Make It

Do You Blog Your Business?

Modish Biz Tips has an article up today covering 7 reasons why you need to blog if you are a shop owner. Check it out here.

How Not to Use Twitter to Promote Your Business

On Twitter, you can use the hashtag (#) along with a word or phrase to make it easy for people to search for that phrase within Twitter. For example, over the past few weeks, news regarding the Iranian election has often been tweeted with the tag: #Mousavi. (Mousavi is the name of the candidate who many believe actually won the election.) This makes it easy to enter the phrase #Mousavi in the Twitter search and only turn up relevant results. It's a way to guarantee your Tweet will be seen by people looking for news on this specific subject. And, with interest in the Iran election running high, it's a way to guarantee your tweet will be seen by lots of people.

As business owners, we all want to raise awareness of our brand, but surely no company would be so tacky and tasteless as to write tweets promoting their store and include the #Mousavi tag so that it turns up under this heavily searched term. Right? Well unfortunately one UK-based furniture company did exactly that, exploiting the Iranians struggle for demorcracy in order to sell home accesories.

In some of the worst hashtag spam we’ve seen in a long time, European furniture maker Habitat has been caught spamming Twitter to increase signups to its customer database.

More specifically, the retailer was caught adding topics from the trending topics – from #iphone to #Mousavi – to the front of Tweets trying to get people to sign up to a customer database. One Tweet read: “#MOUSAVI Join the database for free to win a £1,000 gift card.” The cheap trick has led many Twitter users to ask: what does selling furniture have to do with the situation in Iran?

Read the full article at Mashable. It's the absolute wrong way to use Twitter and has tarnished the brand's reputation in my mind. Take note.

African Fabrics

So I've really been wanting to make some clothing lately but I just haven't made the time and cleared off a space on my messy worktable to do it. I've had some mildly succesful forays into making clothing and I think a simple shirt or dress is definitely doable (no buttons or zippers!). The other day I was overcome with the desire to sew with African printed fabrics. A quick Google search turned up The African Fabric Shop, where I found the two fabrics above. A Twitter exchange with Chelsea of Frolic turned up another site, Vlisco, where I found the samples below. The prices look reasonable but both sites are in Europe. Any recommendations for stateside shops?

Boxing Kitten and Duro Olowu are two fashion companies that have made these prints their signature.

Soaper, Blogger, Reporter

I've been neglecting the blog over the past week and a half, working on an article for a local online newspaper. I've mentioned before how I'm interested in doing some more writing. I pitched the paper a few ideas and they were interested in one so I've been working on the story and it's now online! http://annarborchronicle.com/2009/06/24/subterranean-start-ups/

Say Say Say

As a card carrying member of the MTV Generation and music video fanatic once upon a time, the loss of Michael Jackson is still too shocking to comprehend. I've spent hours on YouTube watching my old favorites and discovering some new-to-me ones. Here's one of my faves. I love the song and also love how silly and upbeat the video is.

Yellow and Khaki

I've been enjoying this color combination lately

1. Rifferaff
2. Up in the air somewhere
3. Carta, Inc.

Wren Handmade Wedding

Lovely handmade details at the wedding of Laura Normandin aka Wren Handmade. Images via Martha Stewart Weddings.



The cards used for the invitation suite are from Michigan artist Gwen Frostic.

Saturday

Top: Fabric purchased this morning for $.75 at the thrift store
Bottom: Some of our container garden out on the apartment porch.

Valid points about Etsy wrapped in inflammatory rhetoric

It's too bad this Slate/Double X article about Etsy was written in such an inflammatory manner (ahem, the title is "Etsy peddles a false feminist fantasy") because there are some legit points raised. Including the way the site exerts a downward pressure on prices, and how hard it is to really make a living in this way. Even for so-called "success stories."

Even the success stories don’t seem to be generating all that much income. Rikrak, one of the featured 50, boasts of having had more than 1,500 sales on Etsy since she opened her “store” in 2007. But her wares are mostly small-scale quilts: placemats, napkins, coasters, and the like. The last time I checked, her most expensive item was listed for $21. Many sell for as little as $4.50—meaning the available margins for profit are almost non-existent. Assuming, generously, that every one of these 1,500 sales was for $21, she’s earned just $31,500 in two years—or roughly $15,000 a year—and this is before time and materials and Etsy’s own cut. In her profile, Rikrak says she also sells to boutiques, and credits her presence on Etsy with helping to score some of these accounts. Still, it’s hard to see how, with margins this microscopic, anyone can generate much of a profit on the site.

Jezebel took issue with the tone of the article as well.

Not only does [the author] fail to address the sizable population for whom Etsy is a sideline rather than a get-rich-quick fantasy, but fails to acknowledge that it might be, not just a source of modest income for those affected by the recession, but a means of empowerment in a demoralizing market. In this sense, the modesty and unique handmade nature of the typical crafts (and price-points) on Etsy are uniquely well-suited to this economy. If one were so disposed, one could certainly choose to regard the site's popularity as empowering, and such objections as manufactured.

There's lots of commentary and debate on both articles, click the links above to read more.

This Will Make You Smile

There's definitely some kind of lesson to be learned here about marching to the beat of your own drum. (It gets good around the 1:12 mark)