Sold!

This post may or may not be of much interest to anyone but myself but one of the purposes of this blog if a place for me to process my thoughts about my little business. Yesterday I was analyzing my sold listings to see what if anything I could gleam from what has been successful in my shop. What got me thinking was a post I saw from the Indie CEO about how we spend our advertising dollars. She talked about knowing who are customers are and figuring out different ways to target them. She also gave some specific ideas for particular crafters. Here are her thoughts on knitters:

• Handmade hats, crochet, knitted, felted-cold climates, cold weather sports gatherings, colleges/universities.

This got me thinking about who my target customer is and made me want to see exactly where my sales have come from and what I have sold the most. I can say with certainty that the 2 scarves I have pictured here are my most popular items. The sari silk at the top I have sold 4 times on-line and have sold at least that many at craft shows. The green one has sold twice on-line and has sold at every craft show I've ever done. I'm so sad that Hobby Lobby discontinued this yarn, I bought it out in green and several other colors when it was on clearance. You can tell from the pictures that they are from early on in my business. I used to use props in all of my pictures. I still like the way they look but it is so time consuming and I realized that I needed more consistency in my shop.
So here is what I learned from my research. From my 79 on-line sales I have sold to 26 states, 4 sales to Canada, and 1 to the UK. Of these 17 were from what I consider warm weather states (FL, CA, Hawaii, TX, AZ). I have had 13 sales to MO, the most of any state, which makes sense because a number of those were to people that I knew or had been referred to me. The others were a mix. Here are the top places: CA-7, FL-4, IL-4, MS-4, NY-4, TX-4, WA-4, and Canada-4.

I don't know exactly what this information tells me. I have had a string of sales from CA and FL which got me thinking that it might be because fewer people knit or no someone who knits in the warmer climate areas. It does still get cool in these areas so I thought about trying to target some of my fashion scarves in these areas. But I know that people in Canada and colder states are going to have more appreciation for my work so if I'm going to do any on-line advertising it should probably be directed there.

In terms of inventory online I've sold 43 scarves, 12 scarflettes, 8 headbands, 9 wristcuffs, 2 barrettes, 1 bridal party jewelry set, and 1 necklace on-line. Obviously I need to stick with what works and not muddy up my shop. I'm going to continue to list interesting scarves and scarflettes. I will continue to make wristcuffs and headbands to list as well. I'm not going to showcase them as much and I don't think I'm going to bother to bring the headbands to my shows. The necklaces and barrettes were not received so well and will be phased out.

I will hopefully find a way to use this information. For now it's just kind of my rambling thoughts. If you have any thoughts on this research please share.