Left brain details support right brain creations
If you are the creative type, you will love what you can do with wires,
hooks, knots, tiger tail, crimp beads and crystals. You may get lost in your work and
forget to eat, do the laundry or pick up the kids from school.
No matter how much you might get “in the zone”, you cannot afford to forget two vitals
ingredients to your home based jewelry business success:
1. You can’t make product without inventory! Don.t wait until it.s 1:30 in the
morning and you are trying to finalize an order you must ship to one of your key
retailers first thing in the morning, to discover you are 6 stones short to complete
6 necklaces!
2. You can’t afford to forget one unique design! Get ready for the „knock off
parties” that will be held in your honor. Other designers that lack originality will
simply check out your work, and go home and copy, sometimes to the last knot,
and sell it before you can say, “dagnabbit”!
Your inspirations are your art and your livelihood. You need to preserve the
ideas you receive.
Personally, I find the details difficult and they often frustrate me when I want to stay with
my ideas and play. Any tools that can help are always appreciated.
Here, there and everywhere!
I find that my „inspired ideas” tend to arrive in my local brain station at the most unusual
times. Riding my bicycle, taking a shower, driving downtown, cleaning out the
refrigerator, and even upon waking from a cozy late afternoon catnap! Once I quit trying,
things seem to fall in place in my consciousness with ease. So how do I capture the
ideas?
Here are some tricks I have used over the years:
1. Notepad by the bed with a pen handy
2. Dictaphone in the car
3. Napkins in the glove compartment in case Dictaphone battery is dead and I need
something to write on
4. A pen and my palm (no not palm pilot, palm as in hand!)
5. I have been known to use lipstick when necessary
6. Keywords that are meant to trigger the entire idea later… (not always effective
and can result in extreme exasperation with self!)
It can be very helpful to perform brainstorming idea sessions when you are sitting at the
table with the materials and have a pen and paper handy. If you are good at scheduled
creativity, which some people are, this is a great way to insure you capture the best
ideas.
Bead Manager Pro has some great features for idea management. Once you have
entered the items you need to make the piece, and it totals your inventory (we will look at
that in a minute), you can then add a description of the design and even a photo to
remind you. So as soon as you get a chance to try out one of your napkin or hand palm
scribbles on some beads or wire, you can enter the details in the software and you are
set.
One of the best features of Bead Manager Pro is the inventory control. As I mentioned
previously, it can be very disheartening to discover at 2 am that you are short a few
stones or beads or 3 feet of wire. With BMP, you can enter what you purchase
wholesale, and each design you make will automatically deduct the materials from you
inventory. You can set alerts to warn you when you are down to levels of 50 or 100 or
10 – whatever you choose.
The Alerts summary page will show you exactly what Alerts you have in your inventory
for parts & pieces. You can also set alerts for special occasions to remind you of
customer.s special dates (a great way to keep track of when they might be in the market
for a new piece of jewelry)
It.s also so simple to actually get to the part that is in alarm. Just click on the active alert
and you will instantly go to the detailed section of the part, piece or customer alarm so
you can see instantly what.s going on in your inventory.
Does your picture paint a thousand words?
There is so much to do to get your business off and running. Our next chapter outlines
the best tips on photographing your jewelry to sell. Can you imagine working this hard to
build an elegant product and successful business, only to lose valuable sales because
the picture did not say 1000 words? Ouch!