My mother's main annual visit to Tucson encompasses the month when the International Gem and Mineral Show is in full swing. This past February, our first in Tucson, after much arm-twisting and begging (HA!) she dragged me kicking and screaming (double HA!) to any bead lover's paradise, where she bought hundreds of dollars' worth of beads, threw them at me and ordered, "Make me pretty things!" (Ok, not *quite* like that...)
I made her eight sets - necklace, bracelet and earrings - which she absolutely loved. She also wrangled a few other pieces that I had made for myself, but hey, she had paid for the beads and was letting me keep any I didn't use for her, and I could make more for myself anyway.
Before she went back home to Albuquerque at the end of her month, she had a party at which she displayed my artistic talents. Her friends were very impressed, and all evening I heard, "You're very good at this, you should do this as a business!" Naive fool that I was, I figured okay, what a great idea: people love my stuff, so it should be a piece of cake to have fun designing and making pretty things that people will be lining up to throw money at me for.
*Cough* Oh, were that life would be that simple...
First I had to figure out which hoops I had to jump through to be properly set up as a home business in Oro Valley. No help there, as the Small Business advisory office (which is apparently one person, one desk and one phone) never got back to me after I left a message asking for help. Being the creative type and not the most organized linear, professional business person, it was a definite challenge to be unstoppable about finding out what I needed to do. It took many weeks and ended up involving setting up a corporation, bank accounts, getting business cards and an internet domain name, and getting an Oro Valley business license, which required that I draw out a plan of my house and show exactly where my home business is located within it, which then allowed me to apply for an Arizona business license, all of which then allowed me to get a Federal Identification Number - the prize that would entitle me to not pay tax on my local purchases, and at future Gem shows. My husband was very proud of me for not giving up, as based on the past, that was the predictable outcome.
In the meantime, I basically spent from February to June on the internet ordering beads from eBay and making lots and lots and lots and lots of pretty things. We had just moved here the previous October after living in Minnesota for many years, it was a huge transition for us, and I pretty much had no emotional or physical energy to go out and get a life other than attending our spiritual center - besides that, all I wanted to do was make jewelry.
Artistic and creative expression is very fulfilling for me and by July I had stockpiled quite an inventory, but I was wondering how I was going to start selling my items, ideally before the season of art fairs started again in October. I consulted with some artist friends on Facebook, who ended up directing me to Yessy, a site for selling handmade art. I got a gallery there and proceeded to start uploading my items.
I did sell a number of things to spiritual center members before I became official, and later sold quite a few things to friends over the internet. One friend, a former high school classmate, ordered several necklaces and pairs of earrings for his foundation's annual silent auction. He took them over to a friend's business and showed them around, selling all three necklaces on the spot for more than double what he had paid - so of course he had to order more! His second round of purchases was kept under wraps until the auction, where they did very well. Another friend bought a set made with pink seed beads to match the pink dress she had bought for her anniversary cruise with her husband, and another bought 6 items to give away as Christmas gifts. Recently I sat down and figured out how much I have actually sold, and was surprised as how fast it has added up, but I am still seriously in the hole considering my initial investment.
By the end of the summer I had planned to get organized to do some juried fall art fairs, but was going to have to get a tent and two more tables that I have no storage space for, along with setting up my full display and sending in pictures of that along with a few pictures of my best pieces. I got stopped about the tent and the tables; besides the lack of storage space it was still way too hot to go outside and set all that up anyway; I wasn't sure how to best display the large number of items I had made, and I wasn't sure about what kind of merchant account to set up for accepting credit cards, since there are virtually no fairs in the Tucson area between April and October. I had heard about accounts that could be gotten on random months as needed at a very high monthly rate, but the only alternative I was aware of was accounts that have to be gotten as a long-term contract, which would be very expensive if I'm not selling much for 5-6 months at a time. (I am now looking into getting a Paypal business account, but the buyers have to have an email address, and with all the older people in this area, some number of them won't.)
By the time I started getting really motivated to get past all that, I fell and badly tore the ligament in my right wrist. Being right-handed, this was the kiss of death: now there was no way I was going to be able to even get ready to apply for any fairs, let alone actually do any. When I started feeling better from that, we went back to MN for our planned annual visit, where I got really sick from mold and came back to many weeks of bad coughing and laryngitis. It lingered so much longer than I would have normally anticipated, I felt I couldn't make any plans or commitments to register for any fairs, because I had no idea how long it would take till I could talk to customers - and I still had no storage for my needed fair items, which involved contacting the HOA to make sure I could put something against a side of the house that would be visible from the street.
A friend offered to have a jewelry sale for me at her house in November, but things came up for her and we had to change the location to mine. I spent a whole week getting set up, figuring out what new pieces weren't priced and entered into my handwritten inventory, putting together sets, organizing and reorganizing the displays, matching up price tags with pieces I had been wearing, etc.
Between us we invited close to a dozen people, and when the day of the sale came not one single person showed up! Honestly, although I did wish it had turned out differently, I was truly not the least bit unhappy about how it did turn out, even after all that work. During the week I had a strong sense that the point of this whole exercise was for the Universe to show me all the ways I wasn't organized yet, and give me an opportunity to upgrade in those areas; so instead of being upset I was very excited and grateful for that. Another friend came over later that week, and we spent hours reconciling my finished pieces with my inventory, as I had discovered many errors while setting up for the party.
Since then I have been changing over my inventory from being priced with tags with strings that keep getting tangled up in each other and other pieces of jewelry, to using "barbell" adhesive strips that only adhere to each other at the ends, and are untangle-able. I still am unsure how to best put prices on my earrings, so in the meantime am just keeping them on their racks, each rack having its own price. I also haven't quite figured out what to do with the pieces I do wear regularly, as it isn't going to work to have to take off the adhesive tags each time, make new ones each time, or have the old string tags keep getting tangled up.
The last things I need to do for getting organized is to transfer my handwritten inventory to the computer, and then upload all the rest of my several hundred pieces to my online store, which currently has a small fraction of the total inventory in it. I have also transferred my domain name to a hosting server, so my stepson (?) can finally make me a very simple website with my business logo, directing people to my online gallery. (I can't really afford to pay for it, but if anyone else wants to volunteer you will get credit for it!)
My store is at www.yessy.com/AnitaSummers, if anyone wants to go take a look; please just remember that a good 3 to 4/5 of my inventory is not up yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment