Monthly Archives: August 2012

To eBay or not to eBay? Or Etsy is the question…

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I’ve been running my online shop on eBay for a little while now. The good thing about eBay is that you have a lot of traffic. If you get the price, the description and the product right, people will find it and hopefully buy it.

The eBay auction side of things really helps to drive sales, and also helps to guide people into your shop. Also with a shop you can lay things out reasonably well with quite limited skills. You can also try to get people to add your shop as a favourite or sign up to your newsletter. At least you can let people know what’s new in your shop – that’s if you can get them to sign up!

eBay is great in that you get all the things you need to set up an online shop, all the payment side, all the reminders and they act as a ‘big brother’ to sort of disputes.

Feedback is good to help enhance your reputation as an online seller. 100% good feedback not only looks good, but also lets your customers know that your products are good and the delivery times and prices are good. The problem is that the feedback is more on the side of the buyer rather than the seller. If you had a poor customer (which if you’re on eBay, you will have from time to time) you can never give constructive feedback. Where as customers can give positive, neutral or negative feedback.

Aside from all these good things about eBay, there is a big elephant in the room. As a small seller it actually costs a lot. I find a large portion of any profit I make, is fed back to eBay, as shop costs, listing costs, and selling costs.

So, I’ve been investigating options.

This is where Etsy comes in. As I sell mainly vintage or handmade, Etsy actually fits the bill quite nicely for me.

I set up a new shop on Etsy really easily and I’ve listed some of my more premium stock. There’s no charges for an Etsy shop, unlike eBay. Also the listing costs seem cheaper, but I need to look at the financials on this over a couple of months. The listings last for longer too – 4 months as opposed to the eBay length of up to 30 days before renewal.

I quite like the ‘feel’ of Etsy. It’s more like a community and you can start to build up circles.

It’s early days, but I haven’t sold anything on Etsy yet. I have had a few people add some items or my shop as favourites. During the couple of weeks I’ve had an Etsy shop, I have been selling items on eBay, thought mainly from my auctions. But, like I said, the auctions do drive more sales.

Here are the two shops:
eBay – Quirky Purple eBay Online Shop
Etsy – Quirky Purple Etsy Online Shop

I’m going to try both out, side by side, for a couple of months to see which works best for me.

Has anyone else had experience of switching between these two? Which worked best for you an why?

Reworking, customising, fading and studding

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I do like to mooch around the garden centre looking for plants that are a bit sad and neglected, and usually in the bargain bucket. I like to buy them, build them up and pop them in the garden or allotment. Most of my garden is stocked with bargain rack plants – and my garden is blooming nicely thank you!

I tend to also like mooch around charity shops and look through the rails to look for odd little items that look a bit sad and neglected. I like to try and think what I can do with them to revive them and make someone want them again.

Well I’ve been working my was through my pile and seeing what I can do with them. I posted an article a little while ago about reworking an old shirt and I’ve been doing some similar things to some other shirts.

Below is what I’ve done with a few shirts – mainly cutting and studding:Reworked and customised shirts at Quirky Purple

Here’s some of the cut of jeans/shorts that I’ve been working on – these have been cut, bleached, and studded:Reworked and customised denim shorts at Quirky Purple

Here’s a few skirts that I’ve recently customised – these have been studded mainly:Reworked and customised skirts at Quirky Purple

It’s quite nice seeing what they actually become as I don’t always know exactly what I’m going to do, and it kind of evolves as I work with the garment.

I’m always on the look out to try new things to try so I’d be interested to hear of any new projects I could try!

These reworked, customised items are available in our Quirky Purple Online Shop – happy shopping!

Big, bright and bold 80s

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A little while ago I did a post about 80s colours – Sorbet, sherbet, candy cane – fashion that’s good enough to eat. That was more about the softer side of 80s colours. This week I’ve been posting up some vintage 80s clothes onto the Quirky Purple One Shop and they all seemed to be the bolder brighter 80s colours and it got me thinking.

As anyone who knows me or has read previous posts, you’ll know that I am a big fan of all things 60s. I properly discovered and became fanatical about the 60s in the late 70s. The 60s look was just starting to hit mainstream with films like Quadrophenia and then all the mod revival and Two Tone and ska bands suddenly hitting the charts.

This started a whole raft of 60s inspired clothes, colours and patterns in the High Street. Well, if you ignored the ra-ra skirts, leg warmers and hammer-pants…. The 60s and the 80s were both about big, bold and bright colours. Stripes and geometric patterns and of course big colour blocking was in – this didn’t have to just be the bright colours, but monochrome worked just as boldly with black and white contrast. That’s one of the keys here – contrast.

Anyway, as I was cropping the photos I’d taken of the dresses and playsuits it really struck me on how vivid some of this outfits are and the fantastic contrasts. Have a look at these:

Bright 80s coloursMore bright 80s coloursThey look fab don’t they? The other weird thing is that these are all original 80s vintage, but if you walk through the High Street you’ll see similar colors, patterns and styles. The great thing about wearing the originals though is that you are unlikely to walk into a room and see someone else wearing the same outfit!

Anyway, all the items pictured are either up for sale on our Quirky Purple Online Store or about to go up online.

Olympics, being British and Union Jacks!

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Have you been watching the Olympics?

I had to admit I was typically cynical Brit about the whole thing. Even when we had the Olympic torch coming through town I kind of thought I should go but wasn’t really that bothered. But I went along, the sun came out and there was a great atmosphere. It was a really excellent way of bringing the Olympics to all areas of the UK, without it being an exclusively ‘London thing’.

I’m not the biggest lover of sport but even I have been engrossed in watching the Olympics.I started just watching the odd bit where we had Brits in the finals and we stood a good chance of a medal. After a few days, I was watching all sorts of sports that I’d never even seen before.

Even the opening and closing ceremonies has had that quirky, distinctly British style to them.

I was in Spain last week, and I might add that I was still managing to keep up with the Olympics, and it was a little bit surreal. There were a lot of Union Jacks on clothes. Nope, I wasn’t in ‘British Benidorm’, I was in Alicante, and these weren’t all Brits wearing the Union Jacks. I’ve also seen the UK High Street creating all sorts of summer clothes based on Union Jack styling.

Has the Union Jack come back into fashion again? We all remember Gerri wearing the dress to the Brits and I certainly remember a lot of Union Jacks and targets on clothes in the late 70s and 80s. My mate’s boyfriend even had a Union Jack blazer, but then again we were in a mod club…
Anyway, it must have got me think and made me feel a bit patriotic so I decided to make a couple of new crochet designs for Kindle covers. I’ve got a Union Jack and a mod target. I think both look fab and fit most eReaders and 7 inch tablets (Samsung Galaxy etc) too, and can also be made to iPads and iPhones.

Union Jack and mod target Kindle covers

These are now available online in our shop.

There’s also a bunch of other designs too – a skull, zombie, robot, daisy, and a TARDIS. All can be Kindle, eReader, 7 inch tablet, mobile phone, iPad or iPhone covers. All are handmade which makes each one a little bit individual. If you would like something different or bespoke, please contact us with your request at https://quirkypurple.com/ask-us-to-source-and-item/

Quirky Purple logo Stock changes daily so check us out!
http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Quirky-Purple