WHAT IS OOAK ANYWAY?

25/9/2020

Hosting monthly trunk shows online was a necessary decision for the survival of my business during Covid-19 times. All in-person events have been cancelled for the foreseeable future, and shipping overseas has been patchy or still closed to some countries. Simply put, my job is to buy materials, make all the things and then sell them to make a profit for my time, energy and experience. This is my full-time job, my income, not my hobby or charity work.

What you don't see behind the scenes of a small businesses is the financial outlays we make to keep our businesses afloat, and these costs are deducted whether we make sales or not. Website hosting, credit card handling fees, graphic design and photo and video editing app costs, utilities, rent, email...the list goes on. Of course, these costs have to be factored into the final charge for the items we produce. It's an easy path to go down to undercharge for our work, especially when receiving feedback from customers who think we are too expensive or that they could make it themselves. But we have to stand firm, we have to get that pricing formula to do the pricing for us and we must never price from a place of self-worth or comparison. We are our secret sauce. The story behind what we do is why our customers buy what we make.

This month the online trunk show theme is OOAK (One-of-a-kind). I've made some new pieces especially for the show, curated a selection from my current collection and adapted some pieces I'd already partially made. Everything in the show will be unique, never to be repeated and almost all of it isn't available in the webshop....yet.

I love seeing familiar names pop up, so I'd love you to join if you're in the mood for a OOAK piece, or something special for your mum, aunt, sister, sister-in-law, Godmother. I know it's only September, but shopping early for the holidays will be important this year...because, you know, 2020.

There will be a trunk show every month, so make sure to hop on the mailing list to be alerted to what's coming up.