Now that I'm done whining about having to replace my computer I can get back to the fun stuff! I was very, very lucky recently. A good friend decided to "invest" in my business(es) and gave me enough money to really start to get some things off the ground. I'll be able to start a wholesale account with a fiber supplier, so that I can buy my wool at wholesale prices, which will give me a broader selection and a slightly higher profit margin. After waiting forever for Etsy to come through with the promised ability to manage more than one shop from the same account, I finally just went ahead and started a second Etsy account to sell the yarn and spinning fiber in. I'm not putting the link out there yet because the shop is still empty. Writing up Etsy listings is more like writing ad copy than a classified, and that's never come easily to me, so the listings are going through lots of revisions before I make them public. I'm hoping to have the new shop up and running by Thanksgiving!
Here's what I've been working on:
I'm starting to work on colorways outside of single color families - these are some of my more successful attempts.
I'm also working on increasing my spinning speed. I expect the dyed fiber to be a bigger percentage of sales, but since much of what I spin ends up sitting around waiting for a project, it may as well be available for purchase while it's waiting!
These first two colorways came out beautifully the first time! I love it when things work right!
This last skein is just for me :) It'll go nicely with
this yarn. Right now I'm thinking of hats and leg warmers, because this yarn is too "soft" for socks. It would pill terribly, and I'd probably get holes faster than I'd like.
Not terribly fashionable perhaps, but I'm planning on wearing them under skirts with the actual aim of keeping my legs warm!
These first two colorways came out beautifully the first time! I love it when things work right!
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Wow I had no idea that Etsy couldn't enable you to have several shops under one account, it seems so simple for them to do that, they must be making more money that way but sounds frustrating!
ReplyDeleteThey don't make any more money off doing it that way - it was more a "growing pains" issue than a financial one. Etsy charges for listing an item, renewing an item, and takes a percentage of sales figures (plus other optional services), rather than a "per account" fee like some other sites. When they first started, it hadn't occurred to them that people would want multiple shops, or that they might want to have their shop account separate from their buying account. As the site grew it became something that people were requesting, but they had to make some fundamental changes to the infrastructure of the site before they could do that. They've been slowly working towards this all year, and will likely make the change soon, but I have no idea how soon "soon" will be. I didn't want to wait too much longer, so I just went ahead & set up a second account.
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