Future Shop by Daniel Nissanoff

Because I've either become iPod obsessed or lazy or both, I have been reading less and listening to audiobooks more. I know it's generally best for me to actually READ a book, but since I started taking public transportation on too-crowded buses and/or walking to work, I haven't been able to find time to read (I used to take an empty train for half an hour each way). Hence the audiobook, and hence my starting to listen to Future Shop this morning. It's about the impending boom of internet auctions. I personally thought, probably because I'm mired in selling on Ebay already, that it was mainstream. Apparently it's not yet. This leads me to believe that we really should embrace the Ebay-style auction world for some of our sales, maybe for "clearance" items when we get to that point. I worry that our particular product won't sell well on Ebay, because it's such a specific item that people may not be searching for or know that they even need. But, it's good for me anyway to hear from this book what buying trends are dominating today. For now we're focusing on establishing our own functioning e-commerce site.

Gearing up for production

We just received our shipment of frames and got a ton of other supplies last week, so we're ready to start making our jewelery frames! There are actually three huge boxes under my desk. We have to set a schedule for our work so we can be sure to allocate time, probably weekly. Wish us luck!

Web site design

So, web design is pretty grueling, and I'm not even the one sweating over a hot Adobe Illustrator file! Kristen has been working hard and came up with a good design that we all generally like but will be tweaking for a while until we come up with the final design and actually get it up on the web! So yes, right now the link in the sidebar doesn't work because there's nothing there. Not to worry! It will be there soon, as will our famed (or soon-to-be-famed) jewelry frames!

Iconoculture

This website, iconoculture.com, could be a good resource for our market research. At this point we need to think outside our own heads for marketability (not that our ideas aren't totally awesome and the whole world won't want to buy them!).