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What to Sell?



Thank you to everyone that left a comment on my last post!! You all had such great ideas for what you like in an online quilting store. I continue to work on the store, but have hit a slight snag. Hopefully it will not hold me up for too long, I am thinking it will not. As of now I do not have an official opening date, but I am plugging along, putting together all the little pieces.

Before I get to the next story in my trials of opening this store, I wanted to announce the winner of the pattern from last week.

By way of random.org, The winner is:

Frances AltBahr says:
January 17, 2011 at 3:55 am (Edit)

I have only made 3 quilts, so I am pretty new to all of this. I search alot but never have ordered online I wasn’t sure how the colors came out by not seeing the items. I love your store name and wish you much success! I got your web from the quilting board which I love to read. I will be checking this site often also, and marking this in my ‘favorites’ Again, good luck and have fun!

Contact me and I will mail out your Schnibbles X-Rated pattern:

Congratulations!!

One of the biggest challenges of starting up an online store is deciding what inventory to stock. It took a little work to find wholesalers and set up proper accounts, but once I was all set up I was staring at thousands of potential products. Which ones should I choose? What colors should I pick? How many of each item do I buy? Do I want to cut fabric? What tools are useful? Which patterns are hot? What books are useful? So many questions!! Answering these and making a decision was not easy.

The first decision I had to make was whether or not I wanted to sell fabric. Buying bolts of fabric is not an inexpensive endeavor, so I had to decide right away what kind of store I envisioned having. There were many considerations that went into this, how much time would I have to pack boxes? Where would I cut fabric? Where would the inventory be stored? Would I sell pre-cuts? How much could I invest? But most of all, what is the need for quilting stores online? Where and how could I differentiate myself? The questions never end!

There are a lot of quilting stores online, I have shopped at quite a few of them. All the stores I have been to sell a drool worthy selection of fabrics. However, there does not seem to be a good selection of stores that only sell quilting supplies and notions. Yes, many fabric stores sell notions as well, but there is only so much of those that they can stock. I am sure they have storage and cost restrictions as well, and buying bolts of fabric uses up a lot of these resources. What if there was a place where you could buy thread, batting, rulers, needles, spray adhesive, books, patterns and more all in one place? There aren’t many stores like this and that could mean that either 1. No one has given it the old college try yet, or B. It just wouldn’t work. These are both considerations to take into account.

Another consideration was where I would be keeping my inventory. I have a nice spot in my house that is secluded and gets no traffic. It would be perfect for storing inventory. Although the space is perfect, it’s also not very large. There wouldn’t be a lot of room in that area to store bolts of fabric, nor would there be enough space to put a cutting table. Of course if I felt that having the room for these items was very important, I could find a way to expand the space, but I really wanted to keep things contained in the one area for the time being.

So with all these thoughts in mind, as well with a few other considerations like being able to pack boxes quicker and being able to use my husband and son more, I decided that my store would not sell fabric by the yard. It was almost a relief when I made that decision actually because I have a hard time picking fabrics when I go to a fabric store. Making a decision like that actually almost makes me hyperventilate! So I was relieved to know that I wouldn’t have to decide what fabrics to stock, which ones would sell well, or what colors pop with each other. I could leave that to all the other stores out there that do such a wonderful job at it. I may perhaps sell pre-cuts one day, but for now my store is a fabric free zone.

Once I decided that my store would be notions and supplies only, I was still faced with which notions I wanted to stock initially. Ideally I would love to stock everything out there, but that’s not feasible nor does it make sense. I don’t want to have items in my store just for the sake of having items in the store, I want to have things that people want. So I did a little ‘market research’ asking around what people are buying for notions right now. I follow over 100 quilting blogs already, so I watched what the bloggers were using, and I put all this information together to make a list of items I wanted to sell. The initial list was small and included things like this book:

Written by a blogger I have been following for quite some time.

I also had the ever popular Schnibbles patterns and books on my list:

And how could Dear Jane not be on my list:

I also added a few items that I have enjoyed using to the list. Like this pattern:

Or this one:

And this chalk pencil:

Plus there were so many more items on my list!! As I poked around the websites and fliers I found new and exciting things that I had never used or weren’t mentioned in my research, but I thought they would be fun and useful to people. I kept a list of all these items in an excel spreadsheet plus the cost (lest it get out of hand). Soon I had a nice long list of items I could stock for my store. I went back and forth with myself of how many of each item to buy, what colors to stock, and how many varieties of similar items I needed. I know my store will grow as business comes in, but I also want to have a good selection for opening day. It wasn’t easy, but after talking with people I know that run online stores, and just sitting there crunching numbers, I finally settled on amounts and colors and was ready to place my order.

It took me two months to place the order for the items though. Why? Because what if what I ordered wasn’t right? What if none of it appealed to anyone? I think this is a common fear, but it would have been enough to shut down production right there. Once again though, my husband stepped in and and told me to just go for it. We have a back up plan if things shouldn’t work for some reason. Plus he reminded me what I always say “If you don’t try you have already failed, if you try at least there is a 50% chance of success!” I processed his words and swallowed my fears and jumped in and placed the order.

Thank you again for listening to my tale. Of course there is so much more, but I do want to save some for another day!! I would love to have another giveaway today as well.

This mini self-healing mat is from Omnigrid:

At 5 7/8″ by 8 7/8″, this little mat is just perfect for rotary cutting smaller blocks. The small size makes it easy to turn the block around for easy cutting, which helps you be more accurate than if you had to constantly shift the block itself. I use smaller mats like this for making a disappearing nine patch where you are making multiple cuts that must stay lined up.

All you have to do to enter is leave me a comment by January 29th. I would love to hear what non-fabric notions, patterns, books or quilting supplies you are using lately or are looking to buy. You can also just say hi! If you are a blog follower (either through the widget over to the right or through any blog reader like Google or even if you have my site saved in your favorites and you check back often for new posts), feel free to leave a second comment telling me such and you will get a second entry.

Happy Quilting!
Rachel

Posted on

Chinese Pork Recipe

We made another family favorite meal last night. We are working on keeping our calorie intake down, so finding meals that are lower in calories is a priority for us. This is a fairly simple meal, but it does take a bit to get the pork cooked, we prefer this meal for a weekend when we have more time to prepare.

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Chinese Pork

Boneless Pork Ribs
Chinese Style Ah-So Sauce
Broccoli cut into small pieces

Boil pork on high for 1 hour.
Steam or boil broccoli until soft.
Turn broiler on on oven. Cut the cooked pork into bite sized chunks and mix with Ah-So sauce in a bowl. I usually use half the bottle (to help keep calories down), but it will depend on how much pork you have. You want your pieces to be fully coated in the sauce.

Spread covered pork into a single layer on a cookie sheet, I put down aluminum foil first for easy clean up. Place pan under broiler for a five minutes or so, turning the pork a few times while it is cooking. You want the sauce to caramelize on the pork, but be careful it doesn’t burn.

Serve cooked pork with your broccoli and enjoy!

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The longest part of this recipe is boiling the pork to pre-cook it. You could even do this the night before and refrigerate the pork to be used the next night. When you put the pork under the broiler it will warm it right back up.

Lately I have been picking up my dinner the same night that we are eating it. I swing by the grocery store on the way home. I really like doing this as it means we don’t have a lot of extra food in the house that we are tempted to eat. Hubby and I are working on counting calories to drop a few pounds, and it’s not always easy to keep our calories low. Keeping food out of the house helps us stay on track.

Happy Eating!
Rachel

Posted on 97 Comments

What’s in a Name?



 
So now you know my big secret. I have been planning this store for a couple months now, and the one thing I have learned is that it is a LOT of work opening a store! I thought it would be, just buy some stuff, throw it online, call it a store …. but there is so much more to it. I was thinking it might be kind of fun to share with you bits and pieces of my process for opening the store. I love reading when bloggers share a “behind” the scenes, so maybe you will too.
 
The first hard decision I had to make was what to name the store. Did I want to go with the obvious and put the word quilter or quilt in the title? This has its benefits as people would be able to know what kind of stuff I sell straight from the get go. But it also has its own set of limitations as what if I want to sell embroidery stuff? Yes I could do it, but people might not think a store called Quilter’s Playhouse (or whatever) would sell anything except stuff for quilters. This is a constant naming battle, should your product name describe what it is? I have found that more often than not, a store or product name does not describe itself. Yes you have the Taco Bells of the world, but you also have names like Sears, Wal-Mart, Victoria’s Secret. We know what these stores sell because we have been there. But if you had never ever heard of Sears before, you may not know if it was a restaurant, a clothing store, a stationary store, or even a gun store! But once you go there and the name becomes popular, you know what they sell so it doesn’t matter what the name of the store is.
 
Because of this reasoning, I knew from the get go that I wanted my name to be free of the word quilt or quilter. I know of a lot of stores that use these words, and I love going to them, but for me I didn’t want to limit myself that way. So I had to meander along and find a a name that I liked. My first choice was obvious. The domain that this blog is on is mine. I bought Scrapendipity Designs some time ago and haven’t always used it, but I have been using it as a quilting blog for a while now and there are a good number of people that visit my blog and know the name. I could easily add a store right here and call it a day. However, as much as I like this name, I also had another domain under my belt that had never seen the light of day.
 
I bought the domain for Dewberry Lane about 2 years ago when I was more into digital scrapbooking. A friend and I were going to start a scrapbooking business, and I came up with the name Dewberry Lane and since the domain wasn’t taken yet, and I didn’t want to lose it, I went ahead and bought it. Well the business fizzled out after only a month or two of planning, but I was able to keep the name and the domain since it was my idea. I held on to the domain, renewing it every year, even though I wasn’t using it, because I thought the name was really catchy.
 
So when it came time to name my new business, I really felt that Dewberry Lane was the right name for my store. The name evokes thoughts of a peaceful, back country road for me. A tree lined street where you could take a walk in the afternoon and say hello to all your neighbors. Where houses have front porches with rocking chairs on them, ready for two people to sit, sip lemonade, and chat the day away.
 

 
Something like that. This was too beautiful an idea for me to just give up on, so I finally made the decision and named my store Dewberry Lane. While it has basically no name recognition like my blog already has, it is a catchy name that I thought people would easily remember. The best part was, I didn’t have to worry about anyone already owning the domain for it, as it was already mine! So I dusted off the old domain and started the process of figuring out how to turn it into a store.
 
After settling on my name, it was time to focus on building a site, creating a logo, and deciding what product I wanted to sell. These three items alone were the most nerve wracking of the whole process. There were many times while I was working on these three things, that I told my husband that it couldn’t be done and I wasn’t going to do it. Luckily he kindly reminded me that these things really weren’t that hard and I shouldn’t let them defeat me. So with his encouragement, I plugged along.
 
I don’t want to make this post too long, so I will share how I muddled through those steps in other posts. If you actually made it to the end of this post though, then I think you deserve a giveaway! One of the items I will have in my store is a good number of Schnibbles patterns and I would like to give one away today.
 

 
This pattern is called X-rated. It finishes at 31″ x 31″ and you could easily make it with 2 charm square packs and a yard of background fabric.
 
So how do you enter my mini giveaway? Well all you have to do is leave me a comment. I would love to hear what you like in an online store, but you can also just say hello. If you are a follower (either through the widget over to the right or through any blog reader like Google or even if you have my site saved in your favorites and you check back often for new posts), leave me a second comment with how you are a follower and you can have a second entry. Be sure to give me a valid email address so I can contact you if you win!
 
The winner will be announced on Saturday, January 22, 2011.
 
I do plan on having more (and bigger) giveaways as I get closer to opening, so be sure to check back often!
 
Happy Quilting!
Rachel

Posted on 6 Comments

Dewberry Lane

Last I posted I told you that I had some exciting news for you. Well I have a small sneak peek today in the form of a video:


 
Coming soon to the interwebs near you, I will be opening an online store, Dewberry Lane. The above video is a sales pitch for one of our items from our highest grossing salesman.
 

 
The store isn’t quite ready yet, but I would love to hear some ideas of what you would like to see. Product, classes, tutorials … what would bring you to my store? As we get close to opening we want to help make our store useful to you!
 
Happy Quilting!
Rachel