How Not To Wholesale Part One: Not Making the Sale

My first big wholesale order was pretty much a disaster, and with this step-by-step guide you too can make your wholesale process a hair-pulling experience for everyone involved! This first part focuses on the many ways you can respond to the inquiry of a potential wholesale customer. If you play your cards right here, you may not have to deal with a wholesale order at all.

My wholesale order included tiny bracelets. 600 of them. *shudder*

Snail Mail
It's important that when a potential wholesale customer contacts you, you take as much time as you can before responding. Make sure at least a day or two passes between each response of yours, and offer no explanation or apology for the delay. If she asks what's taking so long, imply that you have many more important things to do. This will give her an idea of how slow and careless you're likely to be in filling her order, and drive her to seek someone more responsive.

I Could Tell You...
You're here to make and/or move product, not research and write boring responses with calculations, measurements, different shipping options, price estimates... it's making me yawn just thinking about it. So play it fast and loose. Maybe you can make what the customer is looking for, maybe you can't; your goal is to string him along for as long as you can before needing to actually figure stuff out. Make your responses as short and non-informative, and the customer will eventually quit asking.

Be (Un)Prepared!
You've never done a wholesale transaction before (or if you have you didn't keep any notes or records of it) so you have no idea how this is even supposed to work. If your customer doesn't ask about your wholesale policies, don't tell her; if she does ask, make up whatever you feel like. Don't bother researching or even thinking about minimums, pricing, turnaround time, or shipping, and especially don't bother looking back on what  you said before to make sure you're being consistent. The more scatter-brained and unprofessional you look, the better chance you won't be trusted with the order.

Thoroughly Modest Millie
Impress on the customer at every turn how completely unqualified you are for his order. If he's requesting something you've never done before,  make sure he knows! Dwell on every part of the process you're unsure of, and leave him in no doubt of how little you believe in your own work. Even if he is asking for something that you do know how to do, you can still point out all the mistakes and imperfections of your recent products. You can even suggest others in your field who you think could do a better job with his order, making it much more likely he will abandon you for a competitor.

First Weekend Sale!

Edit: Sale is closed.

I recently announced on the Quiet Mischief Facebook page that we would be discontinuing a long-running coupon code. Now that the coupon has been officially discontinued, I'll tell you what we're working on to replace it: weekend sales! This idea was inspired by a local bookstore. Every Saturday they have a sale, sometimes on art books, sometimes on children's books, and sometimes on any book that had blue on the cover. I loved shopping these sales, so now I'm bringing them to you.

Once or twice a month, we will have a sale on some of our items. The sale's theme will be announced a few days in advance so you can prepare, and more items that fall in with that sale will be listed on the days leading up to it. These items will be marked down using Etsy On Sale, so the discount will already be applied, no coupon codes or refunds necessary. And now for the details of our first weekend sale!

Theme: St. Patrick's Day
Now's the time to stock up on all items with green! This sale is early enough that any items purchased during it should have plenty of time to arrive and protect you from being pinched on March 17th.

Discount: 15%

Running time: Sale will be in effect starting at 12:01 am MST March 2nd and end at 11:59 pm March 3rd.

Eligible items: Any of our items with green on them! These items will be placed in a special sale section for the weekend so you can find them easily. Custom items will only be eligible if you want to include the color green and purchase during the sale; other details will be worked out in convos or emails. If there is any item you think should be included that isn't, feel free to contact me, and I might agree with you. : )

Coupon codes: COUPON CODES ARE NOT VALID DURING THIS SALE. Any purchase made with both sale items and a coupon code will be cancelled, or you will be invoiced for the difference.

Discount items: Discount items are eligible for this sale! They'll be in the sale section, and the sale price will be on top of the discount that had already been applied.

Are  you excited for this sale? Already have an item in mind you'd like to buy? Have any suggestions for future weekend sales? Leave a comment below telling us what you think!

Don't forget to share this post with your friends so they can be part of the fun!

The Master List:: Duct Tape Colors and Patterns and Where to Find Them

We get asked a lot where get get certain colors or patterns of duct tape, and I finally had the bright idea to make a permanent list of duct tape and what stores to find it in. Note that this list is specifically for Utah (other states may vary) and only includes Duck Brand. Also note that most of these (aside from discontinued patterns) can be found online.

Colors
Red - Wal-Mart, Michaels, Joanne
Orange (neon) - Wal-Mart, Michaels, Joanne, Home Depot
Yellow - Wal-Mart, Michaels, Joanne, Hobby Lobby
Yellow (neon) - we have only found this online
Green - Joanne, Michaels
Green (neon) - Wal-Mart, Michaels, Hobby Lobby, Home Depot
Blue - Wal-Mart, Michaels, Joanne
Blue (light/neon) - Michaels
Teal - Wal-Mart, Michaels, Joanne
Purple - Wal-Mart, Michaels, Joanne
Maroon - Michaels, Joanne
Pink (neon) - Wal-Mart, Michaels, Joanne
Chrome - Wal-Mart, Michaels, Joanne, Hobby Lobby
Gold - Wal-Mart
Black - Wal-Mart, Michaels, Joanne, Hobby Lobby, Home Depot
Beige - Wal-Mart, Michaels
Brown - Joanne

Patterns
Tie-Dye (pink, yellow, orange) - Wal-Mart, Michaels, sometimes Target
Tie-Dye (blue, purple, pink) - Wal-Mart, Michaels, sometimes Target
Camouflage (digital) - Wal-Mart, sometimes craft stores
Camouflage (hardwood/realistic) - Wal-Mart, sometimes Hobby Lobby
Zebra Print - Wal-Mart, Michaels, Target, Joanne, Hobby Lobby
Cheetah Print - Wal-Mart, Michaels, Joanne
Rock! Print - Discontinued, was found at Wal-Mart
Peace Symbols Print - Wal-Mart, Michaels
Purple and Green Plaid - discountinued, was found at Target
Paint Splatter Print - Wal-Mart, sometimes craft stores
Blue Plaid Print - Target
Houndstooth Print - Wal-Mart, Michaels
Damask/Victorian Print - discountinued, was found at Target
Checkered Print - Wal-Mart, Michaels
Flame Print - Wal-Mart, Michaels, Joanne
Butterfly Print - Wal-Mart, sometimes Michaels
Dragon Print - Wal-Mart, Michaels
Skulls Print - Wal-Mart, Michaels
Pink with White Polka Dots - Michaels
Blue with White Polka Dots - Target
Black with Multicolored Polka Dots - Wal-Mart, sometimes Michaels
All Christmas patterns - seasonal; were found at Wal-Mart and Home Depot
Hello Kitty - Target

How Not to Have a Successful Etsy Shop Part One: Getting Started

Jump the Gun
You have half an item made, and supplies to make five more. You're sure you can make another item every couple of days or so (assuming you stop playing Skyrim long enough). So why not start your Etsy shop now? After all, the sooner you have items for sale, the sooner they can sell. You put up a blurry, dark picture of your half-finished item, promise in the description that it will be awesome once it is finished, and wait for the sales to roll in. Or sale. Since you have only one item up so far. But seriously, more will be up within a week or two. Unless you take an arrow to the knee.

Wait for Perfection
You had an idea for a product. You bought some materials, made an item, improved on your design, made another item, made some tweaks, and made five more items. You photographed these, but as you were editing the photos (trying to get the background light juuuuuust right) you notice some imperfections in your items. Discouraged, you spend a week or two pondering, and come up with another product idea, one that's even better. You create, tweak, create, and photograph, but though you like some of the product photos you think they're not quite good enough. And it's not like you can start your Etsy shop yet anyway; your logo still needs some work, and you haven't yet found the perfect name.

Dreams are Serious Business

I've always had vivid dreams, and most of them I was able to control. I would realize early on in the dream that I was dreaming, and from that point be able to make things go my way - I could use telekinesis, turn invisible, fly, or simply rewind time and try it again.

For a couple of months this has been changing. As an example, when my last dream was starting this morning, I never realized I was dreaming. I made only a few changes, and those very minor; when the man robbing the bank went through my wallet, all he took was some cash; he passed over my debit card and put back my Social Security card at my suggestion. Later, when that same man was trying to capture or kill me for going to the police, I was able to defeat all of his minions with slapping, which must have been manipulation because a) I'm a weakling and b) slapping, really?

However, I was unable to stop the robbery in the first place, or to escape from it. I was even forced to experience pain (a puncture wound to my hand). Later, knowing that Mat would want to know what happened, I was unable to find a quiet place to call him. And at the end of the dream, though I defeated the minions, I was unable to kill the man who had robbed me and was now trying to kill me. (Apparently he had the ability, when his mouth was stuffed full of chocolate, to swallow half a candy bar at once. Yes, I was trying to suffocate him with chocolate. I work with what I'm given.)

I have two theories about why my dreams are changing.

Theory One: I'm a creature of habit.
Back when my dreams were full of magic and me getting my own way, during the day I was constantly stressed, often to a point I didn't think I could handle. And even when I found a moment of contentment, I would suddenly be struck by the fear that I had forgotten something, and that thought would persist until I remembered or came up with something to be stressed about.

For the past few months, I've been in a better situation, and been learning how to better handle stress. But it's also been in the past few months that my dreams have been changing. I experience much more stress overall, in addition to slowly losing my ability to control things.

In short, I am so used to stress that when I avoid it during the day my mind forces it on me while I sleep.

Theory Two: I'm some kind of learning CPU.
In my magical fully-controlled dreams, all my problems were solved by invisibility, flying away, or other methods of escape. This paralleled my waking life, where I would run away from problems; for example, I quit my English major because a paper I worked hard on got a C, and I didn't bother trying out for a vocal performance major because I was afraid I wouldn't make it. This attitude of mine has slowly been changing, and as I have learned to deal with problems in real life, perhaps dream me is also learning to deal with problems instead of running away.

Why I Posted the Lame Short Short

First, I texted my sister. "How's it going?"

Then I felt the familiar tugging. "Story idea over here," it seemed to say.

Then I got on the computer.

Then I wrote a short short.

Then I realized it was dumb.

Then Mat started reading it.

Then I got really embarrassed.

Then I thought that I should share my lame short short with the world, in order to prove some kind of point to Mat (no, I don't know what the point is, nor how me posting a short short I wrote in a couple of minutes is supposed to prove anything).

Never mind. I don't know why I posted it either.

A Lame Short Short

Loosely based on true events

"How's it going?"

She groaned. "I hate the whole world."

"That well, huh?"

"Shut up." She waved her hand dismissively.

"So, when you do think you'll be done?"

"Shortly before I kill myself, I hope. Now get out of here!"

"Hey..." he said soothingly, reaching over to pat her shoulder. He only got in a couple of pats before needing to move his hand to avoid a swipe from her. "Only trying to help and all that."

"No, you're trying to be obnoxious. Go. Away."

She looked up in surprise as he jerked her chair back from the desk. "Hey! What do you think you're doing?"

"Rescuing you." He leaned on the chair, preventing her from scooting back. "You, my dear, need a break."

"But..." her anger was dissolving into something more like despair. "I need to..."

"Hush. It can wait five minutes, and you'll work better for it. Come on."

She tried to push him away, as he was now blocking her view of her computer screen. "But I know what you mean when you say 'break.' I won't be back here for hours if you have your way."

"And you'd enjoy every minute of it."

She sighed. "I just can't today. I have so much..."

"No," he said, cutting her off. "No objections. You're starting to get sad and then you won't be good for anything."

She looked a trifle stung. "But..."

"No buts, even. Though you do have a very nice one." She managed a small smile at that. "Now, get up and come hang out with me." He took her hands and tugged on them.

"But..." she allowed herself to be pulled out of the chair. "My work..."

"Shut up," he said affectionately.

Here's why I posted this

Customer Appreciation, 2011

It's been a crazy, fantastic year at QM & Co. I didn't keep up on my quarterly reports because I realized that no one other than myself was interested, and no one other than my sister and boyfriend were going to listen to me about them, but I'll give you a brief update: goals weren't just reached. They were smashed to pieces as we quickly moved past them and on to bigger and better things.

Best of all, this year has ended with three kinds of thousands. Starting last month, we've been grossing over $1000 a month; we have 1,000 likes on our facebook page; and yesterday we hit our 1,000th Etsy sale.

Quiet Mischief and Company is a full-blown business now. I earn more at this per month than I did at my first part-time job, and it can only get better. Every week we get a little more dedicated, a little more creative, and a little more known.

But of course we'd be nowhere without our customers. So I am happy to announce our Customer Appreciation Week!

From now until late Monday Jan. 2/early Tuesday Jan. 3 any purchase from our shop will have a free gift sent with it. Heart and rose rings will get one or two braided rings. Friendship bracelets will get a matching tiny bracelet set. Tiny bracelet sets will get an extra tiny bracelet or two. And the more you buy, the more gifts you will receive!

Thanks, everyone. You've made this year fantastic. Let's finish with a bang and start the new year running!

Quiet Mischief and Company Etsy shop

Need some ideas on what to purchase? Here are some of our best sellers:
Duct Tape Rose Ring Tutorial

Neon Rainbow Duct Tape Rose Ring

White Rainbow Plaid Friendship Bracelet

Rainbow of Tiny Friendship Bracelets (matches the rainbow plaid bracelet above)