing, materials that I cannot really estimate for, like glue and thread, etc.), and labor. It gives you four price figures: your total cost, wholesale price, retail price, and a "Safe Price Range" . I love that it does this, because these three different prices are perfect for the various places that I could sell my products: craft fairs/personal sales, online venues like Etsy, or a "brick and mortar" storefront that sells items from local artisans.

I don't know about other people who sell their crafts, but personally, I plan to have different prices for each venue. This may not sound fair, or the ideal way to conduct a business, but let me break down the reasons why. If I am selling my items at a local craft fair, then I need to be aware of who my customer is going to be, and most importantly, my location. Someone who is shopping around a craft fair in the boonies of Upstate New York is most likely going to spend less money on items than someone in New York City. Right? The typical craft fair visitor in my area is not going to be shelling out $30 for a felt flower headband, regardless of how well it is made or how much time has been put into it, (there are always some exceptions though). So ideally, my prices should reflect that if I want to make any sales and try to establish my business with "the locals", which I feel is an important thing to do when just starting out. As long as my prices are fair, and I'm still making money rather than losing money from these sales, then I see no reason why I can't sell them for less, using the wholesale price from the MPW.

Now let's take a look at selling on Etsy, or other online venues. In case you were unaware of this, listing items on these sites is not free, nor is it free to sell them. Etsy charges a fee for each item that you list. After a certain period of time, (a few months), if your item has not sold, then you can relist the item, paying the fee again. Etsy also charges a fee for each sale that you make. They will charge you a (very small) % of the purchase price of the item, (does not include tax or shipping). Unfortunately, the fees do not end there. If your customer is using PayPal to pay for their order, which they most likely are, then PayPal will charge a fee based on the full amount of money received (including tax and shipping). This is a small %, plus $.30 for each transaction. So, with all of that in mind, items that I list on Etsy should be priced higher to help cover those charges.

Another thing to consider when pricing these items is that Etsy has an International customer-base, which means a higher chance of reaching customers who will pay $30 for a felt flower headband (which they do). It would really be stupid of any seller not to take advantage of this, and this is where the middle "Safe Price" figure comes in handy.

The retail price would most likely apply to items being sold in stores. Although I currently don't do this, there are several local stores/venues that sell items for local artisans, kind of like a consignment shop. My sister does this, and if I remember correctly, she has to pay a fee each year for her space in the store, and they also collect a 30%-40% commission from the items that she sells there. Obviously, this means that she has to price accordingly if she wants to make any money at all, hence a higher retail price.

So with all of this in mind, last night I sat down with my receipts, (or at least the ones I had the foresight to save), and the MPW and got to work figuring out what I should be charging for my items. I calculated what it cost me to make each item, figured out how much time it took me to make each item, and plugged them into the MPW. Holy moly! What a difference in prices! I realized that the biggest difference in pricing my items was that I wasn't figuring in my time, the labor that it takes to make each item. Although, for some random reason I was doing this with my necklaces, but not my other items. Apparently I must think that 15 or 30 minutes of my time is worth less than one hour of it. In other cases, I underestimated how much it actually cost for the supplies to make certain items.

One of the tips that I see over and over again regarding pricing, is that pricing your items low (thinking that they will sell better) will actually hurt your sales. Apparently when people see a product that is priced low, they assume that it is cheaply made; they are more likely to buy a similar item at a higher price. This makes absolutely no sense to me because I always shop around and compare prices for the biggest bargain. I am all about finding the best way to save money, not spend more of it. But speaking of comparing prices, I also learned that it's best not to price your items based on what others are selling similar items for. The main reason for this is because you really have no way of knowing how those people are figuring out their prices. They may not have as much time invested, or as many material costs.

Overall, I think the biggest issue that I have to overcome is being able to appropriately value myself and my items. I often think, "Why would anyone pay that price for one of my items?". I guess I don't think that people actually consider the amount of time and work that I have invested in an item when looking at the price. They compare my products to similar items that they can find in the store, and think that I am overcharging for them. (I must assume that everyone is a bargain shopper like myself).  But here's the thing, yes, items in a store are going to be cheaper, there's no getting around that one. But in most cases, they are also cheaply made using cheaper products. I don't use prefabricated items for my products, (with the exception of the "hardware" like headbands and hair clips, but I challenge you to try to make those from scratch). I don't take a plastic or silk flower and simply glue it to a headband and resell it. I don't buy cabochons in bulk, glue them to a ring base that I have bought in bulk, and resell them. Each one of my flowers, each one of my poms, is unique. Each has been hand-cut, hand-sealed, and hand-assembled. I take my time with each piece, and put my best effort into making them look "perfect", and that extra care is worth something.