The Jewelry Shop

I'm getting really anxious (a sort of good kind of anxious) to open my jewelry shop again.  There's a new type of metal clay I've ordered that I look forward to trying out this week, and that, along with catching up on a couple of projects I needed to do, has been making me feel confident that I can do this again.  Even with the full time job and the fact that I have twice as many children now as I did when I started the shop, I still think I can spare the time to work on the jewelry shop again.  I've thought about it and this time of year especially is usually slow in orders, so it'll give me a chance to ease back into it (and if I have an influx of orders, it's never a bad thing).

Some of the things I'm going to do when I open the shop (my ETA at the moment is around mid-April)...

1.  Go through all the processing times, shipping information, pricing, etc.

I'd like to believe I can still get things ready to ship between 2-3 weeks but that isn't realistic now, and I don't want to add that unneeded extra stress.  I'm going to go through the listings I want to activate and make sure each one has an updated description with something that says 'read the shop banner for processing time' so I don't have to worry about changing each one in the future.  I want to make sure all my pricing makes sense for the time put into the piece, the product itself, and the supplies needed to create it.  Some prices may go up, some may go down.

2.   I'm only going to activate a limited amount of items to start.

Some of my more popular items will be back, for sure.  A lot of the less popular items won't be reappearing, and one or two of the most popular things won't be back just yet (one of my most popular, the men's fingerprint band, won't be back until I have enough supplies to make it a less challenging piece...with the techniques I was using before the holidays, it was the most stressful item in my shop and also the most popular).

3.  I'm going to try narrowing down my niche.  

Fixing up my categories is long overdue and I'll work on making the shop easier to navigate overall.  I feel like it was just a mix of several types of jewelry before.  When I reopen, I want to focus on meaningful pieces, like fingerprint jewelry, puzzle jewelry, and handwriting jewelry.

4.  I want to look into adding new pieces (ones that fit into said niche)

More keychains with white copprclay (depending on how hard it is to fire the new metal clay, which worries me).  I also want to figure out a way to make charms for the pandora bracelets.

I want to come up with another way to make jewelry with a lot of personalized meaning.  One of the only souvenirs I get when I travel is jewelry; it makes it easier for me to be reminded of the fun times I have, even if  it doesn't necessarily represent the place I'm visiting.  I know I purchased that item in that place and I remember most of the important parts of that moment...like the weather outside, how I felt on that particular day, who I was with, etc. But I haven't been able to narrow these thoughts down to anything I can represent in a piece of jewelry.

5. Add to the puzzle jewelry line. 

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And that's about it.  So there are things I look forward to doing with the shop, I just want to take it slow and make sure I can offer quality items.  There is nothing worse in the whole world than having an unsatisfied customer.  I mean, obviously there are worse things in the world...but I guess when it comes to things that aren't earth shattering (something to do with family/friends...job loss...illnesses...things like that would be worse).

Anyway..I'm excited, but also very anxious.  I didn't know if I'd want to reopen after having been closed as long as I have been, but I'm pleasantly surprised to find that I really, really miss that creative part of my life.  My husband has been urging me to reopen often (the extra $ never hurt) but I wanted to wait to see when I was ready.  And I'm almost there.

Off to make a few charms.