Tweaking your Items: The Quest for Perfectionism

There are a few sayings in the business world- "If you're not moving forward, you're falling behind," and "The only thing that endures is change." Thankfully, as a microbusiness owner I don't need to worry as much about revamping my line every year or coming out with a Hot New Item every season (which is not to say I never add new things to my line, but that's another post.) I'll leave the intense pressure to drive forward to the big guys, and work more on some small-scale changes that increase the quality of my products. They may never be absolutely perfect, but I'm gonna come as close as I can!

Here's a great example: My leather flower necklaces have been selling quite well at shows and online, but I felt they weren't exactly perfect yet- it's tweaking time!

This is just a shot of my leather flower pendants before the center beads have been stitched on. (Aren't they cute all nestled up into their little green dish!)

I'd already upgraded the necklace cords from a lightweight cotton string to a tightly woven, waxed cord with nice lobster clasp closures, but I noticed several things I could change on these guys. The petals needed to be a bit more shapely, and the bail on the back needed to be placed differently as the flowers tended to lean forward a little when hanging on my display. They were fine when being worn, but presentation is everything when you're selling at a show so I needed to figure out something.

Here's how they look after the beads have been stitched down- the petals lay flatter, and they open up very prettily. The shape changes I made to the petals are subtle and my customers probably wouldn't notice unless they had an old style and a new style side-by-side, but there's definitely a difference! The new petal shape is curvier, and comes to more of a "point" at the tips. It's more graceful and feminine.

The leather pieces on the back to secure the bails and cover the stitching used to be circle-shaped. Now, as you can see, they're more shaped like a guitar pick, with a little tip pulled out of the circle. This change in shape moves the bail higher up on the back of the flower and improves the way they hang on the cord. I've also been adding a "V" stamp to the back of all of my flowers- a great suggestion I got from a neighbor, and an inexpensive way to brand. (Branding is important too- I should cover that in a post as well, lol!) I got the stamps made online for less than $5 each, and I use pigment inks in metallic earth tones for the impressions.

As an artisan of handmade things, I think quality is the number one thing that sets us apart from the Walmarts of the world- don't you agree? Sometimes, little changes to the way we make our items can make a world of difference in improving quality levels, and that's always a good thing. What changes have you made lately that have improved upon your products? I'd love to hear about the tweaking you've been doing!

My new website!

I've been working on getting my own website up and running for the past several months, and it's finally close to what I can consider done:


You can visit Viridian Handcrafts and see the rest of the site if you like!

I'd been toying with the idea of my own site for probably close to a year, but I always assumed that it would be a huge, expensive project that I would have to pay someone to do because I'm a perfectionist. When I had a day job, my boss told me that to get his site where he wanted would cost thousands of dollars in web designer fees, and it'll be a LONG time before Viridian is solvent enough to drop that kinda cash. So I reluctantly assumed that I'd never get my own site, and that I'd have to put up with Etsy's foibles and fees indefinitely. Not such a bad thing, but still...

Fast forward to last spring, either late May or early June when I left my day job. (Gosh, I can't even remember exactly when I left! I must have mentally blocked out the event...) I was chatting with some Etsy friends who had their own sites, and lamenting that my own site was out of my reach. "Not so!" said Julia of Julia Catherine Jewelry, who took the time to write up a neat little HTML front page for me and got the ball rolling on this whole shebang.

I originally went with GoDaddy for hosting because they were recommended almost everywhere I looked, but quickly realized several things:

1. Their user interface is such a nightmare to navigate! Seriously, their whole website is a huge mess of links, graphics, and colors with not much organization showing. That really freaked me out- how was I ever going to find out how to build a website in that maze? Although they did give me a check-up phone call right after I signed up, which helped me with a few things...

2. I needed a shopping cart on my site, since the plan was to um...sell things! I found out that I would need to find a separate shopping cart and integrate it into my site somehow. That worried me too- I didn't know much coding to start with, and I was overwhelmed with the idea that I'd now have to learn web design for my site, as well as running a fledgling full-time craft business.

So I started looking at hosting services that had a built-in shopping cart. Several names were tossed at me by my Etsy friends, including pappashop, bigcartel, and homestead. I reviewed all of them but they seemed sooo expensive- $20 to $50 a month for the number of items I wanted to be able to carry. Plus, I decided early on that I didn't like bigcartel's layout. When you're just starting, paying $50 a month for your own shopping site makes Etsy look more and more appealing. Then...

Then, someone pointed me to Pagebuzz. My first reaction was "This is a really, um... cute-looking hosting service!" There are bumblebees scattered all over their front page, and it looks kinda cartoonish. But after reading about all the features their hosting service has, and the price ($9.99 a month!!) I decided to go for it. And I'm sure glad I did! You can either use their templates and layout options or upload your own layout for the pages. You can choose all the colors for the text, links, backgrounds, etc. AND- they have a built-in shopping cart that's pretty customizable and can support up to 2500 items. That's a lot more than 100 or 200! I've also found that their customer service is incredibly friendly and helpful.

So here I am, a few months later with a fully functioning, beautiful website that looks and behaves exactly the way I wanted it to, with a shopping cart that lets me add items with ease and is easy for customers to use too. I'm thrilled with the outcome of my website journey, and even though I want to add a few more widgets here and there I'd say it's ready for business. I think I'll have a grand opening celebration in September! Now, to make things to fill my Shop pages (that's the next step, to actually have things to sell. It'll take a bit...)