Growing and Changing

Moving Day It has been longer than we would have liked to update our blog, but so many changes have been taking place the last few months, the largest of which has been relocating from the back bedroom of my home into our own office and workshop within the mill that we have been working with the last year.  It has been a great working relationship, and now that we are on the same property, it makes working that much easier.

Direct Check Out

After we got a bit more settled in to our new place, Etsy came out with their direct check out program.  Customers no longer have to go through PayPal to make their purchases unless they choose to.  We signed up for this direct check out option even though it meant not getting paid until the item shipped.  Once we set up direct check out, within a week or so, our sales nearly tripled!  We were overjoyed as well as overwhelmed.  What was a barely manageable amount of orders with the two of us and one laser, was now becoming unmanageable.  We had to consider other options.

Growing the Business

We chose to invest into another laser to double our production.  We were very lucky to find the the same type of laser we currently use  sitting in a warehouse in Colorado having never been used.  Epilog sent it ASAP and we had it within 3 business days.  It was a blessing that it came when it did because we were drowning in orders for Mother's Day.  We decided to name each laser....

Looking Ahead

Sales have maintained and we are expanding in directions we have wanted to go.  We are very busy and now are looking to take on a part-time worker to help with the boxing and shipping of our items.  We have come to the realization that we are no longer the small home based business we started out as, and it is time to have some help.

All in all, the last two months there have been a lot of changes, all good, but challenging at times.  Each challenge brings opportunity to learn and grow to become the company we want to be become.

Commissioned Art and Realtors

I'll admit marketing and promoting has not been my strong suit.  I wish I could just make my stuff and sell it without having to do a  lot of other time-consuming tasks to get it noticed.  I suppose I can count myself lucky that I have had the success I have had with very little effort.  However, I want to do more.  Knowing that, I realize it is going to require more effort and more time to get my stuff noticed on sites like this blog, Facebook, twitter, etc..., in order to get the circulation I am looking at wanting.  Starting this week,  I will start blogging more regularly to show not only our products, but about who we are as a team, what we stand for as a company, and what we want to become.

This week we were contacted in two different capacities that I think can take our little cutting boards into new arenas.  First, we were contacted by a school that wanted to commission us to do a fundraising cutting board that was totally unique.  When all was said and done we ended up agreeing to engrave a 12" x 24" by 1.5" chopping block made out of European Beech End Grain.  It is a beautiful piece of wood.  The engraving is one of a kind because we had each student in the class write their names down on a piece of white paper and then we transferred their own handwritten names onto the engraveable design.  Here is the preview:

I can't even tell you how excited I am to engrave this and see all those little names forever engraved into a beautiful piece of wood.  Some lucky person will not only get to have it in their kitchen as a useful tool, but also a memento and piece of art.

We also were contacted this week by a "marketing expert" who looks for items for her client ( in this case a Realtor) to buy special, holiday gifts for their clients.  I know that's a lot of clients, but I think you get me.  Anyway, she wants to buy 45 of our small boards (9x12) engraved with the Realtors logo, greetings, etc... .  We are starting to see how these cutting boards could be used in a large-scale capacity for corporate gifts.  After all, would you rather have a plaque, a trophy, another knick knack around the house from your employer or actually have something you can use?  I think most would prefer the latter.  We are going to be targeting some of our local Realtors to see if we can get anymore interest in that capacity.

This week, we also purchased our own web address for our humidor shop.  Although we have had good success with Etsy and our humidors, we think that having our own website would bring in more business, especially with the military humidors.  Our address is www.humidorengraving.com.  Tony hasn't built the site yet, but once it is live I will post here with regular updates.