The busiest place for us during this slow time has been Etsy.com, where we opened a new shop just a few months ago. We offer both vintage jewelry and handmade artisan jewelry at our Etsy shop, which you can find by clicking this link:
http://www.gementia13.etsy.com/
The handmade artisan jewelry is made by Gem, who would love to spend all her time on this aspect of the business, and while things are slow, she's getting her wish, for the most part, as we aren't doing much buying right now. Lately, she has been working on some "Heart of the Ocean" style pendants, faceting hearts out of some wonderful light blue Andara obsidian we acquired last year and hanging them from necklaces made of clear rock crystal beads. She jokingly refers to these as her "Heart of the Ocean Lite" necklaces. There was such a fervor over the J. Peterman Company reproduction we handled last year that we're confident Gem's "lite" version will do well. She should be unveiling the first of these within a couple weeks.
We've gained about a dozen new clients on Etsy since we opened, including one famous client (though we never drop names) who may be wearing an item or two of ours on TV sometime in the future, as she's become quite a regular at our Etsy store. We've had several sales at our main webstore as well - we're including the link below for your convenience, so you won't have to go back to our oldest posts to find it.
http://www.gementia13jewels.com/
The slowest locale in the land of Gementia has been the eBay store, Absolute Gementia, which doesn't surprise us too much. Owing to the drastic (and ill-advised) changes made by the current management of eBay, sales there have fallen considerably across the board. We've seen quite a number of our fellow Powersellers leave eBay in search of greener pastures. (Note to newcomers: We left our old Powerseller ID, gementia13, and switched to advanced.gementia when we opened our store, to start fresh without the worries and complications of Powerseller status, which far outweigh the benefits.) We've closed our stores on Atomic Mall and Bonanzle, as there just isn't enough traffic to these sites to make the upkeep worthwhile. We've delayed opening the store on Overstock.com for the same reason. It takes a lot of work to keep a store updated and stocked, and if the items aren't moving, the time is better spent elsewhere.
Tax week notwithstanding, we've seen signs of an economic upturn recently, with sales increasing steadily. We've gained some wonderful new clients and have had a very positive first quarter both on Etsy and at the main webstore, and the few eBay buyers we've had have given us resoundingly positive feedback. We look forward to an even better quarter this spring, once everyone has recovered from the April 15th stresses and scares. Wish us luck!
