all right so it is what is it today it's
7th of november so i'm a little bit late
in doing this video so this one's mostly
going to be about the first sales last
month in october
just some figures about
revenues and expenses and also a few
things on
what went well and what could have been
improved and i guess things i will
change for the next
sales and um a few little details on
kilns which i've complained about
for i guess since the start of
everything
but it's i guess
it's been especially bad because of the
lockdowns and things here i mean
everything's kind of going back to
normal so it might be okay i'll give it
some time but there are plans to
basically get a key on and work on a few
other things and that includes a
potential new business
which will be most likely a shared
studio with a retail space which i also
get into so it's going to be a bit of a
long one today
uh
yeah so you might want to make a coffee
and just come back and there's also not
going to be any like visual
presentation in terms of like
items and work in progress and stuff
because i haven't been making that much
in the last
i guess since the last sales i was busy
packaging things and then
a few wholesale orders and things like
that but
there's not much to show
so feel free to just do this as like a
podcast really
so yeah first let's go into
i'm just looking at my figures all right
so just a quick i guess
debriefing on the sales i'm so basically
eight orders plus one wholesale
uh for the eight orders there was 11
units sold so most people bought one
item uh i think there's two orders with
two
and there's 15 units sold for the
wholesale order so it's 15 plate so that
total to a thousand and 39 dollars in
revenue
which is not bad i think that's a good
starting point and considering
how small the audience is right now
i think the fact that there were sales
is a good thing and i think that gives
me a good confident boost i mean if if
there was no sales on the
shop
i would be pretty devastated i'll keep
going obviously but it would have been a
bit of a i guess
discouraging kind of moment but
this is a good amount where it's not too
much where i'm like okay i'm gonna do
amazing and kind of have that
expectation into the next one because
the first one is it's tricky
you've got a lot of friends and family
who'll happily support you on the first
one
but i think those sales don't really
come back as often as i guess regular
customer if that makes sense so anyway
um and then in terms of expense so like
a grand a grant seems like a decent
amount and most people will be like yeah
that's you know a fair amount of money
but let's look at the expense in terms
of how much it costs to get to that
point
uh so
material is a tricky one just because
it's hard to estimate exactly how much
clay how much glazes i've used
but i would say
maybe 30 40 dollars
uh for the payment system so i use
stripe through squarespace and they take
i think it's 1.6
plus thirty cents per transaction uh so
it came to about twenty three dollars
and packaging came
to about thirty dollars and that's an
estimate again so if you've seen my
packaging video um i think the
conclusion was it's about 350 per
package in i guess
average
um so it times that by eight it gives me
about 28.
this doesn't include the wholesale order
because i haven't packaged that yet but
i'm going to deliver that myself so i
won't have to use as many packaging
material because you know
shipping is a big one so shipping i want
to get into a little bit more shipping
cost me 196 dollars
which the idea was customer would most
likely pay for that because it comes
from each other there's a shipping fee
calculator based on the weight
but what happened was even though the
weight was correct i thought packaging
weight would be okay in terms of like
it's not going to boost it up that much
but a lot of time what happens is a
piece might be exactly
a kilo or like 500 grams and the
shipping cost is calculated by kind of
tears so you'll go from zero to 250 gram
250 gram to 500 500 to a kilo a kilo to
two etc
so when you just go above 500 grand for
example the cost goes up quite a bit
relatively speaking so it goes from like
nine dollars to
14 12 or 13 ish so often the weight of
the item was correct and the order was
calculated based on that weight
but because packaging the boxes two
boxes plus the packaging adds about 300
gram to 500 grams depending on if it's a
small box with a big box and often that
boosts it to the next tier which means
there's an extra four or five dollars
unaccounted for while it's good to
have the customer paying for all that
shipping fee you also don't want it to
be that big so kind of
a balance would be incorporating some of
that shipping cost into the price of the
pieces
and still charge for a smaller shipping
fee so
people aren't just getting free shipping
and ordering 20 items separately so
they'll be a bit more considerate with
their order maybe get a few more items
at once instead of spreading it out and
that means less packaging for me and
less shipping cost for me but in the end
i think what i charge for shipping fee
was about 150 dollars so that's about 40
different i think it was a little bit
more than that i can't remember exactly
but it mostly came from the two overseas
order because bumping up one tier in the
overseas all the men about ten dollars
or fifteen dollars so that's something
to keep in mind for the next sales in
terms of how i approach the shipping
kind of fee and if i need to bump my
individual prices up just a touch maybe
like two three dollars just to kind of
account for that difference but yeah
overall it's not too bad and then i
guess web hosting i'm counting as a
sales expense because i need it for all
the payment system i need it for the
inventory system so i'm just including
this to give a more overall look into
the whole thing so the total expense for
october in terms of the sales and loans
this doesn't include things like rent
and all that that's 321 which gave me a
net profit of 718
australian
um again not a bad amount not gonna make
a living on it obviously but i think
it's a really good start i think it's uh
it gives me room to grow and it gives me
a little bit of confidence so with
figures out of the way let's go into
more everything went well everything
went smoothly the launch was good uh a
decent amount of interest through
i think mostly instagram so it's it's a
lot of instagram and kind of marketing
or promotion to
like stories and things like that also
like friends of friends and things like
that so that out of the eight orders
five or six were people that we know and
then there were two to three that came
from complete those two from complete
strangers as in like people i haven't
interacted with before so they might
follow me on instagram or on youtube but
i don't i haven't had like a
relationship with them um there are a
couple of others from other people who
i've met on instagram mostly other
potters message and we've had chats
before so it's more for i guess support
kind of sales i see it that way i think
all the sales happen in within the first
four to eight hours of the launch which
makes a lot of sense um and i looked at
my analytics even though there were
people going to the website after that
and there was a decent amount of traffic
there wasn't many interest in the sale
and that could be for two reasons um one
most of the
larger items were sold out pretty much
right away and what's left were smaller
functional wear like cups and a couple
of plates it's mostly cups and maybe
bowls yeah cups and bowls and they're
quite small so things like this and some
rice bowls which the rice bowl didn't
sell at all um which i was kind of
surprised because that was like my
favorite thing and i think i was very
biased towards it because it was the
first things i made in the set that kind
of came out right so that was nine of
them so i thought you know that might be
something people would buy two or three
off at the same time turns out people
were more interested in the bigger items
so the fastest decorative items the
large bowls what happened is people are
more interested in feature pieces it it
makes sense to buy one fast or i guess
one sculptural piece just to put on the
shelf as a decorative because with
plates and bowls and functional wares in
the kitchen i guess most people would
want the matching set and you want at
least two and with handmade stuff the
prices adds up quite quickly for example
if i sell a bowl for thirty dollars four
of them that's 120 and that i guess
could seem like a lot for functional
wear where home decorative the break
point for that pricing is a lot higher
like sixty seven dollars for an item
doesn't seem as expensive even though
you're only getting one thing so i think
my focus on the next i would say two
three months would be larger items and
decoratives obviously i still have stock
left over from the last sale so i'm
gonna keep that on the shop so at least
there's some smaller things for sale but
yeah anything that i'm making from now
on will be on the medium to larger scale
just to see how that goes and
if i make less sales but a higher
average price point i think that's not a
bad thing um so in terms of packaging my
packaging system worked quite well and
if you haven't seen the packaging video
feel free to check that out just in
terms of what i use in more sustainable
packaging everything's recyclable
without really compromising on the
protection of the item so everything
went according to plan the packaging
didn't take too long the only thing i
would change is i was wrapping things up
one at a time and i would second-guess
myself in terms of if i got the right
shipping label for the right box the
next time what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna
keep everything open until the shipping
label goes on it then i'll seal it
because that way i can be 100 sure that
that is the right order i mean in the
end i think everything got
sent correctly i haven't got any
feedback in terms of things weren't
going missing or any damages or any i
guess shipping mix-ups uh the two us
orders are still on the way which i'm a
little bit worried about but that was
always going to be the case especially
now with the way the postal system is in
the u.s so we'll give it a bit more time
and see how that goes hopefully they get
there soon um i'm keeping an eye on the
tracking not having a kiln has always
been an issue before i started all this
i thought that's something i could work
around and if it means it's a little bit
slow it's okay but it's getting to the
point where not having killed just slows
things down way too much basically it
adds about two weeks of lead time for
each order if i was making things do all
that and that means doing a monthly
sales is actually really tricky without
a kiln because i have to make everything
on the first week after the sale let
them dry to bone dry and then maybe drop
it off on week two midway and if i'm
lucky i can pick up the best firework a
week after and then that gives me
another week and a half to do glaze
firing so that only works if everything
worked perfectly if there's any delay
during any of the firing basically i'll
miss the deadline if i'm doing a monthly
sale so that's going to be tricky i
think at this stage i might push it into
more of a
every two months so the original idea
was to have the excels on the 15th of
november but if i stick to that that
line i won't have that many pieces to
sell i think i'll get about 15 to 20
pieces at most and i don't think that's
enough most of the sales happen within
the first two three days i want it to be
a bit more substantial that way with the
momentum i can sell a little bit more i
think that's going to be a better way
than spreading things out too much so
just because christmas is coming up i
want to do my next sales on the first of
december and then i'll give a bit of
time for shipping to get to the
customers before christmas but after
that in the foreseeable future i think
i'll do
a sale every two months unless i get my
own kiln and that's
that's a big like i think that's gonna
happen that's just depending on when so
that's basically i guess in terms of
debriefing that's basically it for the
sales um overall it was a good
experience everyone's been happy i've
got a lot of feedback from customers in
terms of the
presentation and the packaging and the
item itself which is really great to
hear i haven't heard anything bad yet so
fingers crossed everything went well
you