Internet store to live another day

First of all, wouldn't you know that we got an order on the TIAS site yesterday??!! Massive panic as we searched through multiple storage bins to find the item that was purchased - I knew this would happen! After months of packing and unpacking for show after show, never being able to pack a bin the same way twice, it's become complete chaos to try to find anything that we've listed on the website that is also something that we take to the shows.

Which is our complete internet store inventory.

And now approaches the end of the TIAS store, and an opportunity to start fresh someplace else. We are going to set up shop with eCrater, a free web store builder and a free online marketplace. With this new store will be different merchandise, however. I have seen (and did see, the entire time) the sheer folly of listing the same inventory in the old store that we were taking to the live shows. Keeping track of items sold was never a problem - I keep very detailed records - but that nightmare of actually putting my hands on something that's been carefully wrapped and packed away in a box that's buried 3 deep and 2 back in the spare room - well, that dream was realized and it wasn't pretty! The air was blue with the language coming out of my mouth, oh my!

And we never did set up our shipping rates properly at TIAS, which meant that we hadn't covered our expenses properly. So this time we'll be doing our homework more diligently, and also, having to weigh each item as we put it into the new store. The shipping rates will correspond to the postal service's Priority Mail rates, which is how we prefer to send items out.

My head is spinning at the work ahead of us. I've got the postal scale already, as I'd bought one months ago, then not used it when setting up shop at TIAS. Hopefully, this will dovetail nicely with the end of the live show season here. As we slow down with the shows, we'll be ramping up the new internet store.