Sincerely, Jackie Shop Changes

One of the most important parts of having a successful business is figuring out how, and where, you'd like to spend the majority of your time. When I started my business, I wanted to spend the majority of my time growing an Etsy shop and provide people with beautiful stationery for their life events. Birth announcements, moving announcements, and house warming invitations quickly became the primary design work I was doing. However, as I continue to follow my passion and purpose, I am finding that I need to make some difficult decisions about the types of products I offer, how I offer them, and how much time I spend on them.

For the future, I envision myself spending the majority of my time working one-on-one with my brides (and grooms) to create bespoke wedding invitations. However, right now I find myself spending a huge amount of time trying to keep up with Etsy shop orders. The amount of time I spend drafting, proofing, prepping, printing, packaging and shipping, each and every order, is eating into time I would rather be spending focusing on wedding design.

While it's really awesome to watch my shop sales go up and up and up, I felt the need to really sit back and figure out if those increasing shop sales meant success to me. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the shop sales going up had very little to do with my feeling of success. I feel successful when I am blogging regularly, meeting with clients, networking within the wedding industry, and ultimately, creating amazingly beautiful designs. With all of that in mind, I have the gut wrenching feeling that my Etsy shop is only getting in the way of me being able to spend more time on the things I really love.

So, what does that mean for the Sincerely, Jackie Etsy shop?

First off, it means that I will be looking at each and every design that I have available and assessing which need to stay, and which need to go. After figuring out what stays and what goes, I'm going to take another look at the designs and figure out which ones make me happy to create, and which ones do not. The designs that I love to personally make are going to stay in the Etsy shop and have their pricing evaluated (prices may go up), and the items that I do not love to personally make will be moved to another store front - most likely Zazzle - where customers can customize their orders and Zazzle will fill them.

Caitlin and I are working hard to bring the Sincerely, Jackie Zazzle store to life by September 1st, and I'll post about it as soon as it's doors are open. I'm excited about moving to Zazzle for some things, because it means I'll be able to expand my offerings and move into other products that I never would have had the time to offer otherwise (think iPhone cases, tote bags, note books, etc). I'm super excited about this shift, and I'm confident that it will allow me to continue to provide clients with the designs they love, while also freeing me up to focus on some of the one-on-one custom projects that I dearly love.

Over the next few weeks you may notice some changes to the Etsy shop - so if there is something that you've been on the fence about purchasing, I would suggest you go ahead and purchase it soon. Prices will be increasing, and some items will be removed all together, so head on over and get your hands on whatever you've been swooning over!

Cheers to making hard choices and improving the way things get done!

Sincerely,