Selling My Wares

Never Ending Battle

   I guess when your a beadmaker there are two very important parts of your life, first the making of your beads, always trying to come up with different designs etc and second how to sell your beads, where to sell, how much to charge and who to sell to.
   In my case I have three main ways of selling, my ebay shop www.stores.ebay.co.uk/Beads-Of-Glass  in which I sell a lot of my focal beads along with some bead sets, my etsy shop www.etsy.com/shop/pebbledreams  in which I sell a lot of my more natural looking designs, sets and focals alongside ceramic beads and pendants too and finally my website http://www.lampworkbeadsbyrob.com/  on which I sell bead sets and a selection of spacer beads. All three are a good way to sell but both the ebay shop and etsy shop reach out to a much bigger group of potential customers with millions of buyers passing through their sites every year, each a possible new customer for my work. These sites I would say cover around 75% of my sales, with new customers finding my beads every month which is a great bonus.
   Along with the three main sites I also take commission orders from customers most of which are regular buyers who have worked with my beads for years. These orders can vary from a single focal bead or a pair of earring beads up to several numbers of bead sets, all of which are as important to me as any other.
   Now there are also bead fairs that take part all over the country but I found these were not a good way to make a profit, yes you do get to meet your customers and spread your name around but as for making money then I'm sorry but they don't do it. If, like say 80% of beadmakers your doing it as a paid hobby, your day job covers the bills or indeed like some your retired then sales are just not so important, you can afford to sit and wait for bigger better prices to be paid for your work, I've walked around bead fairs and seen beadmakers sitting there with a table full of what I would call over priced beads and heard them mention things are very quiet, sales are slow, well as a full time bead maker you can't make a living like that. The weeks you spend leading up to a fair are spent making new stock, we used to take around 300 sets to each and if you think the cost of that time will ever be returned through fair sales, then I'm sorry but your mad. After the cost of tables, fuel for travel and of course a days wage the facts are you need to turn over hundreds of pounds to even cover it and apart from the odd well run fair this just doesn't happen. I think in all we only ever made a big profit at the Surrey Bead Fair, most others were a tiny profit or a lose, so after a couple of years selling at fairs we had to call it a day.

   There are other ways to sell including having visitors here to look at beads and buy from a selection that most buyers won't get to see online, this is another way of meeting your customers most of which seem to become friends.
   As for selling online I have a few fast rules that I stick to, the most important is to show the beads as best as I can, I want good clear photographs showing as much detail as possible in every bead, I want the customer to see what they are buying, the last thing you want is your beads to arrive to a customer looking completely different to the picture, it would lead to that person not only being upset but going somewhere else to buy future beads. I'm not into all the fancy pictures with props such as fake flowers, beads drapped over large rock or silks, I want a white background to show off the bead, I want the eye to go to my bead nothing else, if I was buying beads I would want to see the best picture possible and nothing less.
   Well next time I'll let you know how I work and why I make what I do so until then keep beading enjoy the cool rain.