Gothenburg Event

My next event has approached fast and I now only have one week left until the pre valentine’s day event in a shop in Gothenburg, Sweden's second largest city (it is actually nicknamed little London by the locals).
I know a lady there called Jane and she runs a shop called Jane's Place which sells all those things from the UK that you miss and just can't find in Sweden such as Walkers crisps, Monster Munch, Jaffa Cakes and real sausages. So every year I order my Christmas items from Jane including the crackers that you cannot bring over yourself (because of the explosive bit) and on Boxing Day we have our English Christmas with the Swedish side of the family.
On one occasion picking up sausages for a BBQ in the summer we were chatting to Jane and we talked about the possibility of doing something business wise together and it has ended up being one of her tasty Saturdays. This is where clients come along and taste selected items from Jane's pantry once a month to see wheat she has in stock and catch up. We thought it would be a good idea to take advantage of the clientele she already has and let them see something new in the store plus there is plenty of time left before Valentines so I can even take orders. Tomorrow I am off to hand out flyers in Gothenburg. I have 120 of them....I hope that is enough....and I hope they don't all end up on the floor making a mess or I will have to stop and pick them up again.
So mass marketing and spreading the word is this week’s target, oh along with making the mandatory pieces...which thankfully I started with last week. Hurrah. Here is a little peek at a new piece just for the Valentines do at Jane's Place.





So if you are in town or about or have an afternoon to spare come on over and see what we both have to offer.

Prioritising

Prioritising...it is so simple when given due thought however it can upset the whole logistical flow if you miss even one little (but important) thing.
I am not entirely sure how I thought I was prioritising my orders from my London party at first....maybe it was by who ordered first on the day or what I thought I was in the mood for but anyway what I had not done was look through my orders as a whole and see how much work each order was and how long it would take to do. When taking the orders I did a rough calculation but I did not sit down and work it through with all my material once I returned home. So inevitably I focus on one thing and forget all others for few days until.... I get an email asking how it's going with one piece (which is so very simple and quick to do that I really should have done it first), it is then I realise my error.
It's so funny, so friggin simple yet I don't do the things that I know I should....I guess I have no real discipline yet when I comes to orders and prioritising them as I have not done it before but I am very much a girl who only has to be told once (unless it's my parents!!). I promptly sat down and wrote a time each ticket would take to complete, measured all the materials I would need and then set about putting the work in to my diary which gave me a much better idea of realistic due dates for items. I then emailed those customers left who would be expecting a short turnaround time to let them know when to expect their items....and now I feel like I actually have a grip on things again.
Lesson for me here: When I get back from a big ordering event allow time to plan all the orders in to the diary (prioritise with small, easy ones first as those people will expect a shorter turnaround time) and then mail out the due dates to the customers. It is great for keeping the communication channels open too and that is very important when dealing with long distance customers.
So once the smaller orders are complete I will re-assess my time line and if I am still on target I will mail out the expected due dates to the people with slightly bigger pieces ordered and start the communication up with them again.

An update on the time management thing too, it works!!! It is not easy getting up every day at 6am but it really works and I am treating my silver more like a job now, with my daily schedule, and it seems to be going much smoother.

Items slowely getting up on the new website:

Marketing Ideas and a really good 'make your own calendar' tip

I am thinking a lot lately about marketing, target audiences and how to reach them. In Sweden it is a mixed bag, there are technology savvy people and there are the older generation who are not quite so and are just getting to grips with searching the internet.

Google sent me an ad the other day with money off for Ad words. It seems I would get a small advert on the right hand side of the page on a Google search result page but only pay if someone clicked on my website. I am skeptical. As a routine searcher myself I regularly click on those links to see what I get and where, rarely does that ever lead to a purchase which leaves me feeling that I may just end up paying for people to surf the net. There is strong argument that it may just get traffic to my site and that alone is good enough but I am not sooo sure and it's quite a risk.......but one I may have to take to drive new audiences to the site.

It is time to target some publications too. I have seen that magazines for mums are very popular when advertising jewellery here in Sweden and I have even approached my local orienteering club who advertise on the back of their quarterly pamphlet. There is a local newspaper that goes out once a week too and that does reach a LOT of local people as it is free but the adverts don’t come cheap.....time to design a good (but tiny) advert!

So that covers the internet and publications for now but I feel like I need to reach more people so I think I may get some small A5 leaflets printed and hit the streets of Alingsås and Gothenburg. I will also leave some at the tourist information in town and make sure I am registered on the company website for Alingsås.....every little bit helps.

I did see a really good way to promote a site too this week. A fellow Etsy shop owner, (check out his blog I am following on the left), is doing a giveaway competition but in order to be entered you have to follow his blog, add his blog to yours etc etc. It's all designed to get the word out there......I think I may have to follow in this wise mans footsteps soon....maybe a February give away.........WATCH THIS SPACE ;o)


One little tip I found this month too....a website where you can make your own Swedish or Finnish or Norwegian calendar:
http://kjell.haxx.se/kalender/
You can upload pictures for each month and insert dates for birthdays throughout the year which update the age of the person automatically every year if you put in the original date of birth and of course it has all the flag days, red days and name days in there, perfect!

New SEK based shop NOW OPEN

Finally I have a site where I can post items for sale, customers can see what I have previously sold and read up on Silver by K8 all in one place. There are even links to the right of the page to go to my blog and my Facebook page where I can advertise offers and events, huraaahhhh.

What about my current website then? Well I have decided to streamline and really I don't need all those pages so I will have my wonderful IT man (Henrik the husband) make the SEK based shop appear when anyone types www.silverbyk8.se or www.silverbyk8.com in to the address bar or searches from Google....at least that is the plan! For now it is a link that I have embedded here, on my FB page and on my current website.

So why did I do it?
The Etsy page was very American, whilst providing as much protection for both consumer and purchaser it also made a lot of admin for anyone just trying to buy an item (signing in to Etsy first then buying the item on Etsy and THEN buying it for real). It was actually confusing for a lot of people who don't use Etsy.....and that is most people in Sweden! So to simplify for customers and for my accounts, (no more USD conversions,)I found a much simpler alternative here in Sweden. Now customers can find the item they like, click on the buy now button and pay with a credit or debit card. No additional steps required (but if you find any let me know!!).

My new flower ring with a pop of colour from last week in the studio:



Some Christmas orders (completed and since christmas is over I can now publish them!)