Listening to My Customers

Listening to your customers can often breathe life into a shop's bottom line. My Etsy shop sales were rather disappointing. My inventory had stagnated, views were low and there was really nothing happening with my jewelry. Rather than just continuing on with my current inventory lines and hoping for a positive holiday sales season, I chose to try to figure out how to turn my sea glass inventory into new product line.

Several customers requested sea glass anklets and these creations proved quite challenging. Trying to avoid making something similar to my bracelets, I eventually decided to take a few pieces of sea glass that were marble and egg-shaped and drill through them length-wise. We had a few casualties along the way, losing a few gorgeous pieces of sea glass that suffered blowouts, but some pieces (like the image above) came through the drilling process perfectly. In hindsight, I'm not sure if I will create many more anklets with this type of drilling, but I will still make them like this...

I also had a few requests for necklaces that were a bit more subtle. I have made custom pieces for customers using smaller pieces of sea glass and people who visited my table displays last season showed quite a bit of interest. So I delved into my sea glass collection and pulled out several tiny pieces- all measuring 1/2" to just short of 5/8" in length and wrapped several. The "Petites" have really turned the momentum around in my shop... my views have increased and my bottom line has improved.

Both of these items came to fruition after listening to customer suggestions. They have allowed me to expand a stagnate inventory and give customers that visit my shop, a few additional options. When it comes to sea glass, you can't always give the customers what they want, if the ocean isn't providing the needed "gems". But in these cases, I'm glad my collection contained what was needed to make my customers happy! 'til next time... R