Spring Discount

Hi y'all! 

Over the past few years, I have become pretty tight with a lot of talented folks in the handmade industry. And I've really wanted to partner up with them for a SALE! I've asked all of my buddies to provide a nice, exclusive discount that we can all share like a big happy family. Isn't that special?! Check it out...

 These are some of the amazing wares up for grabs: 

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Florence Oliver

Danelle is based out of White Bear Lake, MN and creates vintage-inspired goods for your modern life. She has some of the greatest clutches and hand-painted goodness I have ever seen!

I have one of these. It's awesome.

Discount: 20% off

Code: SPRINGFLING2013

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Made by Michelle Brusegaard

Michelle is based out of Grand Forks, ND and creates screenprinted towels, greeting cards and beautiful scarves, all printed by hand. 

Discount: 20% off

Code: SPRINGFLING2013 

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Just Liv

Elizabeth is based out of St. Louis, MO and creates handmade, of the moment accessories using vintage and re-purposed materials. If you need some super-cool jewelry that nobody else is going to have, you gotta check this out.

 

Discount: 15% off

Code: SPRINGFLING2013

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redshoes26 design

Christy is based out of Minneapolis, MN and creates state icon illustrations that are archival-quality giclee prints with handmade frames. These little prints are the perfect size!

Discount: 26% off 2 or more state icons

Code: SPRINGFLING2013

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Larissa Loden Jewelry
 

Larissa is based out of Minneapolis, MN and creates vintage-meets-modern jewelry. Larissa is a jewelry star at the shows we both participate in!

Discount: 25% off all jewelry

Code: SPRINGFLING2013

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Nik J Designs
 

 

Nikki is based out of Madison, WI and creates bags, accessories for the home, & children's clothing in the most fun and whimsical prints you can find!

Discount: 15% off

Code: SPRINGFLING2013

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Lolamade Monsters

Laura is based out of Minneapolis, MN and creates hand sculpted figurine monster friends. The monsters love being travel companions, work buddies, and of course toys for the kid or the kid at heart! I have 4 of these monsters, and they make great pals!

Discount: 20% off

Code: SPRINGFLING2013

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The Bare Tree

Saul is based out of Madison, WI and creates screenprinted t-shirts, scarves and other fun stuff. And his swag has been on the Big Bang Theory and in the movie Crazy Stupid Love!
 

Discount: 23% off

Code: SPRINGFLING2013

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Bubbles by Brooks™

Amy is based out of Rochester, MN and creates wonderful lip balms, soap bars and shampoo bars. They are earth-friendly and appeal to all of your senses. I am a lip balm addict - thank goodness I don't need Chapstick anymore, thanks to Amy!

Discount: 10% off

Code: SPRINGFLING2013

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Colette Paperie

Keli (me, duh) is based out of Cincinnati, OH and creates handmade greeting cards that will change your entire perspective for sending cards. Irreverent, funny, clever are only a few adjectives to describe these non-traditional cards.

Discount: 25% off

Code: SPRINGFLING2013

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This discount is available ONLY on March 20-24, 2013, beginning in honor of the first day of Spring! Enter the code (it's the same code for all: SPRINGFLING2013) on the websites listed to receive your glorious discount. You can reach out to any of the sellers via their website if you have any questions. 

 

As always, please re-post this to your Facebook wall, email it to your friends, spread the word as much as you can so we can offer these discounts more often! 

Have a great day and happy first day of Spring!

 

How to Sell Your Product Creatively and Effectively

The list below are some great ways to market your business. Most of them are pretty cost effective, too!

The list has examples from my business which has a lot of small priced items, which allow me to do a lot of small scale marketing in a creative way. But I think if you brainstormed it with a creative group (or hairbrush-style into your own mirror), you could think up a lot of these for your service-based company or higher-priced item company or whatever crazy thing you're up to. Let's begin...

                                                        VISUAL STATEMENT

Create a product that is unique and interesting. My cards are directly based on the fact that they have to be almost one-of-a-kind. Inside-joke-inspiring of the reader. Cards you'd never find at Target because they are too risque. 

 

Create new products often and keep it moving. This also helps you find things to say on social media sites.

Have outstanding marketing materials to hand out (cheap business cards from Vistaprint are OK, but get a great design BEFORE you buy. Don't buy one of their shit templates.)

Have great professional photos. Do not attempt at home unless Autumn Lee Koomen or  Noemi Hedrick or my buddy Amanda is with you and of course, also the one that is holding the camera. You do not hold the camera.

Find ways to make your product more valuable without adding cost to you. Crafty grabs are everywhere on the cheap, wrap things up and make them pretty. Even a very simple kraft paper and twine wrapping with a cute little tag makes a huge difference.

Use not only pretty, but interesting packaging on products (if you have tangible products.) If you don't have tangible products, can you create a fake tangible product? If you're an editor, can your business card be a printed eraser? Real cheap. Puns are totally acceptable.

The trick is to make it look expensive, without it actually being expensive. Or making it clever and funny. 






 Examples:

A radio station put a cheap guitar rack outside with a sign that said "Free Air Guitars" - it's funny and hardly cost them a thing.


An anti smoking ad that said "smoking causes blindness" put a big eyeball as the center of the public ashtray, so you put your butt right into the eyeball. 






 
A rodent control place has a little card that can be tucked under a door and it looks like a little mouse hole in the door, the backside has their information on it.


 

If you have inexpensive products or marketing materials, you just have to make them look expensive and legitimate. If it has a bad design, people will not take it seriously. I can't emphasize that enough. 

Make your marketing materials Not Lame. The trick to my drink coasters is that one side is completely brand-free. When you do that, you are reducing your chances of it immediately going into the trash. When you create any kind of marketing material, try to find ways where people do not automatically chuck it.


SOCIAL CONNECTION

Share your story. (via blog, via personal interactions) People love to hear about quitting corporate jobs to do what you love. They are envious and want to support you. They might hate their stupid corporate job and want to live vicariously through you. They also like to support small businesses.


Go to events where you will meet people. I am horrible at this but it's got to be done. Practice your opening few lines because you might be terrible at introducing yourself. The owner of Colette Paperie is terrible at introducing herself.

Keep a mailing list and don't bug them, but create interesting bits of information that people that care about your products, might also care about. When I reach out to my mailing list, I usually try to be silly in my emails and also include a gift/coupon code for them, and thank them for being like the awesomest customers in the world. 

They know I love them and they also know I am a real person.

Don't be afraid to add some kind of personal connection when you reply to business-related emails (this is your best form of customer service) or when you meet a person or when you are on your Facebook business page. Talk about what crazy things your kids are up to, recipes you died over, these are pretty good on social media. Then you are a real person, not an advertising BOT. To me, there is nothing worse than a Facebook page that is all business. I personally end up not following business pages because they aren’t entertaining – I need to be entertained - if I had it my way, my news feed would consist of some baby mama drama, someone's kid getting suspended at school, maybe some cute babies. Oh and some kind of delicious looking pumpkin muffin or something. Entertainment!

Email or send letters/promo pack to local newspapers and magazines, with a sample. I was featured in Mpls St Paul magazine a while back simply for doing this. Promo packs are likely to be thrown away but you can make them cheaply and still have them look cool. A little photo of you, a little bio, maybe a sample of your product. Just something real and heartfelt, reaching out to them. Simple though. Don't write them a love letter or anything.
 
Give free gifts to those who appreciate you/give you a lot of business/recommend you to others, and if you sell your pitch right, those gifts might come for cheap to you. I'm considering sending my wholesale customers some free calendars, but I never want to come across as "sucking up" - because that isn't the answer either.



Networking to me is kind of overrated – and I know you can throw darts into that statement all day long. But hear me out. I think a network can be great, but I don’t think it’s as important as we might think.  If Aunt Suzy or my friend Rachel buys cards, that's great - but that doesn’t pay my car payment (especially since I just bought a new one.) I want people who don’t know me to come across my stuff, be blown away, and buy a shitload of it. 

** One note on Facebook personal pages – I do think separating business from personal is important. For some reason, when you talk all business on your personal page and advertise your products to your friends, you become the aforementioned advertising robot.

 

Have something to show for your work besides just words on paper or a Facebook biz page. At my trade shows I do, my display is huge, complicated, and takes a ton of fine-tuning to make it look perfect. When people come to my table at shows, a lot of them say "Wow." - that's the kind of impact you want on everyone that comes across your business – your presence, your website. When you go on my website, there are over 250 products. It’s hard to believe that 1 person does it all, which gains so much credibility. How to translate this into other businesses is maybe having your marketing materials prove what you do, so people are automatically impressed.

Use your resources. When I needed a photo shoot, a girl I went to high school with (one of Cincinnati's biggest wedding photographers, mentioned before - Amanda Donaho) took pics for me. When I wrote my book, a girl I went to college with was my editor.  Get your important advertising buddy to send an email on your behalf to his contacts at so-and-so magazine. If you don’t know the right person, ask Rachel. “On behalf of” emails are highly effective because they trick the reader into thinking you are too amazing to be bothered to email them.

 You're too good for email!

When you feel like you can't do something yourself, try first to learn it yourself. With Google being everyone's focal point, you can find anything. I taught myself web design through Google search. Free. 

DO NICE THINGS



(This is the most important part of this blog post.)

Donate products to good causes that you personally care about. Tell people you're doing it. In theory, your products are cheap for you. I'd rather donate product than money, always. 

Create customized products to donate to these causes. Put a little effort into it. People notice when you do nice things. I have done 3 fundraisers worth mentioning:

1) A friend of mine that worked at Target with me was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I created "cancer warrior" cards that people could purchase and they said the cancer warrior's name on them. That friend sent it to her mailing list, I raised some money for her, and many others that had family members with cancer asked that I create some for their family as well. It ended up growing quite large and I gained a lot of great customers as a result.

2) A friend of mine's Dad has cancer and she needed to take time off of work, so I offered my fantastic mailing list of 3000+ people a free shipping coupon code. I ended up giving my friend several hundred dollars and she was like, "What?!" - "Who is sending you this?" And I said, "I dunno. Cool peeps on my mailing list." *shrug* - And it's true, get yourself a great mailing list of really nice customers and you've got yourself some solid support. Keep the assholes off the mailing lists. :)

3) My card drive to benefit the Michelle Project. I spent a few hundred dollars and had fun writing out some cards and I got a ton of additional sales in return and those few hundred dollars that I donated to the project were also a tax write-off. It was a win-win-win-win-win x infinity.

I would also like to mention this great act of generosity... A friend of mine recently did 30 acts of kindness on her 30th birthday, she crafted up these adorable tags, taped money and popcorn to the red box machine, taped candy bars on people's cars, a coffee gift card in the baby changing station at restaurants and a note that said "You're a great Mom". Lottery tickets taped to gas pumps. I think this idea is awesome and I hope I can be inspired by it to do something similar in the future.

To read about Amanda's 30 Acts of Kindness, check out her blog here and her friend Jessica's blog here to see more about it.   

RESPECT LEVEL



Set rules. Your customers will respect you MORE, not less. 
I do wholesale business with some large companies that have policies of not paying upfront. But my policy is always payment upfront. When I put my foot down, they give in as well and the mutual respect is built. Small businesses are vulnerable, but surprisingly iron-clad if you put your foot down.

IF YOU MUST ADVERTISE…

 

If you're going to spend money, Invest in advertising in a smart way. Target your customer and don't pay for advertising to someone that will never be interested in your product. I do DailyCandy deals that cut my profit into 25%. But those customers came back for more and it was worth it. Those were my exact target customer though.



All in all, just try not to give people what they hear every single day. Try to make a difference. People will be polite and supportive, but that's not really what you need. You need that cash money.

10 things that make me sad... and kill my mojo

1. "Big Sistering": Something I deal with regularly, when someone is a fraction of time older than me (or 20 years), they might feel the need to be "always right", and condescending any chance they get. That person could simply be wishing they were my age again, or they want to mark their territory as being "older and wiser". It usually just hurts the younger person. It also really bothers me when I find myself doing it. This is definitely an area of my life where I do a lot of contemplation. I see it often, and I wish that we could just stop tearing each other down simply due to our age.

2. "You Just Wait" Syndrome: I see this mainly amongst my friends who have kids. One person has a 3 year old, and one just had a baby. The baby's mama is fretting about her child beginning to crawl and how she desperately needs to baby-proof the house. 3 year old's mama says, "You just wait until they are walking and start going through all your stuff!" I'm pretty sure baby's mama knows that she's going to go through that, but today she just wants people to be understanding and give a little pity in the scenario. Helpful suggestions on what to do or asking questions on how you can help - without the dose of whatever it is that is yet to come, are highly recommended so that baby's mama doesn't pull her hair out. I find "You Just Wait" syndrome to be highly hurtful and basically not helpful at all.

3. When I go through something that the majority of my friends have already gone through. For example, a grey hair sprouted it's ugly being onto my precious box-dyed head the other day. I just wanted someone to be on my level for a moment. Yep, I know, you might already have grey hair. And I'm sorry I wasn't around to give you my condolences. But I need yours right now, because I want to be dramatic about it and have a momentary crisis. Yes, I clearly know that it isn't that big of a deal, and the next day it totally wasn't - but that doesn't mean I wasn't having a meltdown right then.

4. When I complain about something and my friends keep telling me what's great about the situation. I had to drive 12 hours to a show once, and hardly made any money. My friends said, "Hey at least you passed your business card out to people! Maybe they'll come back and buy more." Yes, this is true, and my friends didn't mean anything by it - they probably just wanted to respond positively. But really, what I was contemplating and perhaps wanted to really talk about is the fact that I'm probably not going to do that show again because it was a waste of time and energy. Let's be realistic, folks.

5. People who "live vicariously" through my single-hood. Dating was way more fun when we were younger. When we were 18-22, we had a sense of wonderment. "Oh, this could be magical!" Kissing a dude was the greatest thing ever. When you've dated for 15+ years, shit isn't magical anymore. Every guy comes with baggage - emotional and physical, and we are all just a bit (or quite a lot) jaded from dating for so damn long. Living vicariously is cool, until you realize how crappy it can be.

6. People who say "Just when you stop looking, Mr. Right will come along" or some similar variation. Here's the thing: Every scenario is different. Just because you met Mr. Right when you were galloping around Paris or you finally met him when you were 35 instead of 25 like the majority of the world, doesn't mean it's going to happen for me. In actuality, there are a lot of people in the world that are single for their entire lives. A great thing to say is, "How does single feel to you?" or "What qualities are you looking for?" or some other thoughtful-not-condescending question, and go from there. Stop throwing lines you've already heard. There have been years-at-a-time where I didn't look for Mr. Right, or any Mr. at all - and lo and behold - I ain't married right now.

7. People who don't respond to invitations - whether electronic or paper. 10 years ago, this was unacceptable and completely rude. And in my opinion, it still is. Example: Last year, I had a birthday party. I sent out honest-to-goodness paper invitations. Some of who I thought were my close friends, didn't even acknowledge receiving the invitation. Sure, I knew they wouldn't show up - they haven't shown up in years - but it would have been nice to have gotten even just a little note.

8. Electronic excuses and overall laziness. As a greeting card pusher, of course I have a problem with e-mail congratulations and other various lazy ways to communicate with people. And I do it all myself, too. Example: I was away from Minneapolis for about 10 months, and a lot of my friends were bummed I had left. Upon returning, so many people wanted to meet up with me. And many did. I work from home, so I have the most unbelievably open schedule in existence. So my response is "Whenever you're free!" because I know everyone else in the universe (it feels like) has a jam-packed calendar. And yet, nearly 2 years upon my return, a lot of those people who wanted to meet up, have never scheduled any time with me. Their loss - but also kind of lame.

9) When someone is dieting, people love to tell them what they should be doing. We all know how to lose weight. No really, every single person knows how to do it.  It's not rocket science, folks. And, if you suggest things, that might make said dieter go and eat a bag of cookies. People are pretty darn insecure about these things, so tread very lightly. The better way to go is saying something like, "Let me know if you need someone to work out with, then we can hold each other accountable." That way you are both in the equation and dieter doesn't feel singled out and well, fat.

10. Resentment. There is a quote I read in one of my favorite books, "The Art of Non-Conformity" that reads, "If you want to get a lot of people to stop liking you, start doing what you love and making lots of money doing it." There are a lot of good things going on in my life: I make much, much more money than I used to when I worked for a big company doing the whole "career" thing, I have an open schedule, I work in my pajamas, and many other awesome self-employed things that make my life extraordinarily better. But I also work very hard and had to go through a whole lot of crap to get here. Many of my friends have treated me with such resentment ("misery loves company" and all) - that I've had to let a lot of them fade out of my life. Sometimes I get so frustrated by it, I start thinking everyone in the world resents me. When someone puts their balls out into the world for all to see, just... be happy for them. Success is very difficult, no matter who you are. When someone finds success that would be there for you in a heartbeat - you should be happy. You never know when you might need them. And success comes in waves. Tomorrow, Target might copycat all my greeting cards and put my ass out of business. If you're unhappy about your life, make a change.