The Benefits of B-School for Big-Hearted Craft Entrepreneurs
Marie Forleo’s B-School is an 8-week online training course about business and marketing for multi-passionate, big-hearted craft entrepreneurs.
Makerist Makes Selling Digital Patterns Simple
Berlin-based Makerist would love to work with more American crafters. Makerist—voted one of Germany’s top 20 Internet start-ups last year—is a market leader in Europe for digital patterns and e-learning related to sewing, knitting and crochet. They recently entered the North American market, and founders Axel Heinz and Amber Riedl and their team are particularly interested in working with U.S.-based digital pattern makers and with those who love to instruct via video.
5 Elements of a Bestselling Pattern
Bestselling patterns frequently have elements in common. Working to include some, or all, of these in a pattern, can help it have a better shot at rising to top seller status.
Recorded Webinar: Get Ready to Exhibit at a Trade Show with Katie Hunt
Katie Hunt of Tradeshow Bootcamp and Proof to Product will share her three secrets to maximize your trade show investment and keep wholesale orders coming in long after your show ends. You’ll learn: Why you need to leverage two key ingredients to create a beautiful, impactful booth that sells your products. How to avoid costly […]
Get Your Emails into More Inboxes with These Deliverability Best Practices
Email is the most cost-efficient form of advertising, and it’s one of the few places to spend marketing budget where you can actually see return on investment (ROI). The money that you spend on email marketing can be directly tied to actual sales generated from email campaigns.
Craftsy to Greatly Reduce the Number of Patterns and Pattern Sellers on Its Platform in 2019
Online class and supplies platform, Craftsy.com, alerted pattern designers yesterday that it plans to reduce the size of its pattern marketplace as part of a revamp coming in 2019. According to the FAQ document linked to in the email, the Craftsy team reviewed 220,000 patterns from 12,000 shops leading up to yesterday’s notice.
RJR Enforces MAP Pricing for Cotton+Steel; Retailers React
Fabric company RJR sent an email to retailers notifying them of a minimum advertised pricing (MAP) policy that will go into effect for Cotton+Steel on December 1, 2018. The policy limits the ability of retailers to advertise prices below a certain level.
Sample Return and Exchange Policies
In these sample return policies you can see what kinds of issues might arise and put some thought into what policy makes sense for your specific products and for your particular business.
The Point of No Return: Making and Enforcing Return and Exchange Policies
A craft retailer must establish a clear and fair returns policy, including which products are returnable, how long a customer has to make a return, and how the purchase price will be refunded.
Folkwear Patterns: Serving Generations of Sewists
Folkwear is one of the oldest independent sewing pattern companies. They publish global, historical, and vintage sewing patterns, often including extensive cultural history, textile information, and handwork embellishment instructions in their patterns.
Rewarding Your Best Customers: The Ins and Outs of Customer Loyalty Programs
A customer loyalty program is a rewards program offered by a company for customers that make frequent purchases. The rewards can take the form of discounts on future purchases, free shipping, free product, the opportunity to purchase exclusive products, or even access to exclusive events.
Getting Ready for the Holidays: November Checklist
Here are some concrete tasks you can work on over the next few weeks that will bring more people to your shop and convert them into customers.
How to Make The Most of Your Trunk Show
Although ‘trunks’ themselves are virtually a thing of the past, ‘trunk shows’ produced from a multitude of travel bags and boxes containing all sorts of beautiful handmade items are very much a thing of the present.
Cozyblue Encourages Crafters to Slow Down, Get Cozy, and Get Crafty
When Liz Stiglets, owner of cozyblue, first launched her Etsy shop in 2007, she made every product by hand, whether it was knitting a hat, sewing a soft animal, or hand-stitching a wool felt crown. But she soon realized this type of work wasn’t sustainable creatively or financially.
Brand Ambassadors Help Companies Earn Loyal Fans
Nothing sells a product better than word of mouth from a trusted source – whether it’s a restaurant to try, a movie to see, or a craft product to buy – which is why brand ambassador programs are so successful.
Mobile Payment Processing Cost Comparison
Ethical Dilemmas of Providing Free Content
In the race to gain blog readers and newsletter subscribers, the craft industry has adopted the motto of “free.” They hope offering free patterns as lead magnets will lead to future sales. Many in the industry aren’t buying it. Others still feel that approach works.
Recorded Webinar: Elevate Your Imagery: Use Design & Photography to Sell
When marketing, we have 3 seconds to grab a person’s attention. 3 seconds! With all of the noise that is out there in social media and in a saturated freebie market, how can you make sure your vision stays clear and your product doesn’t get lost? Photography for your business is a big undertaking. The […]
Holiday Prep You Can Do in September
Before the busy season starts to creep up on us, this is the perfect time to start preparing your craft business for the holidays. Not sure where to start? Here are some ideas to help you get holiday-ready.
Craft Industry Fears Major Fallout from New Tariff Activity
Recently imposed 25 percent tariffs on $200 billion more in Chinese goods includes a large quantity of craft supplies, such as cotton fabric. Craft-industry businesses now have to contend with the likelihood of a price increase soon on supplies imported from China.