It's the way it always starts out, and Etsy had been no different. Well, different in ways, in good ways, but more about that later. It's the setting up that is a task, the filling out of About, the Story and the Policies, a sort of "template" for the Descriptions which gives the Customer the best and most information. the latter two which may be the most important because it really lays out to a potential Customer how a shop conducts business.
For days (and nights), there are the nearly constant re-edits, spell checks, grammar checks, the "second set of eyes" (and the third and fourth and fifth and on and on). And then knowing when to let it go, hoping visitors to the shop won't go to sleep, lose interest. Because after all, there is the real business of the shop to run, what the Customer sees when they first enter the shop: the merchandise itself.
So the "essay writing" takes a break for awhile and takes a backseat to the actual collectibles and treasures stocking the shop.
But we've done this before and soon enough it all starts coming back, maybe a little slowly at first, and then seeing that only with six items in the shop, thirteen items in the shop (as of today, it takes awhile to build) that already more visitors and views are appearing than we ever imagined in such an early stage. The happy realization that others have actually taken the time to browse, to look around.
The shop still needs more though and there is the inevitable discussion of "the look" we ultimately hope to have, "the look" that says CottonwoodDrive, or several "looks" depending in the best method to showcase each item.
And the un-spoken knowing -- un-spoken until just this afternoon -- that when "the look" is achieved, that earlier items listed will have to be re-photographed. Making sure whatever "look" is achieved, that it does not ultimately over-run the show owners' lives. So "the look" also involves a certain amount of discussion and planning. And organizing.
Etsy seems to be a mellow place, a place where no one rushes anyone to shop, the kind of place that if it was actual brick and mortar, that we would like to shop there ourselves. So we stock the shop a little at a time, maybe not quite as fast as we would like, but it gets done. And we see more visitors and views.
We finally managed to list the first of our 1950s-1960s Retro children's bedspreads and/or coverlet, Made in the USA and mostly cotton, Atomic Age dreams. There are still three more to photograph and list and while we would have liked to have had them in the shop earlier today, life intervened and we spent most of our time lining up even more of our stock, getting it ready to "go live" in the shop, and yes, more organizing to make the processes as easy as possible.
For one of the things we've learned through the years is that running a tightly organized on-line venture allows for better Customer Service, faster shipping and a better quality of life for us, the humble shop owners.
Our CottonwoodDrive shop is less than two weeks old now. There have been no sales yet, but lots of visitors and views -- even a few Favorites -- and we find everday, a number of times each and every day, that we sure are having fun.
Always with the thought in the back of our minds that those time-consuming pages of About, the story of the Shop, the Policies and the Welcome section therein, well, after awhile,it will be time to edit for brevity. Short and sweet and straight to the point ...
Just not today. Or tomorrow. Or this week. So please bear with us.
