Black Friday and the wrong way to talk to your customers about buying handmade

Black Friday and the wrong way to talk to your customers about buying handmade

I’ve got strong opinions about Black Friday.
Actually I’ve got strong opinions about publicly complaining about Black Friday.
Black Friday is a relatively new phenomenon here in the UK and each year there seems to be more and more polarisation around the event and more and more Anti Black Friday blog and social media posts from makers. To be clear, I don’t believe that anyone should ever feel obliged to discount their products.

Why you want your customers to say NO.

Why you want your customers to say NO.

One of the best pieces of business advice I ever got was to get my customers to say no more quickly and more often.
Don’t worry, I was really dubious too. I mean, don’t we want our customers to say yes? Yes to buying our products, yes to joining our mailing list, yes to following us on social media, yes to telling all of their friends about us. No really isn’t the outcome that we’re looking for.

Should you do Sale or Return?

Should you do Sale or Return?

Start a conversation about Sale or Return (or Consignment as it is know elsewhere in the world) amongst a group of makers and you’re likely to get some pretty strongly worded responses. Sale or Return definitely gets a bad rap and there’s no question that it’s not the...
Three Ways You’re Wasting Your Time on Facebook

Three Ways You’re Wasting Your Time on Facebook

You’re probably wasting a lot of time on Facebook. And, no, I don’t mean by watching cute animal videos and scrolling through your frenemies’ photostream. Who really does that anyway? *ahem* If you’re doing any of these three things you’re wasting time with your...
Why you ABSOLUTELY must have a mailing list

Why you ABSOLUTELY must have a mailing list

I bang on about this all the time but, seriously, having a mailing list is the single best thing you can do for your business, right now, TODAY. Sometimes creating a business around the things that you make can seem completely overwhelming. It can seem really...
Why Quality Photos are essential and how to improve yours

Why Quality Photos are essential and how to improve yours

Nine times out of ten, when someone is frustrated that they aren’t selling as much as they’d like, product photography is the culprit. Online, product photography is absolutely essential. It’s all your customer has got to go on. And it’s not enough to simply SHOW your...