Schoolhouse Craft Wrap-up

Towards the end of September, I attended two of three days at the Schoolhouse Craft conference here in Seattle. It was organized by some of the best & brightest craft businesspeople in the area, as a grassroots way for the crafty community to network with and educate one another. To scan the collective wisdom that attendees tweeted during those 3 days, search the hashtag #schoolhousecraft.

First I should commend the organizers for putting together a truly wonderful and professional event that was very well organized and had lots of lovely little touches to make every aspect of it special – including the official conference bag in my photo at the top of this post. The venue, Phinney Neighborhood Center, had an ideal blend of classrooms and a larger lunchroom/auditorium for mingling.

One of the cool opportunities I had was to have our shop reviewed by one of Etsy’s Community managers, HeyMichelle. Her insights and suggestions were really valuable. One of the changes we’ll be making based on her input is photographing and creating a new Etsy listing for our “regular” bulk order (8 dozen lollipops for the price of 7 dozen). Right now our only large quantity listing is combined with our customized label service. Making it easier for people to order a simple mix-and-match bulk order makes a lot of sense!

Thanks to the excellent Blogging 101 panel, we’re now reading several new-to-us blogs including http://www.fiberfarm.com/ and http://blog.alittlemorelikethis.com/.

There were loads of useful insights in the Connecting With Your Customers panel; too many to list. Here’s just a smattering of paraphrases from my notes (hopefully accurate ones):

As a new business owner, you may think you have to say yes to everything, but it’s more important to think about your values and stick to them – Jennifer Shea, owner of Trophy Cupcakes 

I reward the loyal person by offering the best of what I have, and trust that they will talk me up in places I might not have been able to reach – Kari Chapin, author of The Handmade Marketplace 

I try to strike a balance between what people have told us they’re looking for and what *I* want to do and what is inspiring to me – Rebecca Pearcy, owner of Queen Bee Creations 

Daily someone has a suggestion for a new [design], and they all would be cool, but… it’s not always possible to address them all. Things that were repeated requests across customers do wind up being good sellers when we do them. – Ryan and Lucy Berkley, owners of Berkley Illustration 

Oh, and I was honored to be a panelist on Jessie Oleson (aka Cakespy)’s Guerilla Marketing panel. I hope that the attendees gained some useful tips from us, and personally I was really happy to meet Erica McGillivray, the marketing director and president of GeekGirlCon.

So, YAY for the amazing crafty community! Can’t wait till next year!