It's all about the stockist

Along the road to where we are now we have realized a number of things:

Firstly, for Sumptuosity it is all about the stockist; we do sell a fair amount through the website and sales are building from the studio shop, but these don't compare to the income from our stockists...

We don't advertise in magazines, tried it for a short while and it didn't make any difference to sales; also we don't do press releases for Craft & Design magazine or Selvedge (or any comparable); generally it is other makers that read these texts, not people who are interested in you and your products...

We don't do craft fairs any more, we did for a year or so but when you're in a hall in whatever town you are so dependent on many things, the weather (not too nice, not too bad), time of year, other things around you; all these things you can't influence...

We concentrate solely on craft trade and trade fairs and our appearance at these fairs; leave the selling of your products to the experts in the craft galleries and gift shops up and down the high streets of Britain, streets which need all the help they can get right now.

Our stockists have become firm friends and many of the good ones have constantly reordered our products through the last three years. These are the people that are keeping (now) five hard-working people busy (and paid full-time) in the studios of Sumptuosity (in York city centre).

Remove the pain and the job gets done

I analyze the process of all tasks especially the tasks that tend to get left to the very last moment they can be done; usually this is because it is a painful task. If you find this is the case analyze the task, determine why it keeps getting left, remove the pain and the tasks get done.

We used to do all our silk cutting in a cellar, it is cold and damp down there, we were always running out of cut silk, so I moved the cutting table upstairs renewed the cutting mats and I replace the cutting blades every month. The roles of silk are bound with an elastic band both ends to keep them tidy and stop them from fraying.

Now we never run out of cut silk, silk preparation is now a pleasurable task.

I’ve also removed the pain from stockists ordering our products; I’ve created a customized web-based order form, password protected obviously.

The form allows the stockist to enter design quantities within each product and the product count and price, as well as the total order price updates automatically (using javascript) (top image). It takes (probably) 2 minutes to place an order online; we get an email with all the details and then let the stockist know when we aim to dispatch their order and confirm all the details (bottom image).

We mail them every time the order status changes: when the order goes WIP, when it is complete, when it is dispatched.

We now get ninety percent of our trade orders through the website.

Stop running in to the same brick wall

Why use such a title? Well, I am determined to learn from mistakes – mistakes are a good thing as long as they do not cripple you and you learn from them I find.

Increasing productivity is an ongoing project and one that there is less and less areas where we can now ‘trim the fat’; never the less, it has been a good week and one where a further change in process has yielded favourable results.

Last week I tried to group all the weeks order tasks (making of button brooches, making of bookmarks, making of lavender bags &c) together, but when it came to packing 10 or so orders on the Monday many things had been missed so Ruth spent practically the whole of Monday filling holes from the previous week – not good.

This week I divided the tasks in to orders comparable to the size of production I wished to achieve each day; but I always leave the lavender bag and notebook sleeve production for all the orders for Friday when Ruth and I have a day off; there is little freehand embroidery required for these tasks so now do not necessitate any input from Ruth. This new process has worked much better, we could see completed orders earlier in the week and these completed order trays were put to one-side; mentally it helped us all as we could physically see where we had come from and where we still had to go.

So seeing we have a problem and changing the process has helped tremendously; we have stopped running in to the same brick wall.

Other things we have changed include:-

• documenting an order on receipt rather than when it is to be dispatched, we now give every order an order number which corresponds to the invoice number, all the paperwork is completed up front;
• informing the stockist (by email) at each change of status of their order – when it is WIP, when it is dispatched &c. This means that the stockist spends less time chasing us.

Another proposal I am considering is to pre-empt orders from stockists who order the same (or very similar stock) very regularly. We can build stock of our button brooches and store them in boxes but it is quite difficult to do this with bookmarks, handbag mirrors &c. So pre-empting is going to be my next tool to improve productivity for our very regular stockists so when they order and state delivery asap, they will get it within a day or two.

This weeks productivity matched last week but I think that tomorrow (Monday) we will see the result of the benefit of the new processes when it comes to packing.

We gained two new stockists this week, the first being the Bessemer Gallery in Sheffield; they contacted me when I was still in Sweden (some months ago) asking for trade info, I replied immediately providing the login and password to the trade section of our website but heard nothing for a month (I always flag trade enquiry emails for a one month follow-up, in case the enquiry goes cold), I followed up and again heard nothing, so this week I thought I would give it one more go before I let it go completely; this time round I received an immediate reply and an order followed later that day. Polite persistence does sometime pay off, it seems.

The second new stockist is the Quilt Museum here in York; I contacted them last week asking if we could swap leaflets so they held leaflets for Sumptuosity and Sumptuosity held leaflets for them. The museum director agreed and suggested I contacted the commercial director, which I did; we met on Wednesday morning and Wednesday lunch we received a surprise order! Apparently, a record time in which a prospective Quilt Museum supplier being reviewed and approved! We are pleased. We have created some “I love quilting” & “I love patchwork” button brooches and handbag mirrors specifically for the museum.

I had to design a quarter page add for the Top Drawer exhibition catalogue this week, I spent a couple of hours on this and was extremely pleased with the result. First of all I collated all the information and looked at examples in a comparable catalogue; I was surprised at how BAD many of the advertisements I looked at are, filling every bit of space with text and image.

We have decided our brand image and we always stick with it, and I love negative space, it is so decadent. So now we have our colourway and I have decided our typeface to be ‘courier’ the basic form is so appealing.

This layout will follow-on to a brochure/catalogue too.

We have a post student placement starting this week – Alanna, I think she is with us for a couple of weeks. We have had student placements with us before (before I came into the business full-time) and it always hindered productivity; so, I am determined this will not happen this time around, Alanna will get a rounded overview of the business and will contribute in all areas. The one change this time around is that I will plan her duration with us as much as I plan the weekly production.

More insight to crafting a craft business next week