More Thoughts About Getting Exposure and Sales

A colleague of mine said in passing that she thought at lanyard would make a nice gift for her boss and that her boss liked purple. I'm going to take a couple purple designs into the office tomorrow and see if I can make a sale. Here's one I just finished with the boss in mind:

As I've mentioned before, people who see me wearing the lanyard are more likely to buy one. I know of a couple people who have bought them for gifts after seeing one on me they liked. I've considered the possibility that using a 'live' model would be helpful for online sales, but in reality the picture size you get online is too limiting.

Another suggestion is to try and sell them through our company store. I waver on that idea, as I'm a handcrafter, not a commercial manufacturer and I'm not sure that I want to get involved with the challenges of selling to a retail outlet. The unique value of my items is the fact that they're jewelry not a utilitarian item and my pricing is based on that premise.

I could use very inexpensive crow beads and make the lanyards very simple and sell them for $12 to $16, like many I've seen. But I have to make what I like, and I don't like that look - it's what got me into making my own lanyards in the first place. I purchased a couple lanyards at a crafts fair made from the larger crow beads with some fancier accent beads near the ends where the badge loop was attached. They were ok, but still really didn't look nearly nice enough with dressy clothes or business-style suits - they were fine for business casual, but I give enough presentations and go to conferences where I want to make an impression that business casual doesn't make. I may try to see if I can get some advertising in the program at one of those conferences some day.