Post by LCARS on Jun 12, 2011 21:08:38 GMT -5
My Gosh, it has been FAAAAAR too long since I have come here to visit with my old rock friends. My last post here was on Nov 2nd 2009.
Some of you may remember me from such threads as the famous "Rock In The Cache Box" exchange program. If you have been here less than two years you probably have never heard of it or me but I used to be one of the many respected rock gods here... or what ever "godlike" forum status of Mark's I made it to.
I apologize for my long absence, I promise it had nothing to do with anyone or anything on or to do with RTH. I missed all the wonderful people here and I wish I had never left. It was just a time in my life when I had to put the rocks and just about everything else on the side away while I focused on the more mundane but important aspects of living life for a while.
It would be great to chat with any of my old friends here that are still around and meet everyone else who's come along since I left.
You'd be hard pressed to find a better bunch of folks than on RTH! Anywhere else you go on the net these days seems to be filled with forum trolls and more BS than fact but here you get to experience what the internet and forums were really intended for, an open exchange and flow of ideas and knowledge that everyone benefits from. If RTH has maintained it's high class reputation for having great folks on it then I will probably make a point to start coming back regularly and maybe even getting actively involved in the RTH community again full time... well, maybe not full time but extended part time at least.
What has sparked my sudden and unexpected return to RTH you ask?!
Well, over the years I definitely have amassed a decent assortment and quantity of stuff I made/traded/bought for my own collection. With the onset of nicer weather and a spring cleaning dig around through my various piles of stuff I came across a lot of my rock goodies and that got me to thinking I should really get back into this, so here I am! ;D
The last two weekends I have taken a whole bunch of my finished work and surplus collection pieces to the local swap meet and set up a table with everything from rough stones/slabs and grab bins of tumbled stones to marvelous finished display pieces, jewelry and other stone crafts I have done. After all this time of making things for people or for my own interest I had never actually "set up shop" so to speak and tried to sell my stuff to the public. With only one 3.5'x7' table for the basic vendor rate there is no way I could put out everything I have even with a multi tier acrylic display case and stacking bins so I brought what I thought was a good selection of things that had a decent chance of attracting attention and selling in a flea market environment against all the cheap garbage and knock-off retailers around.
It was a great experience to get some feedback from people and see what items are the most interesting to most people and what reactions people had to the prices I set, keeping haggling in mind.
Overall I did not do too bad for sales, it was a little slow the first time because i got there late and had to take a spot way at the back so a lot of people never even made it down to my end but today I got there earlier and waited in line to get closer to the middle intersection (the hot spot). I did double the sales of last week and even made a couple business contacts from people who wanted custom pieces and one lady wanted me to make 140 gel wax candles for a wedding she's planning once she saw the quality of the ones I was selling. :drool:
Once people understood that I was not a junk vendor the pricing did not get any negative responses despite the odd browser making eyes and walking away when they expected me to give up a pendant that took me a couple hours to make for $5, yeah right.
My girlfriend runs the table with me so one of us can always leave to browse or get food or go to the bathroom without having to worry about who looks trustworthy enough to watch the table for a while.
She is also my sales promoter and very good at pushing the sales on the principal that every piece is made by me and is unique and also that items can be made to order. She had the idea of bringing my mounting station with me so I could make a keychain or something out of a stone someone picked from a bin right there at the table and they could walk away with it in the time it takes jewelers epoxy to set up and I have actually done that for three different people in the two days I've been there and they were all impressed by the fact they could pick the stone they liked and have it made into something right there on the spot.
Something I found to be quite effective at getting people to the table for a closer look was the "FREE ROCK" grab bin. I set up a tupperware bin with a decent assortment of the rocks that my GF & I collected off the local beaches and tumbled, most of it was used as filler stone in batches I was running but it still comes out with the same nice finish as the rest of the batch, they're just plainer looking than the fancy stones are. I set up a sign that said one free larger stone or small grab bag of pebbles per person who visits the table and that was enough to get people to stop walking. ;D
I found it particularly effective with the kids. You call them over and ask them if they would like to pick a free polished rock from the bin and the answer is yes like 95% of the time and the parents are never far behind so while the kids rifle through the beach rocks looking for their favorite one, mom comes over and looks at the pendants or gel wax candles while dad oggles the fossils or my small pile of refurbished electronics for sale on the side table. I sold a DVD player to a guy today while his wife was picking out a dyed agate geode. ;D
After a couple days of hocking my wares i'm starting to get a feel for what sells and what doesn't. Almost every single person who stopped at the table spent some time admiring the gel wax candles but at $15/ea or 2/$25 (for a 4"/400ml bowl), I have only sold one so far despite all the comments and questions I got about them.
I did get that inquiry to do up a bunch for a wedding but we'll see if that pans out or not. I'm not sure if she's ready to face the sticker shock of that part of her wedding planning budget now that i've had a chance to do the math.
My polished stone fridge magnets seem to be a pretty popular item, probably because they are cheap, look good and serve an actual function so people seem to buy them up at $2-4ea with a volume discount of $1 for 4. Most of the stones I make into magnets are stones that have a flatter side with a flaw on it but look fine on the other sides and some are failed attempts at shaping stones for jewelry that were aborted for whatever reason and tumbled out until they were passable for sale.
My fossil pieces have been slow to move so far but there has been plenty of questions about them and if I can get out for a collection trip some time this week I can bring back enough material to stock up one side of my table with finished pieces varying in size and price from $5-25. I just have to put in the time to make it happen and I should be able to offer something nice in anyone's price range. I have been toying with the idea of making business card holders out of the fossil slabs, I finished mine yesterday and used it on my table today.
Now that I got my feet wet a bit in the sales department I have an idea what to expect and what to work on. All the attention my work has been getting the last few days has really been getting me energized again to get back into stone crafting.
Anyone who knows me knows I used to love posting pics and I am thinking about setting up a FaceBook page to show off and promote my creations so I will be photographing a lot of my pieces and putting them up on a FB page of some sort at some time in the near future, as my (real) work dies down again temporarily over summer. :blush:
Once I have some pics of what i'm doing I'll be sure to share them with everyone here.
For now it's just nice to be back here on RTH.
I'll attempt to catch up with the 2yrs worth of forum activity I have missed in the next week or so and I'll try to post pics for everyone and see if anyone comes up with some good ideas I missed.
Here's to old friends, new friends, good friends, good times and good hounding!
- Rob -
Some of you may remember me from such threads as the famous "Rock In The Cache Box" exchange program. If you have been here less than two years you probably have never heard of it or me but I used to be one of the many respected rock gods here... or what ever "godlike" forum status of Mark's I made it to.
I apologize for my long absence, I promise it had nothing to do with anyone or anything on or to do with RTH. I missed all the wonderful people here and I wish I had never left. It was just a time in my life when I had to put the rocks and just about everything else on the side away while I focused on the more mundane but important aspects of living life for a while.
It would be great to chat with any of my old friends here that are still around and meet everyone else who's come along since I left.
You'd be hard pressed to find a better bunch of folks than on RTH! Anywhere else you go on the net these days seems to be filled with forum trolls and more BS than fact but here you get to experience what the internet and forums were really intended for, an open exchange and flow of ideas and knowledge that everyone benefits from. If RTH has maintained it's high class reputation for having great folks on it then I will probably make a point to start coming back regularly and maybe even getting actively involved in the RTH community again full time... well, maybe not full time but extended part time at least.
What has sparked my sudden and unexpected return to RTH you ask?!
Well, over the years I definitely have amassed a decent assortment and quantity of stuff I made/traded/bought for my own collection. With the onset of nicer weather and a spring cleaning dig around through my various piles of stuff I came across a lot of my rock goodies and that got me to thinking I should really get back into this, so here I am! ;D
The last two weekends I have taken a whole bunch of my finished work and surplus collection pieces to the local swap meet and set up a table with everything from rough stones/slabs and grab bins of tumbled stones to marvelous finished display pieces, jewelry and other stone crafts I have done. After all this time of making things for people or for my own interest I had never actually "set up shop" so to speak and tried to sell my stuff to the public. With only one 3.5'x7' table for the basic vendor rate there is no way I could put out everything I have even with a multi tier acrylic display case and stacking bins so I brought what I thought was a good selection of things that had a decent chance of attracting attention and selling in a flea market environment against all the cheap garbage and knock-off retailers around.
It was a great experience to get some feedback from people and see what items are the most interesting to most people and what reactions people had to the prices I set, keeping haggling in mind.
Overall I did not do too bad for sales, it was a little slow the first time because i got there late and had to take a spot way at the back so a lot of people never even made it down to my end but today I got there earlier and waited in line to get closer to the middle intersection (the hot spot). I did double the sales of last week and even made a couple business contacts from people who wanted custom pieces and one lady wanted me to make 140 gel wax candles for a wedding she's planning once she saw the quality of the ones I was selling. :drool:
Once people understood that I was not a junk vendor the pricing did not get any negative responses despite the odd browser making eyes and walking away when they expected me to give up a pendant that took me a couple hours to make for $5, yeah right.
My girlfriend runs the table with me so one of us can always leave to browse or get food or go to the bathroom without having to worry about who looks trustworthy enough to watch the table for a while.
She is also my sales promoter and very good at pushing the sales on the principal that every piece is made by me and is unique and also that items can be made to order. She had the idea of bringing my mounting station with me so I could make a keychain or something out of a stone someone picked from a bin right there at the table and they could walk away with it in the time it takes jewelers epoxy to set up and I have actually done that for three different people in the two days I've been there and they were all impressed by the fact they could pick the stone they liked and have it made into something right there on the spot.
Something I found to be quite effective at getting people to the table for a closer look was the "FREE ROCK" grab bin. I set up a tupperware bin with a decent assortment of the rocks that my GF & I collected off the local beaches and tumbled, most of it was used as filler stone in batches I was running but it still comes out with the same nice finish as the rest of the batch, they're just plainer looking than the fancy stones are. I set up a sign that said one free larger stone or small grab bag of pebbles per person who visits the table and that was enough to get people to stop walking. ;D
I found it particularly effective with the kids. You call them over and ask them if they would like to pick a free polished rock from the bin and the answer is yes like 95% of the time and the parents are never far behind so while the kids rifle through the beach rocks looking for their favorite one, mom comes over and looks at the pendants or gel wax candles while dad oggles the fossils or my small pile of refurbished electronics for sale on the side table. I sold a DVD player to a guy today while his wife was picking out a dyed agate geode. ;D
After a couple days of hocking my wares i'm starting to get a feel for what sells and what doesn't. Almost every single person who stopped at the table spent some time admiring the gel wax candles but at $15/ea or 2/$25 (for a 4"/400ml bowl), I have only sold one so far despite all the comments and questions I got about them.
I did get that inquiry to do up a bunch for a wedding but we'll see if that pans out or not. I'm not sure if she's ready to face the sticker shock of that part of her wedding planning budget now that i've had a chance to do the math.
My polished stone fridge magnets seem to be a pretty popular item, probably because they are cheap, look good and serve an actual function so people seem to buy them up at $2-4ea with a volume discount of $1 for 4. Most of the stones I make into magnets are stones that have a flatter side with a flaw on it but look fine on the other sides and some are failed attempts at shaping stones for jewelry that were aborted for whatever reason and tumbled out until they were passable for sale.
My fossil pieces have been slow to move so far but there has been plenty of questions about them and if I can get out for a collection trip some time this week I can bring back enough material to stock up one side of my table with finished pieces varying in size and price from $5-25. I just have to put in the time to make it happen and I should be able to offer something nice in anyone's price range. I have been toying with the idea of making business card holders out of the fossil slabs, I finished mine yesterday and used it on my table today.
Now that I got my feet wet a bit in the sales department I have an idea what to expect and what to work on. All the attention my work has been getting the last few days has really been getting me energized again to get back into stone crafting.
Anyone who knows me knows I used to love posting pics and I am thinking about setting up a FaceBook page to show off and promote my creations so I will be photographing a lot of my pieces and putting them up on a FB page of some sort at some time in the near future, as my (real) work dies down again temporarily over summer. :blush:
Once I have some pics of what i'm doing I'll be sure to share them with everyone here.
For now it's just nice to be back here on RTH.
I'll attempt to catch up with the 2yrs worth of forum activity I have missed in the next week or so and I'll try to post pics for everyone and see if anyone comes up with some good ideas I missed.
Here's to old friends, new friends, good friends, good times and good hounding!
- Rob -