Dealing With Stuff

pile of mats and runners

Doug has agreed to help with some administrivia tasks.

Now that my business is closed and I will no longer be selling my textiles directly, there were some decisions that had to be made.

The local guild has a few sales opportunities, plus the Community Arts Council has a consignment shop.  So going forward, my things will be for sale locally on consignment.

When I was selling directly, I sold place mats individually.  Most people buy sets, but not always.  Some like to mix things up, some like to colour code the mats to family members, some want two mats, then another mat to be a centre piece making an odd number instead of an even one.  So I sold them one by one.

However, doing inventory for consignment sales makes this...onerous.  After some mulling about it, it seemed obvious that I needed to sell in sets again.  That meant everything had to be re-priced to reflect the price per set of four (or two).  If they were going to be sold in groups, I no longer needed one tag per mat, but one tag per group.  Which meant I could save some money by reusing tags.

What that meant was someone needed to go through every single mat and table runner, remove the tag, carefully peel off the price sticker, then re-price the tag, and then put them together using the stem gun as sets of four (or two).

And it might as well get done now while we are both staying at home as much as possible.

Since this task is very time consuming, Doug agreed to do it.

The other thing that had to happen was that the phone number on the tag needed to be crossed out because with the closure of my business, I cancelled the business line.  And I must say the phone not ringing several times a day with calls from call centres or scammers has been lovely!

Once the mats are done, the tea towels will need to be re-priced as well as the phone number crossed off the tags.  I have not been tagging the new ones made this year because they might as well all get done at once. 

With the re-tagging, I also made the decision to increase the prices.  I had not had a price increase for a couple of years, and it seemed like it was time.  I am fortunate in that both consignment opportunities take a very low percentage, but increasing my retail price means we both get a little bit more.

I have a feeling that things are going to be very tight, even into the fall and the craft fair season.  At this point I have no idea if the big local craft fair where the guild has a booth is even going to go ahead.

Things are going to remain uncertain for the rest of this year and on into the next from the looks of things.

Stay well.  If you can, stay home.  Let's get together on the other side of...this...