Arc and crate

The world is your oyster, they said. As mentioned briefly in my earlier post in Mar, I have been toying around the idea of setting up a earring blogshop. And I'm semi glad to say that this idea did not fade off with time and I did indeed, launched the website  last weekend, after much procrastination and preparation, I don't even know if it's adequate or not.

Having to sparkle off the idea was easy, choosing which earrings to bring in wasn't difficult either,  in fact I don't think it was strategic at all, it was solely reliant on what I predict should be appealing with a lil relation to the trends/color themes for the popular clothes blogshops. But what comes after the shortlisting of products took up a great deal of my time. From choosing the right (read: affordable and pretty ) packaging, to taking product photos, to eventually rolling out the website and currently the social media advertising are not so easy on the other hand. It forced me to make decisions, to dedicate time I could have otherwise spent relaxing on weekends, in order to get everything done. In fact,  I think I  have already procrastinated badly while I planned naively to get everything up and running in May when Lnr was in Denmark for 2 weeks work trip.

I just want to take this chance to reflect on some of the decision making process and difficulties I have faced in the past few months first before moving forward to comb out what's next, which I am lost at to be honest.

1. Packaging selection

It took me such a long time to finalize on the packaging with some options I shortlisted below. I wanted it to be sleek and appealing and invokes good feelings in consumers when they receive them. Despite that the fate of most packaging is to be chuck aside or in to the dustbin, I felt like there was a need to package my products to make it worth the price I set to sell. I wanted it to be customizable with my logo and stuffs but most options came with a minimum order of 1000pc, which was not something I was ready to take up because I only brought in bout 100 piece of earrings in my first batch. Subsequently I was really keen on the pastel pink porch but I also felt there was a need for the packaging to serve as a protective layer given that earrings are fragile and I don't want anyone to receive a broken pair. And also the porch was pretty pricey compare to other options, small scale biz can be tough because there is almost no economic of scale I could leverage on psk.

 Alas, eventually I managed to find a packaging that was pretty pocket friendly, and they are able to print my logo with min 200. pc order which wasn't that much. Woohoo! I am grateful that the printing turns out fine, was no color off or logo distorted. Except that there was a little sage when I ship them over because 2 out of the 3 parcels were left behind in the China warehouse, lucky me to be able to retrieve them back and top up the shipment fee eventually in my second batch of purchase. :') I don't know how people will perceive the packaging below but I think it's not too far off my initial expectation hehehe.

I ordered about 40 over designs with intense research and price comparison, of the 100pc of earrings that I purchase, I'm glad that there was just a few earrings that was in really poor conditions where the coat turned rusty. No much fuss made with these ones when I requested for new ones with the seller. Though in the long term, this can't be the way forward because I'm procuring these earrings from other sellers which isn't exactly cheap to begin with, and on top of the other costs like website maintenance, packaging and marketing costs, it doesn't leave me with much profit margin and hence unlikely to be sustainable. Although I hasn't have any concrete plans on ways  forward yet, like flying to china to get stocks from supplier? Ah Idk man.

2. Product photo-shoot

I have to admit that I totally underestimated the time and effort required for this segment. While I knew all along that my photography skills is of no better than any commoner on t he street, I thought that the mighty mini photography black box I bought off tb would been my saviour for the photoshoot. I knew very well from the beginning how much different a nice photo can affect the perception of the value of a product to people, and for the price I am aiming to set, I couldn't kope the ready images off the shops I got the earrings from for they are all over the place, with no unified theme in place.

But little did I know that the black box could not do wonders and all the photos I took turned out really really dim and dull when I transferred the photos onto my computer. It took me several tries to achieve the best I could by DSLR before taking crash course on photoshop by Lnr, to turn photos into what they are today on the website with several midnight oils burnt away. I remember budgeting $300 for ear modelling for the website but eventually I got thrifty and became the model myself, or so you may tell from the website HAHAHA. Taking the earlobe shots was more of a breeze and the natural light was on point that day, except that my ear started hurting after wearing so many earrings in a few hours. But at least there was zero photoshop needed for the post edits, which I am relieved both for the time saved and also I felt it's good that the photos can reflect the natural color of the earrings under natural light, as compared to the product photos which I had to do a  little touch up to the images.

3. Website/Online payment 

With the stocks and photos ready,  I managed to move on to the next phase - to set up the website. Thankfully technologies have brought a lot of convenience to our life and one of it was that I didn't have to code out my own website but there are much easier platforms which made website editing a lot more intuitive. Though I had some experience in setting up the website, touching base with online payment system was new and I was rather cautious and sceptical with the mechanism, but it was eventually all sort out yay! But I painfully learnt that there is a agent fee of 50cents incurred with every transaction sigh, which isn't a small proportion of my already thinned profit margin hahahahah Owell what to do. At least I have the platform up and running to receive moolah from since last weekend!  

By now I would like to have a special shout out to Lnr who was suddenly dragged into everything with no choices given. Who abruptly became the guinea pig for photoshoot, my part time unpaid photographer, photoshop teacher, my one and only stakeholder and full set up cost sponsor. Thank you for your unfailing support and encouragement from the very beginning into this with no guarantees or whatsoever, all because I have suggested doing it. For all the late nights you have stayed up with me figuring out photoshop tools, and sharing my joy when we got our first generic sales from a lady that we don't know ( which is by far, our only generic sales HAHAHA. )

May Arcandcrate go Huat and you will get some monetary returns from your investment and believe in me. But if not, your wifu will still be eternally grateful to your kindness and love and you will learn that wifu's happiness comes more rewarding than moolah in the bank hehehe.

With the website ongoing, I felt like the biggest challenge has yet to be addressed, that's it, how to drive the right traffic to the website and start making profits. I think there is a lot more to explore for online marketing and I have to increase my outreach (again, to the right target audience) to keep my website alive. Right, no more typing for now. Brb to crack my brain and work on social media marketing~