Friday, February 6, 2009

No Time to Slow Down

We might be in a recession, but it's not an excuse to slow down completely. I admit to falling prey to this myself. I feel like keeping every penny tucked away under my mattress. This is very counterproductive though.

A great article, which came to me via e-mail, talks about using a recession as a building period.

My experience through a number of recessions is the lower priced items sell faster than the middle tier and the higher tier sell well since many people are more selective where they invest their money. I become more creative when things are slow. I look for avenues, venues, new opportunities. This is not the time to slow down.

This is GREAT advice. I've been trying to do this myself recently. While my purchases of supplies have slowed, they have not stopped and I'm waiting impatiently on one order to arrive right now. I still have ideas and my creative juices are flowing.

My goal is different than many other artisans, as I'm not nearly as interested as pumping up my sales as I once was. Right now, my goal is slow and steady, with as little stress as possible.

But since I'm going to be creating I might as well offer those creations for sale, right? =)


One piece of advice that I would give - do NOT lower your prices just to try to make a sale. You undercut yourself and devalue your work, which is not fair to you or to other artists.

If you feel you need a lower price point try to think of something that you can make that you could price lower, but still make a profit. But don't lower the price on your current work just because it isn't moving as fast as you'd like. And don't skimp on quality to try to lower the price. You'll ruin your reputation faster than you can ever rebuild it.

Value yourself and your work and others inevitably will too.

2 comments:

Sandee said...

I agree with you about not lowering your prices. You certainly need to value your work. Bravo.

Have a terrific day and weekend. :)

jana said...

Love that bracelet! I'm learning to fuse silver with a torch. fun!