.As we get into the full swing of the holiday season, one tip of advice to give you. If you are using your Debit card, run it as a credit and not use your pin. The reason is that some merchants do not clear the pins numbers in their machines and now they have your […] Read more…
Life of a Craft Business
Are You Hip To Be Square?
You are a small business owner or someone doing a number of craft shows a year and wants to offer credit card processing as a form or payment. In today’s market, if you do not offer at least Visa and MasterCard, you are missing out on a lot of potential sales. The huge issue with […] Read more…
More Than Just Wood
I cannot believe that a year has gone by already and another craft season is upon me. So many things have happened this past year (some better than others) in our business. For one thing, we really have been working on expanding the furniture line of our business. My husband, who is a major force […] Read more…
What Makes You Jump?
.In the world of so many ways to entice you to buy something, let alone a handcrafted item, what makes the best incentive for you to do something? Here are my three options. Let me know what works best for you or write a comment of your own. 1. Drawings – If you are a […] Read more…
Building Your Business – Part Two
Whether you are a small “craft fair” type of entrepreneur or have a “brick and mortar” shop, there are several marketing ideas that can benefit your business. This second post in this series is about Blogging. How funny to be talking about blogging as a business marketing idea, since this is a blog post on […] Read more…
Building Your Business – Part One
Whether you are a small “craft fair” type of entrepreneur or have a “brick and mortar” shop, there are several marketing ideas that can benefit your business. This first post is about Email Marketing. Email marketing is extremely powerful, customizable, and cost effective way to target consumers interested in what you have to offer. Email […] Read more…
The Importance of Keeping a Customer
.How do we maintain our customers? We all know that gaining new customers is important to a successful business. But have you thought about the importance of keeping and maintaining your current customers? Gaining customers is great…but if you’re losing customers then your new customers are simply replacing your old customers! Implement Top Notch Customer Service – […] Read more…
Pricing Your Crafts
This has always been a very difficult task as a crafter. It is easy to figure out how much you spent on materials, it is pricing your labor. The method I use is determined on what would I pay an employee to do this task. Simple sanding or base painting is not a highly skilled […] Read more…
It’s November; Do I Buy Holiday Crafts Now?
Every year it seems the major retail holiday, aka Christmas, is migrating closer to the middle of the year. We now enjoy “Christmas in July” options, which were unheard of years ago. This poses some interesting challenges to crafters that are not selling “personal items”. Do we go with Fall and Thanksgiving themed crafts? On […] Read more…
Country Chest – The Price is Right
Working full-time and also trying to launch a craft business is a lot of work. All crafters that are serious about building a business run into the issue of pricing their product at some point. So…what do you think is the price of this country chest? It would be great to know what you think it […] Read more…