Warren Feld Jewelry

Taking Jewelry Making Beyond Craft

Posts Tagged ‘craft business’

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THE IMPORTANCE OF SELF-PROMOTION: Don’t Be Shy!

Posted by learntobead on April 14, 2020

Often, I have found, creative-types can be shy when it comes to self-promotion and marketing.

If you are a jewelry designer who has ambitions to have your work publicized in books or magazines, or to be accepted into a juried show or exhibit, or to sell your things in a store or gallery, you need to be able to promote your work.

ASK YOURSELF THESE QUESTIONS…
 Write Your Answers Down On A Sheet of Paper

What insights, from your own experiences, can you offer your fellow jewelry designers about self-promotion?

What kinds of things help you to overcome any fears about marketing your work?

How do you handle criticism and other rejection like getting the dreaded “No”?

From an article I wrote….

Jewelry designers often find a self-satisfaction in working intensely on a project, often in isolation or solitude. But when it comes to tooting their own horns — this is not as easy or satisfying for them. There is a discomfort here. You might want to show your pieces to others, perhaps submitting them for review or a juried competition, or perhaps wanting a store or gallery to accept your pieces for sale.

Then humility kicks in. Or perhaps a lack of confidence in yourself. Or a fear of criticism. Or a rejection. Hearing: No, we don’t want your pieces.

We don’t want to appear desperate for a sale, or too eager for acceptance.

But, if you don’t believe in yourself and your products, no one will. Your fantasy of striking out on your own will never materialize, if you don’t find it within yourself to do some self-promotion.

Promote Your Value

And the first step is understanding and recognizing:

that to promote yourself
 means promoting your value.

Your jewelry has VALUE to them, why….?

If something has value to someone, then they typically want to know about it. Your jewelry has value to them because it solves a problem for them. It might make them happier, more beautiful, more enriched, more satisfied, more powerful, more socially accepted, more understanding of construction or technique or art and aesthetics. It might be better than other jewelry they see or wear or think about buying.

For a store or gallery, your jewelry might be more saleable, more attractive as displayed, better constructed, more artistic, more stylish or fashionable, a better fit with their customer base, with good price points.

You promote the value of your jewelry to your audience. You do not have to brag. You do not have to be shameless. You do not have to do or say anything embarrassing.

Just speak the truth about value.

Share examples of your work and what you have done, not your ego.

Speaking

And that brings up the second point — speaking.

People who are more comfortable speaking about themselves and their products tend to be more successful in their careers.

Products don’t sell themselves. People need to be nudged.

This “speaking-about-themselves and their products” is a basic communication process. This communication process is a process of sharing information.

You want to educate the right people, in the right way at the right time. You want to speak about who you are, and what you make. The values your jewelry has to offer them. And how you would like to develop your relationship — whether designer/client or designer/retailer or designer/jury — so that you may both benefit.

Fundamentally self-promotion is about communication. Communicators frame the narrative. Communicators start the conversation. They begin on favorable terms.

They would not say: 
Would you like to see my jewelry?

Instead, they would say: 
I have jewelry you are going to love.

Be Relevant

And this brings up the third point — be relevant.

Know your audience, what their needs are, what their problems are that need solving. You may have created the original piece to satisfying some personal yearning and desire. But if you want someone to buy the piece, wear the piece or sell the piece, you need to anticipate why. Why would they want to buy, wear, review or sell your piece of jewelry?

Do not assume they will figure all this out on their own. You will need to help them along in this process. You will need to communicate about the value your jewelry will have for them. You will need to do some self-promotion.

Inspire People

The last point — inspire people to spread your message.

Your best marketing and promotion will be what is called “word-of-mouth”. So you want to create supporters and fans and collaborators and colleagues. And you want them to be inspired enough about you, your creativity and your jewelry, so that they tell others about you. You inspire your current network of family and friends. You might make a presentation or teach a class. You might share images of your work on social media like FaceBook or Instagram or Twitter or Pinterest. You want to regularly connect with people, so that you and your work are frequently in their thoughts.

There are many self-promotion strategies that you can do. You don’t need to do everything at once. You might try one or two ideas first, and do those, then pick a third, and so on.

Self-Promotion Strategies

Some Self-Promotion Strategies That Have Worked Well For Others

1. Wear your jewelry all the time, and don’t be shy about saying you made it!

2. Have attractive business cards made, perhaps a brochure. Vistaprints online is a good place to start.

3. Have an active presence on social media, particularly Instagram, FaceBook, Twitter, and Pinterest; participate in discussions; get people to click on those LIKE buttons (or similar thumbs-up registers) next to your images and your discussions.

NOTE: When a person hits the LIKE button or adds a comment, look them up on the social media site. Find something about their background or their own creative work, and respond to them: (a) First, re-state their name at the top of your response, (b) thank them for the like or comment, (c) comment on what you learned about them, (d) type your name and perhaps a link to your website or your social media site.

4. Have a website, either as a “billboard”, or as a full-fledged e-commerce site

5. Get your website listed in as many online directories and search engines as you can

6. Generate an emailing list and use it regularly, such as sending out a newsletter; get into the habit of asking people if you can add them to your mailing list

NOTE: Try to maintain some more routine follow-up contacts with at least 50 people on your emailing list. Always point out something of interest about them to you.

7. Collect testimonials about your work, and post them publicly

8. Always speak and act passionately when discussing or showing your work.

NOTE: You don’t want to be sales’y. Simply show your excitement and passion and story about making the piece.

9. Organize your own discussion groups on FaceBook or LinkedIn, or begin a blog (WORDPRESS is a good place to start a blog)

10. Post video tutorials or videos showing you making things on YouTube

11. Submit images of your pieces to bead, craft and jewelry magazines

12. Teach courses, either locally, or as a connection with one of the many websites promoting teachers online

13. List yourself with websites that list custom jewelry makers for hire, such as Custommade.com

14. If your jewelry has done well for a store, convince them to carry more of it and let it take up more display space

15. Doing the occasional craft show, bazaar or flea market is also a good form of advertising and getting your message out to a large number of people you probably would never have met otherwise

16. Create a good, rememberable image to use as your avatar, on such websites as FaceBook

17. Follow up with customers and contacts, such as after a purchase, or after someone accepting to include you piece in a magazine, or sell their pieces in a shop. Thank them. Reinforce your personal brand with a short comment about the value of your pieces for them.

18. Have a clear personal style that you can point to in your jewelry, and that you can speak about.

19. Have a clear idea of what is called your “competitive advantage”. What are those 5–10 things about you and your work that sets you apart from, and perhaps makes you better than, the competition.

20. Search for companies or people that may want to see or buy your work. Use directories on Yahoo, Yelp and Google. Use LinkedIn.com. Search Twitter looking for people who are saying they need custom jewelry work done.

21. Network with other jewelry designers, both in your local area, as well as online. Ask for feedback on the self-promotional activities you are doing. Have any of these worked well for them? Are they doing other things you haven’t thought of?

22. Get out of your studio and meet people in the flesh.

23. Attend trade shows, networking events and charity events, or other types of places where your clients might also attend.

24. Offer something — one time only — for free. A free class, a free repair, a free pair of earrings.

25. Publish or self-publish a book or book-on-CD, and promote that

26. Develop your “elevator story”. Pretend you are stuck in an elevator with someone, and you have 30 seconds to say something about yourself which is very impressionable and relatable. This will prepare you for the frequently asked question: What do you do?

Other Articles of Interest by Warren Feld:

Should I Set Up My Craft Business On A Marketplace Online?

The Importance of Self-Promotion: Don’t Be Shy

Are You Prepared For When The Reporter Comes A-Calling?

A Fool-Proof Formula For Pricing And Selling Your Jewelry

Designer Connect Profile: Tony Perrin, Jewelry Designer

My Aunt Gert: Illustrating Some Lessons In Business Smarts

Copyrighting Your Pieces: Let’s Not Confuse The Moral With The Legal Issues

Naming Your Business / Naming Your Jewelry

Jewelry Making Materials: Knowing What To Do

To What Extent Should Business Concerns Influence Artistic and Jewelry Design Choices

How Creatives Can Successfully Survive In Business

Getting Started In Business: What You Do First To Make It Official

I hope you found this article useful. Be sure to click the CLAP HANDS icon at the bottom of this article.

Also, check out my website (www.warrenfeldjewelry.com).

Subscribe to my Learn To Bead blog (https://blog.landofodds.com).

Visit Land of Odds online (https://www.landofodds.com)for all your jewelry making supplies.

Enroll in my jewelry design and business of craft video tutorials online.

Add your name to my email list.

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Naming Your Business

Posted by learntobead on April 28, 2009

NAMING YOUR BUSINESS
What on earth do you think you would buy from The Flan Corporation?

Flan? The Spanish kind or the Mexican version?

Flans? Whatever they are – automotive parts?

Franny-Lisa-Alicia-Nancy kind of stuff?

Would you ever buy a Swarovski necklace of glass pearls, crystallized elements, 14KT gold clasp and real faceted emeralds from The Flan Corporation?

The Flan Corporation is a Chinese company that sells handcrafted, beadwoven jewelry. I don’t know what “Flan” means in Chinese, but, here in the US, it’s not a word that would immediately make me salivate about handcrafted, beadwoven jewelry.

It’s really difficult to pick a business name. It’s harder than naming your child. It’s harder than naming your dog. I’ve tried many times with varying degrees of success. And the first business name you pick might seem great and work great at the beginning, but will it evolve with your business as well? Maybe yes, maybe not. What’s important is not only how good your business name sounds, and how appealing it is today, but also how adaptable it is over time, as you grow or change your business.

I can’t claim 100% success with my tries at naming a business. Take “Land of Odds.” This has been my best name-selection to date, but it hasn’t been perfect.

I came up with that name 30 years ago for a hobbyist type business, where I refinished antique lamps, and some other antiques, for people. When James and I started our jewelry, beads and gifts business, I thought that Land of Odds would be good for that, as well. The name “Land of Odds” always gets such great responses from people. And it is memorable.

As our business grew and grew, Land of Odds – the name – grew with it. We added more handcrafted jewelry, unusual greeting cards, some neat clothing, collectible lines. The name still worked.

Then our business hit a wall. We were located downtown, and the city of Nashville took away 6,000 parking spaces within an 18 month period of time. The city had renovated this downtown historic district, and for various reasons, cars and parking got in the way of continued development. Our business dropped precipitously. I had to put us into Chapter 11 for awhile. James and I dissolved our business partnership, and we put most of the assets in a new business for him that we called Be Dazzled, and we put most of the liabilities under the Land of Odds name.

Now we were functioning with two names used to describe similar businesses that emphasized unusual, often hand-crafted jewelry, gifts, collectibles, gourmet foods, posters, clothing, and beads and jewelry findings.

I shut the physical Land of Odds store down, and continued the business as an internet company – http://www.landofodds.com . The online company was still called Land of Odds. At first, I put all our merchandise online – beads, jewelry, gifts, clothing, posters and gourmet food. Only two categories did well – beads and posters. I slowly began narrowing our focus to beads and posters, and eventually beads only.

As an online entity, we needed to get top placements in search engines in terms of key words like beads and jewelry findings. Search engine robots that indexed a business name with the words beads and/or jewelry findings in the name, would automatically assign it a higher ranking for those terms. A better online name would have been Beads At Land Of Odds or Land of Odds Beads.

“Land of Odds” was still a name liked by all, but it no longer had the same strong association with beads and posters, and then with beads only. The business grew quickly online, and “Land of Odds” began to have a strong “brand” following. But again, no longer the most strategic business name, given what I was doing now.

“Be Dazzled” was another popular name. The image James had for this business was jewelry that was hand made and wowed people. The business faltered, however. We got rid of most of the merchandise, turned Be Dazzled into a bead store, and eventually recombined Land of Odds and Be Dazzled. At the time we recombined them, both had strong brand identities, so we kept both names. We managed the physical store called Be Dazzled separately from Land of Odds – the online store. When Be Dazzled became all “beads”, I added the word “BEADS” everytime I referred to Be Dazzled — “Be Dazzled Beads” — , from our stationery to answering the phone to setting up its website — www.bedazzledbeads.com .

In the bead business, there are many variations on the name “Beadazzled”. Most people, even regular customers who visit the shop everyday, think that’s our name. We were lucky that Be Dazzled/jewelry morphed so well into Be Dazzled/beads. But we would have been better off if we had worked “beads” into the name somehow. There are a couple of small chain operations called “Beadazzled.” For awhile, someone opened up a bead store in Nashville called “Beadazzled”. There’s always some confusion for and with our shop name.

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Selling Your Jewelry In Recessionary Times

Posted by learntobead on March 30, 2009

Selling Your Jewelry
In Recessionary Times

With a financial crisis in full swing, it has become more difficult to sell your jewelry. Fewer stores, fewer customers, fewer craft shows. At the same time, the costs of all the supplies – beads, stringing materials, jewelry findings – have been increasing at much faster rates than inflation. This adds to the problem.

At the same time, it is getting more difficult to get your “message” to your “customer.” With things like blogs, facebook, my space, twitter, other interactive sites and social networks, people are organizing into ever-smaller market niches.   It’s too expensive and too time-consuming to get enough people to be aware of your business, that you can continue to make a living.

They are no longer reading the mainstream magazines and newspapers to get their primary sources of information, to the extent that they have in the past. They are not going to local craft shows or local stores as much, because they have an online world of Etsy and Ebay and 26 million jewelry sites listed on Google.

Perhaps these times and prospects can be reinterpreted as an opportunity to rethink how you approach your jewelry selling business. At the least, perhaps you can better secure your base during these times, in preparation for more growth and expansion as the financial crisis bottoms out, and then gradually improves.

It’s time to take a hard look at your “business model.” You have probably been operating as a one or two person operation. You, or both of you, do everything. You create the designs. You make the jewelry. You market and sell your jewelry. You wear many hats.

“Unbundling” is a strategy where you give up control of some business functions, and rely on the expertise of other companies or organized groups. One obvious thing is to rely on UPS or FedEX for your shipping needs.

I suggest you think about no-cost and low-cost ways to unbundle some of your marketing and promotion. One inexpensive and effective way is to get a regular group together of others who sell hand-crafted jewelry or other hand-crafted items.

As a group,

– develop and share mailing and emailing lists

– try to brand the group with an identify of having quality, affordable hand crafted items for sale

– have a major presence, even a controlling presence, at a local craft show

– generate a logo that everyone includes on their websites and their packaging

– set up your own blog and try to attract potential customers to your blog

– interlink your websites into a web-ring

– have regular discussions about business strategies

– approach suppliers as a group to bargain for group discounts

On one level, you give up some control in managing these aspects of your business. On another, however, you get to leverage the talents and time and resources of these other businesses. This might be the smartest way to continue to reach your customers, and continue surviving and thriving when things are tough, and the business environment keeps changing and evolving.

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