This is going to sound mad to some, but let me explain.
30 years ago my sister and I began making and selling jewelry at Farmers Markets, Art shows, Craft fairs, just about anywhere we found that we had time for (we both had full time jobs). We started out with beaded jewelry, moved from there to cutting and polishing our own style of Cabs for people to use in their own jewelry making, then around 20 years ago we became Chainmaille artists.
It has been a blast.
We’ve been in galleries, we’ve been interviewed for a commercial, we’ve done art walks, had professional photo shoots, been featured on industry websites and made money doing it all.
We’ve gotten heat stroke, had our booth utterly destroyed by a wind storm, gone home soaked to the bone only to come back the next day to sunny skies and great customer turnout.
We survived some of the dumbest questions including one woman who told her daughter our Chainmaille was made of pasta, people who assumed we made the pieces then PAINTED the colors on, and countless men asking if our Chainmaille could stop a bullet.
We even purchased an SUV based on how well our rig and supplies would fit.
We have our own domain and website, and we found a cheat to get it monetized using Square, I’ve even taught others how to do it without blowing your money with Shopify or Etsy or any of the others.
It works, but selling online is anything but worthwhile.
What no one wants to tell you is there’s no real money it any of it. The ones who say they “made $320,000 last summer doing art shows, DM “lying” to get my tips”. They are all, well, lying.
But that’s not what this is about.
We’re not ‘quitting’, we’re not ‘giving up’ or even ‘throwing in the towel’. We didn’t fail, or burn out, and we definitely never ‘sucked at it’.
We have Retired. And in doing so, we have been reminded of another artist we knew who retired a few years ago and had no Exit Plan. He was left with a trailer FULL of art and no plan to move it. He died recently and left his widow with a bunch of inventory and no way to sell it.
Which brings me (finally) to my point.
We do have our work on this website for sale, but in 20 years we’ve only made 2 sales online. And frankly, we’ve never really cared about online selling. Our work only sells when people can touch it, try it on, feel how amazing it is. And since I’m being honest, the idea of going to the Post Office is enough to make us hope nothing ever does sell. We enjoyed selling in person, but dealing with customers via email. . . We’re just too old to care.
But we have so much Inventory.
So here’s the thing – we have several Flat Rate boxes, they can hold quite a good number of earrings, several necklaces, even Chainmaille supplies like Rings and Scales.
In the coming weeks, we are going to pack up boxes and offer them up for $25.00 for a small flat rate and $50.00 for a medium which is mostly just to cover the cost of shipping (continental US only). They will have a minimum of 10 pairs of earrings (small box) or 3-4 necklaces (medium box). That’s (our) retail value of $150.00 for 10 earrings and in the neighborhood of $200 – $300 for 3-4 necklaces. To our fellow weavers, we are going to pack up our Anodized Aluminum Rings and Scales, too. Sizes and colors will vary.
We will show photos of what’s inside. And Yes, eventually even our Freyjas and Hauberks will be offered up, at a fraction of what they sell for, just so they will have a home.
They are doing us no good sitting in boxes in our house.
Hopefully people will see this as a great way to stock up on Christmas gifts, and we won’t have to toss these beautiful pieces out.
Starting next week we hope some of you out there in the void reading this will think it’s a great idea too.
Leave a Reply