Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Never.



Part of my rayon chenille stash

I keep needing to learn to never say 'never'.

I have been in the business of selling my textiles for a long time and all during that time - as soon as it became possible - I have been accepting credit cards on the original knuckle buster imprinter machine.

A few years ago a company called Square began offering credit card processing via the internet.  Never being one to jump on the latest technology (well, ok, some!) I resisted - for a number of perfectly valid reasons.

The past few years even customers have been commenting on my old imprinter. 

Recently after another phone call from my provider, doing their best to get me to sign up for their version of Square internet card processing, partly by making it financially impractical to continue doing things the way I had been doing them, I decided that instead of using a 'Square-like' service I would simply go directly to Square.  I figure they have been in business the longest and probably have their systems worked out.  This is not a service I particularly want to be beta-testing.

This morning was spent partly in getting signed up (on my part) and then figuring out how it all works (on Doug's part).

In the meantime I pulled my big girl panties up and marched myself to the loom where I threaded, then sleyed, tied on and managed to get approximately half of the mat warp woven.

In between I've been working on the conference, trying to figure out how to get the word out about our fantastic instructors and event.

As I was shutting down for the day, my eye caught - again - on the shelves full of rayon chenille.  There are an additional.two large boxes of rayon chenille in storage at the annex.  It is time to put a run of rayon chenille scarves on the to-be-done list.

Time is quickly running out.  My first sale of the year is for the hospital auxiliary conference in April  It won't be a busy sale, so perfect for testing the new Square payment option.  Then the conference in June.  And then three craft fairs in Oct/Nov.  I'd really hoped to not have to learn another new thing to work out my business years, but this morning I had to eat that 'never' I'd been saying and just get on with entering the 21st century.

4 comments:

Cheryl Sheridan said...

Love my Square! Splurge and buy the tap and go option for $59! Any sales under $100, people just have to tap and they are done! Easy peasy!!

Good luck!
Cheryl

Anonymous said...

Square works well for me. I don't do many shows but when I do it is easy. They also have a way you can input your inventory. I haven't tried that but if someone - like my husband - would do it for me I would use that for automatic list of what I sold at the show. I use the chip reader it is inexpensive and works a lot better than the swipe.

Where I live and do shows the cell phone reception can if challenging. But many places have wifi we can use.
Stephanie S.

Peg Cherre said...

I used a knucklebuster much longer than most other folks, too. I switched to Square a few years ago, and it is remarkably easy. I have both the chip reader and the swipe option. I don't think you can have just the swiper these days.

Katie said...

I have a Square, and it works well. However, I have one suggestion: If you are not in an area with phone reception or wifi, you can still use the Square. It will save the information and you can upload when you get back into reception range. However, in these situations, I highly recommend you get the customer’s phone number and address, in case their card denies. And yes, there are shows in the boonies where, gasp, there is no internet or cell phone coverage. Just passing on a lesson learned.