Let The Shopping Begin!

Hurray for the holidays!  As soon as all of the stores clear out of last year's holiday inventories with their eagerly anticipated "Christmas in July" sales, it's time for everyone to ramp up for this year's festivities. For those of us who don't carry Christmas-only products like decorations/bows/wrap/etc. we can start offering good deals to those extra early holiday shoppers with our own clearance sales. This year I've consolidated all of my clearance items to my Ann Louise Studio shop on Etsy, so that's what I did with my spare time last week. ;)

Actually it's kind of fun to dig into those expired items and decide just how little you can reasonably sell them for, but the best part is snagging my favorite items for myself.  I figure if it's something I would buy on sale myself, I may as well keep it! Not that anyone would have trouble understanding that reasoning...  Granted I'm not lacking for jewelry and accessories, but if you make things you love, it's not always easy to part with them at clearance sale prices.

So now with my clearance sale rolling, I don't really expect to get many orders until mid-November anyway which gives me time to plan out some new inventory that I'll keep at my currently empty Novapsis shop.  And of course I still have plenty of work to do with Social Media (not whining, just saying!), plus I suspect when my day job wraps up on October 9th, I'll have a different perspective on where to spend my time. I hate to get ahead of myself, but I certainly can't wait until October 9th to map out my holiday business plans, so hopefully when the time comes, I'll agree with the plans I've made and can focus my new perspective on next year's plans. 

In the meantime I've got plenty of other things to worry about (not the least of which is all of the things I have to do at my day job before I leave -ha!), and time always goes faster than I expect. At this point I'd say it's time for me to do a little holiday shopping too. Ironically that's never something I enjoy, but with a few good clearance sales where I can maybe pick up a thing or two for myself along the way, I'll muddle through the holiday shopping just fine...just like everyone else.

 

 

Back on Track

So as much as I'd like to whine about Social Media again this week, I feel like I'm getting it under control and working it into the schedule. Everything won't happen overnight, and it will never be "done", so that's as good as it gets as far as I'm concerned.

This past week has been consumed with reorganizing my enormous studio space into a personal craft area (general space where I can make a huge mess and walk away) and four separate working areas for business needs: shoelaces/hair ribbon station, jewelry-making room, crochet/yarn nook and a packing/shipping space.

Thanks to my husband's willingness to lend me his woodworking talents for custom ribbon holders, the new shoelaces/hair ribbon station has been very functional and efficient. The photo above is only about half of it, but you get the idea.  For the shipping space I literally had shipping supplies in four different places in 3 different levels of the house, so getting that all set into one 6' by 12' space is SOOO nice. The jewelry area is still in progress since it had been completely integrated with the craft area, but at least as of today the craft area is finally pulled together, and my 5' by 8' table has been cleared with only one project taking up space. I'm terrible about starting twenty projects and leaving them lying everywhere, so one project on the table is a serious accomplishment for me...and now that I think about it, I did do a quick experiment for another project this afternoon, so technically there are two projects on their now. Whatever!

And last but never least is all of the yarn. It's currently taking up the entire guest bedroom which was already doing double-duty as a sewing room, but I've got the space cleared to put it in my studio now.  I just have to carry ten storage tubs full of yarn down two flights of stairs to get that filled in, and I think that will have to wait a few days. For today I'm still good with basking in my success with getting my craft table cleaned off. It's been a good Sunday!

Still Buried in Social Media

So here I am as predicted...  It's Social Media Sunday, and I feel so buried. I can only hope I manage to get efficient at updating photos, writing articles and posting the latest news, or this will drive me crazy! It doesn't help that my Pinterest and Tumblr sites are still a WIP, so I'm still working on those pretty much daily. My sister-in-law has been extremely generous with her knowledge of social media (especially Pinterest) which has given me an even bigger action item list than I could have imagined. I knew I was underestimating the value of these mediums, and she's opened my eyes for sure.

I'm most excited that her ideas for Pinterest gave me some ideas for Tumblr that have worked out nicely, and that was where I had my biggest struggles. It's amazing how not-user-friendly some of these tools can be when you start working with them for the first time. It's as if they think I've got nothing better to do than spend the day learning how to use a new tool - not my idea of time well spent! But anyway, I am now able to add links to my stores for each photo I post in Tumblr (and while I am "able" to do that, I have some work to do to go back and make that happen on prior postings), and I can even change the font color to my accent color. I love it when I can make my own customizations just like I would for one of my independent web sites, and it's much more fun to work on something when you like the way it looks. :)

Next I am off to add photos to my "Gawking Not Shopping" blog, and then I'll be back to Pinterest and Tumblr.  I've already updated my Facebook page with the latest (and of course I had to post on my personal Facebook page too -ha!), I've added the next Shoelace Highlight to my Shoelaces Blog, and of course I've collected my thoughts now on this blog. I think I'm on track!

Everything to Facebook

I've never been excited about all of the social media opportunities and platforms from a personal perspective. This blog was my only endeavor in social media, but its purpose is functional/organizational/cathartic/etc. Things like Facebook and Pinterest seemed to be a waste of time (seriously, who has that kind of time on their hands?!?), so I completely avoided them.

Slowly but surely as I started taking steps to turn my hobbies into a business, social media became an unavoidable necessity. You will notice the recent additions at the bottom of my pages with "Favorite Sites and Blogs". Not only is it an incredible amount of work to get setup, there's a lot of maintenance that goes with them, and the constant marketing and looking for ways to bring people to those pages is mind-boggling.

I drew up a formal social media plan, and it started to look like a hopelessly tangled web. It was hurting my head and stressing me out, so I thought I'd stop and meditate on it for awhile. The hope was that a little flow meditation would allow me to more clearly see the links between all of these platforms and how best to utilize them and how best to market them. It worked!

Facebook is by far the most popular of the social media tools, so I am pointing everything to Facebook. When I have a chance to point to all of the media sites and pages, I do of course, but the bulk of my effort is focused on getting everyone looking at the Facebook page and from there the other sites will be linked, branch out, point back and point anywhere else I want them to. My stores are offering discounts if you "Like" my Facebook page, and every promotion I run will be pointing to that Facebook page.

Now for the obvious irony...  Having been so opposed to social media all of these years, I started a business Facebook page with literally no Friends or other connections of any type, and after a few days, I've ramped up to all of 5 "Likes".  Oh well, I had to start somewhere, and at least I finally did it. It's starting to look like Sundays are going to be social media days, and I'm really still in the setup phases. I just had to stop for a minute to get this in writing and get my head back into what it is I'm trying to accomplish as I'm deeply focused on the details of photo editing and all of the places I need to remember to link together. It will get there!

And good heavens after all of that, I almost forgot to mention:

Please go like "The Boutique Project" on Facebook!

What a Year!

 

With my job situation changing over the past several months, it turned out that I needed more than a blog to keep my plans together. I needed detailed business plans and a lot of sleepless hours to make the switch from working for the corporate world to working for myself. While I've got an enormous amount of work ahead of me, I've accomplished a lot and can get back to looking at things with more of a big picture in mind.

My latest business endeavor has been a new Etsy shop for hair ribbons and accessories (HairYeHairYe.etsy.com). I literally put the finishing touches on it a few hours ago, and my next project will be to update my home page (TheBoutiqueProject.com) with the myriad of social media projects I've been working on the last few months.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that I slid in another shoelace project during my time away (go figure -ha!). It's a new independent site at: http://www.TheBoutiqueProject.com/RibbonShoelaces

I'll also get this site updated with all the activities and get everything back up to speed again soon!