I checked back and found that the post where I talked about setting up an online sales site for my beaded and bead-knitted creations was more than two months ago - time flies, etc.! I had said I would update you as the project progressed, so here’s a quick status report.
This week I launched the site, with a few dozen listings, and there are more to come. For the moment I am the only one with live listings, but I do expect my partners to be putting their items on the site in the next few days, or weeks.
For those of you who might be curious about what I have on the site, here is the link to ShorebirdCreationsOR.
Lessons so far:
The name We wanted to call the store ShorebirdCreations, and the Etsy system (our hosts) allowed us to register under that user name. But when we tried to use that for our store name it said the name was taken. Apparently, if anyone in the history of the site ever used that as a store name it cannot be reused. Never. I can’t even find a record of a closed store with that name, but no dice.
So, we ended up adding OR (for Oregon) to the end. It is definitely not an elegant solution, but once we named it - mistakenly thinking we could use it as a placeholder while we figured out something better - we were stuck with it.
Paperwork Good heavens, there’s a lot of paperwork! I should have remembered from setting up the publishing company, several years ago, that there’s a lot that has to go on behind the scenes before you’re ready to go, but (perhaps like the way the pain of childbirth fades, or we’d all be only children) my memory said it was pretty easy. And maybe it’s become more complicated in the years since; I know it has certainly become more expensive.
I registered the trade name with the state, which I could do online. The name Shorebird Creations was available, and with the application of my credit card it was in my name. But it took a few days before the registration was recorded, and I needed confirmation before I could open a bank account under the company name. A debit or credit card was required to set up our store, so we got a new account in the company name, and then waited for the actual debit card to arrive. One thing I found surprisingly easy was setting up an account with Square to allow us to accept credit cards for in-person sales, like at art fairs.
Photos If you’re putting your work online, people will want to see what they’re buying. Taking good display photos is an art all its own, and I am a rank amateur, but I did my best. Digital photography was a boon, as I could take dozens of shots and then pick and choose the half-dozen that were best. I am still not happy with some of them, but getting them up on the site eventually won out over getting the perfect shot. Eventually, for the 35 or so items I posted for sale, I spent two or three days doing nothing but setting up backgrounds and taking hundreds of shots.
A few tips about photos. Scrapbook paper comes in a huge variety of colors and patterns, and for a few bucks you can get a selection to use as backgrounds for small items. If you have some skills with replacing backgrounds, you can buy a piece of green fabric at a craft or fabric store and use it as a poor man’s green screen. And if you’re putting pieces on a stand of some kind (like the neck style stand in some of my pictures) cheap children’s T-shirts will transform the color of your stand; I got mine on sale at a craft store for about $2 each, which was a lot cheaper than buying - and storing! - stands in several colors.
Time Here is the heart of the matter. No matter how simple you think your project is, no matter how prepared you think you are, no matter how thoroughly you research each step, it will take longer than you expect.
Estimate how long you expect each step to take. Double that estimate. Determine what steps can be done simultaneously, then discard that list because it’s never going to happen. There is always going to be something that gets fouled up, and if the next step is dependent on both those simultaneous processes being complete - they won’t be.
Those are a few of the lessons so far. I believe that last one applies to almost everything we do as creatives. Each new project, each creation, is different from every other one. Even though we have written dozens of stories, painted scores of pictures, sewn everything from a simple apron to an elaborate ball gown, or baked thousands of cookies, each time we create something new it will be different from every other creation. Each creative act is a little miracle of its own, and it will take the time it takes - no more, no less.
That is the lesson I am trying to take from this. Be generous with my time and patient with myself and my process. That’s a hard lesson; just ask my husband, patience is not one of my virtues!
Now for the big ask:
You have listened patiently while I have rambled on for the last three years (Ha! Yes, this is our third anniversary. Did you think I might have forgotten?). Now I would like each of you, in the comments, to tell us about what you create; and if you have a site where we can admire your creative projects please share it. Have you run a Kickstarter? Do you have your books, or art, or music, available online? If so, please share the links so we can support each other!
I would love to know more about what each of you is making; and that goes for all of you who are right now saying, “But Chris, you know what I do.” I may know, but I will bet there is someone here who doesn’t know, and they just might want to.