146 - Department Store - Part 2

FYI my photo library happily repaired itself overnight. Bright as a button this morning. A big biscuit tin, full of collected buttons that gets heavier and heavier and heavier, and endlessly needs sorting. The kind that gets left when the person dies and sold on eBay or handed down to an arty relative. How do you bequeath of photo library? Create a photo book?

Which segues back around to the topic of print-on-demand. Apparently it's a rookie mistake to make a shit load of products and stack your digital shelves full to the rafters.

Side note - this approach does work for non-digital products. If the products are In Real Life, handmade from felt and mimic known brands. Respect to British artist Liz Sparrow for her epic work. I would love to see one in real life. Her felt stores have been getting bigger and bigger and the Americans love them.

I just want my obsessions to pay off like this. I want to pay a team of 5 people to hand sew woolly sushi for me. 31,000 products. It make me feel a lot better about my boutique department store.

I sought business advice offered from a random (although local) stranger on Facebook. He looked at my website and he was horrified. All he could say was "Why do you have so many products?"

Seriously you can even apply your designs to a cake stand using POD.

The POD Ninja guru on Facebook had been there, done that and figured out the Facebook Ads, audience profiling system. He said choose one single product. Like a throw for example. Choose one niche interest. His example was deer hunting. Slap a deer head trophy on the throw, find out what magazines and media interests deer hunters have, which areas they live in, what age group they are and target them with $1 test ads. That would translate to £1 test ads in the UK. You will soon be on your way to raking it in and if that fails you can coach other people to do it.

I gave it my best shot, but I just didn't know what kind of niche, people who like quirky art are in. I don't think they have Facebook accounts.

Design for a biscuit tin - my friend bought one and she does love it

Contrado products turned out to be somewhat hit and miss, and I realised I would have to visit their warehouse and actually check out all their samples before offering them for sale. The fabrics were fantastic. But a pair of shoes I ordered turned out to be very narrow and almost unwearable. A pair of gloves that looked elegant online were like washing up gloves in real life (I had to chuck them in the cleaning drawer).

Another obstacle was the price. Print-on-demand is very expensive because it is custom printed rather then printed by the thousands on a production line. They offer lovely handbags for example, but the base cost is around £200. 

It all seemed so perfect at the start and then the cracks appeared and around the time I was coming to the realisation it was a fatally flawed project, Contrado cancelled their integration programme. 

I haven't given up with Contrado: better the devil you know. Last year I printed some art works on fabric and they turned out very well. Also, one or two illustrations on metal displays with stands. My learning (well one of my learnings) is - people need to know and love (or at least mildly like) me and my work before they will be interested in products. 

Also, I still have all my designs and digital products on their system ready for the right moment. Which might still come. We'll see.