Thursday, April 22, 2010

Going Big!

If you've seen my work, you know that a lot of my jewelry designs are delicate and petite.  I don't actually wear a lot of jewelry ... but I love making it!   But I don't like a lot of the really big stuff that's so popular.  Apparently, I'm not the only one -- because I sell a lot of the little stuff at the craft shows I do.

At shows, I have several trays of very small earrings.  They are usually very simple with just one or two crystals, pearls or stones and a very basic earwire.  I sell everything in those trays for $5 each -- they don't cost a lot to make and I can make several in an hour so it does come out ok for pricing.  I'm sure that some of them will be worn by children, some are purchased to coordinate with a larger piece of jewelry and some are for women who, like me, just like their jewelry small.
I have a line of semi-precious stone jewelry -- none of it is listed on Etsy yet -- and it includes a tray of earrings.  I do sell from that tray, but for the longest time, my stone jewelry hanging on the earring rack wasn't getting much attention at craft shows.  Last week, I decided to really "analyze" my collection -- I came to the realization that I was offering too much that was too small.  As I thought about it, I realized that people tend to buy the larger designs in the stones.  I have 3 or 4 designs that I've been carrying around for several years and have either sold only one or two pairs or none at all.  So I decided to try going with all my larger designs.  I had to make a bunch of earrings to fill in my display racks but it paid off.  If I were guessing (educated guessing, of course), I would say that I've only sold 3 or 4 pairs of earrings off that rack in my last 6 shows.  In fact, the sales have been so slow, my husband was encouraging me to drop the whole line.  This past Saturday I was in a craft show -- it was not well attended and a lot of vendors were unhappy with their low sales.  In spite of the selling conditions, I sold 5 pairs off that stone earring rack!   We'll see how it goes in the future, but if sales continue, this could be one of those little tweaks you have to do from time to time that make a world of difference!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I make a lot of small earrings also, and they aren't selling. Maybe it's time for me to tweak, too!
Bloomfield Beads

pfd said...

Good reminder that we should step back and access. Big and showy is in!