donations to local community organizations for their
fundraising efforts.
Last year there were a series of arson fires around
town one night. One of them burned down a
restaurant that was a few weeks away from opening
(the owner had not yet purchased fire insurance), as
well the dry cleaner next door. We donated 10% of
our jewelry revenue in November to these businesses
for their rebuilding efforts.
Q. 8. Please give our readers a thumbnail view
how your shop has evolved to its present state.
Selling kits has been an evolution for us. From the
time we opened in 2004, I have understood the importance of showing samples of what people can make
with our components.
When we first opened our shop 10 years ago, the internet was used more for marketing than for selling. We
had a way for people to sign up for classes online from
the beginning, but it was not until 2008 that we started
selling products online. When we started selling
products online, we showed samples of what people
could make with our products, just as we did in our
shop. We would get web orders in for components, but
customers wouldn’t order everything they needed to
make the design. We wanted them to be successful and
would follow up with them to ask them if they needed
the missing parts. Sometimes they didn’t know they
hadn’t purchased everything until we got in touch with
them. Sometimes they had something else in mind to
do with the components.
the instructions written up. More experienced beaders
can look at the design and figure out how to make it
without instructions. Our intention is to move toward
offering kits with instructions for all our designs.
We also sell our designs as completed jewelry, both in
our store and some on our website.
Very interesting indeed Vicki! Thank you so much
for sharing and for the open invitation to all RitzyToo
Magazine readers to stop and visit any time if you live
in Vicki’s area or you are visiting anywhere in the San
Francisco Bay Area!
This was all rather time consuming, so we decided
to offer “All Components to Make ____ Design.”
We didn’t call them kits because we weren’t offering
instructions. Also, we wanted to offer the lowest price
possible, and it takes time to write instructions. We
began offering the “All Components” packages at
around the same price as the individual components
purchased separately. But we got a lot of requests for
instructions, so we started writing up instructions and
putting them online. Some of our older kits don’t have
instructions because we never got around to writing
them.
Now, when we first come up with a new design, we’re
so excited to show people what we’ve made; we put
the picture and components online before we’ve gotten
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