This is hilarious… I guess I won’t be sending her any of my product.
If only they could send the whole Jersey Shore cast something that would sterilize the lot of them… do something good for mankind, please!
“imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”…
Sure.
When I opened my store, there were a few people who were miffed at me.
Two of my old bosses, for starters. They owned gift shops and I worked for them. One for 5 years, one for one year. I learned a few things about running a retail store from them. Namely… balloons are a must on open house days and remove the “Made in China” stickers, if you can.
I also learned a whole lot about what not to do. But 90% of it… I learned on my own through lots of (fun) blood, sweat and tears. (Have I mentioned that owning and running your own cutesy store is HARD???)
I guess I’m very grateful for these two individuals when it comes to how I ran my store. Perhaps I didn’t thank them enough because both of them never stepped foot in my store and when I saw them, they were rude to me. Years of service to them, I succeed out on my own… they stop talking to me. Nice! (Oh, and another thing… I find that this industry is a tad cut-throat and nobody wants to share secrets).
I’m getting to the reason for this post in a minute, I swear.
I’ve had several, if not dozens, of the items I’ve created and sold copied. Blatantly. By people I like, too. I was okay with it.
One woman purchased some of my handmade silver charms (cost me $1200 to make… lost wax casting with a fimo original etc etc) and had them made in CHINA. That stung.
One lady took my LOGO, erased my business name and added her name and marketed it as her own design.
I got over it.
Okay… so the fact that my friend who helped me at the store occasionally is opening her own store in a month… I’m angry, or jealous… or ????
She learned about all my vendors, where to get the best merchandise, where I got my insurance…. almost a decade of research on my part… she gets to benefit from for free. I kind of wish I wouldn’t have included her on so many decisions.
There are other details I won’t go into, but… I feel like an immature baby about this. Every time I get another email asking about my trade secrets, I want to scream.
This entire rant makes me look like an a-hole… lol.
She did send me a lovely note saying that my store gave her purpose and was the only thing that made her happy in a dark part of her life. It made me cry. So, I guess I get it. But… I’m still grumpy about it.
Maybe this is why I’m crazy… once, my Mom accused me that I should give her all the credit for all of my past, current or future successes because I got the talent from her… gene-speaking. I wonder if they could graph out my DNA and I could give her and my father each a percentage based on my income for the year?
Pffft.
If you’ve been reading my last few posts, you’d know that my plan was to take the next several weeks to explore crafting and handmade mediums and figure out profit potential and my general attraction to said medium. This was going to determine the new direction of my little crafting business.
Well, change of plans.
I’m going to quickly talk about my experience with mediums of the past… (mediums of craft shows past?) and why I don’t want to do that anymore…
Bath Products
So, I made soap and bath products for almost 10 years. For me, it was pretty, smelled good and it was a renewable item… no brainer, right? Not really. It’s a huge liability, most insurance companies won’t touch it, it has a limited shelf life, everyone else does it and the profit margin is minimal. So, when I got my store, I had to separate the handmade soap products from everything else and give that company its own LLC to protect my assets. Pain in the ass. I had all sorts of soap, bath bombs, shower gel, lotion and a few other fun things. My labels and packaging were artsy, unique and people purchased the items based on that alone. They looked snazzy and it was great having an exclusive line. But… I think I made $500-$1000 a month before having to pay the $800 a year LLC and extra fees to my tax guy to file the damn thing. Scoop your own bath salts were popular and worth it alone… barely. But there was this one time a child inhaled the salts (up his nose… and it burned. Terribly. Because… duh) and the mother was completely pissed off at me… I had thoughts of a lawsuit because the jars of salt were at child level and looked like candy etc etc. Made me very nervous. There was talk of wholesaling out the salts and doing salts only, but it never happened. Take that idea and steal it from me… because it honestly did well and the overhead (not counting the LLC) was minimal. Don’t invest in SOY, bath salts is where it’s at! (Thank you 80′s wall street movies).
Candle Making
There was a point in time where candles were REALLY popular but you couldn’t get the good ones everywhere, Illumiations hadn’t opened yet and nobody was putting them in fun containers. So, I poured wax into anything cup-like, made some great labels, had great smells… it was neat. But it made a huge mess. Wax gets everywhere. People don’t want to pay what you think it’s worth. Unless you have a warehouse and hundreds of molds or containers, doing small batches was irritating and not cost effective. Oh, and one by one my friends started making candles… so, I stopped. (Sidenote… don’t put fresh lavender in candles… apparently it turns the candle into a little flame thrower. There, you’ve learned something).
Tole Painting
I made my first tole-painted thing when I was 8. It’s in my blood. So, I made signs of all sorts for decades. For your garden, for your powder room, to tell your guests to kindly “take off their shoes”. They did well, but once China could stick little blushing cheeks on bunnies, we were done. My $30.00 sign looked almost like the $5.00 one from China. I switched it up and made more detailed French-inspired and vintage-inspired signs. China was right behind us. Now I think the trend is behind us completely. Unless you do hand-painted cutesy baby room name plaque things. I’ve seen a few businesses do really well with the custom name signs. But if I did signs for the umpteen million Katey/Kate/Caight’s of the world, I might lose my mind. Next.
Paper Products
I’ve had cards and stationery made up using my art (see tole painting). Cards and paper products do well in stores. They did well in my store. So, if you don’t have a store, selling cards is tough. You have to print thousands to get the price down and then try to sell them to other stores. The investment and commitment is pretty intense. Leave it to Hallmark. Their cards light up, vibrate, spin and play Pointer Sisters songs now. You can’t compete unless you go into the specialty invitation realm or have a very large, cohesive and amazing line that you’ll probably end up selling to Hallmark.
Other things…
I’ve also made floral arrangements, sewn pillows, hand-embroidered on onesies and baby shirts, puffy painted things (I don’t miss this at all), adorned dog collars, made tote bags, mosaics in the form of tables and other decorative pieces, hand-painted glass, hand painted on furniture, chalk board art, hand-frosted art cookies… I know I’m forgetting stuff. Long story short, each was canned because of not making money on it, being irritated by it or not having the room to store it. Another reason… someone copied me. Someone took my idea and blatantly copied it. It’s a great way to lose friends.
What the one medium I think I might continue?
Jewelry.
I’ve made jewelry for about 20 years. What’s cool about gemstone jewelry is that you don’t get too many people doing it because the investment to get started is high. Getting your hands on gems and findings is a little bit harder than purchasing anything found on my lists above. Michael’s won’t carry a $1000 strand of tourmaline stones, for example. So… it feels more like an exclusive club… sort of. Oh, and you get to play with sparkly, shiny things. Win.
A few issues with it, though… in this economy, people aren’t spending a lot on “luxury” items like jewelry. Also, the competition is pretty fierce, but it’s not that hard standing out in a crowd if you do your homework. I plan on having a range of items for every budget and try to migrate over to the higher-end realm. I’ve never tried to get into that tier, so… it will be a challenge. I welcome it!
So, first thing… liquidate all my old gemstone jewelry inventory and any items that I feel won’t benefit the new line. My new look is as strong as its weakest link, so to speak.
I’ll probably keep all the crafting supplies from my hundreds of handmade business experiments. I currently have 300+ bottles of scent oil, hundreds of pounds of tile, stained glass supplies (forgot that!), and about a ton (literally) of sea salts. A very expensive, but fun, journey 