Bonspiel Creation

As any of you out there who sell your handmade stuff on the internet know, February can be a very cruel month for sales.  I thought I had life all figured out as I holed up here on Salt Spring Island this winter, house sitting for free rent.  With almost no overhead for the first time in my adult life, I could do some drawing, perfect some dress patterns, and produce some stuff with less urgency than usual.

The perfect urban loft apartment, back in Victoria, was going to be mine on April first, just as the cherry blossoms were emerging and the last frost was behind us.  Or should I say, just as the wallets were emerging from pockets, and the barren wasteland of early spring online retail was behind us. The timing was perfect!   But then I got thrown a curve ball:  The apartment had to be claimed for March 1.  With only a small trickle of funds coming in, how was I going to meet these sudden expenses?  There was no question that the loft had to be mine.

I decided last Tuesday evening, on the spur of the moment, to have a 50% off sale in my etsy shop.  I've dabbled with little sales and discounts here and there, but never done anything on this scale.  Part of the reason was that it would be so much work to individually edit 70 or so listings.  But now craftopolis.com has an "edit express" function that enables you to bulk edit the price and title of listings all at once.  

By 9 pm I had my listings all edited to read HALF PRICE ('cause you gotta be tacky sometimes to get people's attention), changed my shop announcement to reflect what was going on, and posted on facebook and twitter what I was doing.  I called it the February Financial Freakout Sale. I sat back and waited.  After 35 minutes I got a sale for two pouches.  I cheered!  Then I went to bed because it was a long day and I was tired.  I figured I would keep the sale going until I made 500 dollars or 5 days had gone by.  500 dollars used to be a good local market day's sales in the balmy days of summer; no big deal.  But in my midwinter mentality it seemed like an impossible amount that i was not worthy to receive.  It also is the approximate amount of my damage deposit.

Imagine my surprise when I woke up the next morning to  9 more sales!:  As the day went on the sales just kept coming.  A store in Edmonton, Sabrina Butterfly Designs, who had been asking me for wholesale, jumped in with both feet and purchased a whack of items too.  By the time the dust had settled, I had far surpassed my goal and shut the sale down before I ran out of items! 

Below for all to see is the record of how this strategy impacted my online sales for February.  This screen capture is from craftopolis.com, a wonderful utility that shows etsy sellers in nice easy to take in at a glance graphics our views, hearts and sales by the day.

As you can see, my sales were pathetic and dismal.  Even worse than an average February, since I had lost about a month of production time and momentum when I had to move in December, so my stock was down. Despite the severe depletion yet again of my stock by selling it for half price, the sale put cash in my (landlord's) pocket and gave me a little peace of mind, as well as lots of food for thought.

What have I learned from this experience?  You, as an etsy seller, might be able to get something out of this.  I learned that way more people were looking at my stuff and wanting to own it than I thought.  I learned that they love a deal and will act on one.  Nobody was buying when I knocked a few dollars off of a few items earlier in the month.  I really think that the specialness of the sale, the wide-sweeping-ness (my whole shop, except this item), and the deep discount all added up to spur shoppers to take action. Also, I made it really easy for the shoppers--each item said HALF PRICE right on the title, and the prices were already adjusted so they didn't have to do any figuring or thinking that might interrupt the impulse-buy process!

My buyers were a combination of new and repeat customers. I love the new customers because hey, maybe if they were reluctant to go whole hog and buy an item they could not smell and touch, but took a chance when it was on sale, they will be reassured as to the quality and come back.  And of course I love the repeat customers because I already feel so grateful to them for supporting me that I am happy to give them a discount. 

I had a couple of people contact me after the sale was over to beseech me to let them know when I was going to do it again.  Will I do it again?  Depends on how desperate I get!  But if I do have another sale, I would do a few things differently.  First, I would publicise the sale  three or four days in advance so people would have a better chance of finding out about it. I think any further ahead of time than that, and it would start to bore people and seem spammy.   Also, I think I would do a sliding sale strategy, ie on the first day everything would be ten percent off.  The next day, 20%, the next 30 and so on up to 50% off.  Since most of the items are one of a kind, once they are gone they are gone, so that might spur people to go for their favorite purse before somebody else grabs it, rather than wait and see if they can get it cheaper.  At best the whole event would have an auction-esque feel.