This post in aimed to answer some of the questions I receive every week such as: How do you do headbands? Where you buy your flowers, elastic, crystals, tissue paper? and many more others you probably won’t believe!
What’s the deal?
This is my disclaimer…I have wanting to say this out in the open. I intend to be as honest as possible. So bear with me. If you are thinking of opening a small business creating handmade items and have not done any research and your idea is to copy only what others do, I think you need to reconsider if this is really right for you. I don’t mean just using others as inspiration, (don’t we all do a little bit of that!) but blatantly asking a seller were she/he buys the materials and then opening an Etsy shop with the same items…speaks volumes about not only your ethics, but more importantly about your creativity. Small businesses are not for lazy people. They require an incredible amount of commitment and without a plan, initial research of materials and the creative side, you need to stop right there and maybe do something else with your time. Ok, that is out of my chest…lets move on to more interesting things 
Here are some of my tips, and I hope they can help you. I wish someone had done the same thing for me when I started, but I just learned by making many mistakes and even lost some customers along the lines from inexperience.
Some Neisha’s Blue facts…
It took me three months to draw my business plan. It took me five months after opening, to score my first sale and another three to start generating sales consistently. Not all of us are as lucky as some that have been blessed with a popular sponsor. It took me at least six months to realize what I was doing wrong – after studying established sellers in my area and buying several marketing tools. So it did not had a fresh perky start as I would love to say. My friends did not call me for weeks, due to my frustration about not being able to sell anything!
Know your prices
Initially, my prices were too low. Can you believe it? Long time ago, a customer truly offended me, but I am forever grateful for her bluntness. Even though I was not in agreement with her perception, she opened my eyes. By sharing her view about my products I started researching other headband sellers in my area. Yes, my prices were probably 60% below what others were selling them. I did not wanted to be quite high, but somewhere on the fair side. So, I took a mathematical approach. I calculated the cost down to the penny, and then multiply it for an integer that consider my time (designing it, procuring it, sending samples, packing, taking it to the post office, customer service) and then came with a pricing strategy. My original mistake was to think as an engineer and not as a consumer. As an engineer I always want to lower my cost for my customer. As a customer, I question when something is too cheap. I do for my everyday items, why I could not wrap my head around this for my own business? Fearfully, I increased my prices by 30-50% more. I said fearfully, because I thought I was not going to have any more sales, but all the contrary, I noticed that my customer confidence went up, along with my sales.
Pictures
My pictures were horrible -well not all- but they were not good enough. Good for ebay, but definitely not for ETSY. Have you seen the artistry behind an image to sell a piece of ribbon? I kept seeing that other seasoned sellers had beautiful images. My plan was to take some images of Mr. Blue with headbands, but after my husband had a fit, I decided to quickly do away with plan A before he asked for a divorce. A shy posting on my ETSY storefront attracted over 20 photographers within an hour. Life is full of small miracles. I remember it like it were today. A photographer from Seattle who was just starting was one of those in the bunch. Her name is Keri Meyers. She is currently celebrating her 20K facebook fans and is now traveling across the USA teaching others what she can so fantastically do. We work at least once or twice a year together, but she opened the path for me to meet other fantastic photographers such as Sarah Sweetman, Jamie Faulkner and Amanda McGhee. At times I get so excited about a new design, that I can’t wait for a month until I receive professional photos, so I just bought a better camera and am using it with a very limited understanding of light infused with good taste.
Well…this is the first part of this posting. I still have more insight on marketing and creativity. Thoughts anyone?
All the images on this post have cute little girls modeling Neisha’s Blue head pieces. All the pictures are copywritted by their owner and we are using them with their ownwer permission. Do not copy, crop or using them without proper authorization from the photographer.
