Has The Holiday Shopping Season Begun??

I don't really pay much attention to the financial news, but I've been told that the economy is turning around a little. People are beginning to re-invest in the stock market and retail companies are doing better...that's what the latest financial indicators are saying .

Well it might be true! My indicators seem to be mirroring what the financial markets are saying. In my last entry I blogged about how the last show I did exceeded expectations. During the week, I noticed a little bit of added traffic to my Etsy.com store and over the weekend, my numbers (according to my shop analytics) hit a couple all-time highs for visits and page views, with Sunday's numbers going over 1,000 visitors for the first time.

Another indicator for my store is in the "hearts" I am receiving in my shop. I have always found that a positive indicator was to see buyer-only hearts and the last 10 shop-hearts I received, 5 of those are from buyers-only. So buyers are visiting Etsy and surfing the site. (when I refer to "buyers" I mean registered Etsy members that do not have a shop on Etsy) A couple of my individual items have also been "hearted" recently by Etsy buyers.

One of my upcoming craft shows has a blog that includes the vendors and those with websites are back linked. My Etsy shop analytics have shown visitors from the shows blog to my site, and this weekend, I received a handful of visitors from the blog.

Maybe last weekend's show was than just a better than expected show. Perhaps people are beginning to purchase gifts for the holidays earlier and spreading out the cost of their holiday shopping over a few months, rather than a 5 or 6 week period of time. Maybe we are just beginning to see a light at the end of this horrible economic tunnel.

It is certainly something to consider as I start getting my inventory geared towards the holidays. The "indicators" seem to be telling me I need to step up my plans for the remainder of the year and try to take advantage of what seems to be many buyers coming back to Etsy.com.
Hopefully the worst really is over and we all get to finish the year off with a couple solid months of sales.

'til next time...

R

Words On Wednesday

I usually post a "Wordless Wednesday" entry with images of new items. I did have images of new items to share. But I also wanted to share some info on my craft fair this past weekend. Since it is positive news, I hope it's just the start of some good things coming our way in the handmade community.

The show I did this past weekend (The Beach Plum Festival) was fairly well attended, though a few of the vendors that did the show last year seemed to think it was slower in terms of traffic. It was my first year at this show, and I found the traffic to be fairly constant and it seemed like many people stayed at the show for a few hours.

Last year I would have considered this show to be slightly better than average...one that I would probably do again next year, unless a much better show such as The Handmade Faire was held on the same day) But in a struggling economy, I viewed the show as quite hopeful for future craft fairs, since I had lowered my expectations for the early fall craft shows.

There seemed to be several people their buying items for family members or friends and people were asking vendors if they had gift boxes for their purchases, as the purchase was to be for the holidays or a future birthday.

Also quite hopeful was the amount of business cards that were handed out. I don't believe I have gone through as many business cards as I did for this show. I started with a box of 250 and came home with probably about 100.

What I also found encouraging, was that almost all of my sales were credit cards purchases. The show did have an ATM around for miles and the customers were happy to pull out a credit card and to make their purchase. this was so encouraging, that I'm considering making it known to my Etsy customers that I will take credit cards, along with Paypal payments during the holiday season.

Maybe, just maybe the economy IS turning around... people have a little disposable income and they aren't maxed-out on their credit cards. I was also happy to see that many of the handmade vendors at this show seemed leave that day looking tired, but happy that the show turned out better than expected.

I'm still approaching each show a bit hesitant and I'll continue to keep expectations lowered, but I'm hoping that everyone with craft fairs on their fall and holiday schedule have the same outcome I had on Sunday...positive and hopeful for the future!


'til next time...
R