RunningRoan

You are right! Search engines rank your site on your content and keywords as well as how many links to your site it finds on OTHER relevent sites. So exchanging links with other relevent sites can help get your site listed higher in search results. For example, if one of your customers put a link to your site on their website and you returned the favor, a search engine will find it. For website do-it-yourselfers (like me) you can Google "search engine optimization" or "SEO" and find lots of fairly simple things you can do to boost your site's search engine ranking. After you make those changes, be sure to resubmit your site to search engines. You can Google "submit website to search engines" to find out how. Keep in mind that it may take a while to see the benefit, just depends on how long it takes the various search engines to crawl back through your site.

I don't believe that posting on forums and mentioning your products (in a professional way when it's appropriate for a particular thread) is underhanded or controversial. And the practice is no secret. I've read many articles and case studies geared toward small specialty retailers that encourage them to become part of online communities to market their business. I'm part of several forums that attract the kind of folks that are my target market. Heck, I am my target market! I join in the conversation and only occasionally mention my products. I also buy ads (if available) on the forum sites. I have gained new customers and plenty of insight and ideas for new products by doing this. Although business owners must post responsibly. If ABC company bad-mouths XYZ company on a public forum, it tends to reflect poorly on ABC company. But if you're helpful, positive, and not using each post as a sales pitch, I have found that forum members appreciate your presence.

I used to be a die-hard eBayer...I started my biz on eBay! I was the only show in town offering a good selection of a specific line of tack on eBay. But as time went on, other sellers jumped on my bandwagon and flooded the market with this tack. There were too many sellers and not enough buyers. It turned into a price war and I wasn't going to give my inventory away so I focused my attention on getting a fully functional shopping cart system on my website. After implementing the shopping cart, my website sales were going good and it was nothing but crickets chirping in my eBay store, so I shut it down. I've been away from eBay for a couple years. Been keeping tabs on my former categories over there for the last few months. My competition has all moved on as well, but even so, I don't see that sales in that niche have recovered yet. I'm planning to use eBay to move old stock, but that's about it.

I am a mobile/online retailer who only dabbles in leatherwork, so my approach may be slightly different, but I think I can offer some helpful insight. This is going to be a book! When I started out, I used gridwall to build my booth. I found this was the best option for me, as I could change the layout of the booth as needed depending on the size of the space I had and the type and amount of inventory I had. I liked the option of getting things up off the tables and in plain sight of customers. There are lots of display accessories available for gridwall...pegs, hooks, bars, waterfalls, shelves, baskets, etc. That makes it easy to neatly display lots of different types of merchandise. My FAVORITE display option is a creation of my own: I needed an attractive and non-permanent way to display single-ear headstalls so they could be viewed from the side, where all the pretty tooling and hardware is easily visible. I got ahold of some decent caliper fir branches that were pretty straight, cut them into 2' long sections (as wide as one sheet of gridwall), de-barked them, sanded them down so they were smooth, and drilled a hole at each end that would accept a gridwall peg. In very little time, I had created an inexpensive, rustic-looking display bar on which to hang my single-ear headstalls. That was years ago and I still use the same bars now. When I first started, I didn't have a lot of inventory so the booth looked pretty sparse. I noticed a fair number of folks just glanced as they walked past. I know what they were thinking..."Doesn't look like there's much to choose from in there". As I built my inventory, I totally abandoned the "minimalist merchandising" method and went for the "stuff this booth full" method. I crammed in a lot of product, but still kept things organized and neatly displayed. No huge piles of stuff that customers had to dig through. Because of a wide selection of things, I had more people walking in and more people finding items they couldn't live without. To make the booth more welcoming and prevent theft, I set up the gridwall in a U-shape, allowing only one entrance/exit. I called it "crowd control". It also allowed room for people to mill around inside without feeling trapped. I put my checkout area where I had a clear view of the whole booth, usually near the entrance/exit. It's very important to greet each and every customer. I usually just do a simple "hi there" and leave them alone. I don't want to be a clingy used car salesman, but I want to acknowledge the customer. I've read many articles that say acknowledging customers helps prevent theft because they know you see them! These days, I sell out of my vendor trailer 99% of the time. The set up and tear down of the gridwall got to be too time/labor intensive. I travel alone so I needed something I could handle by myself. I have a 24' fully enclosed trailer with a ramp on the back. The inside of the trailer is setup as a store with gridwall hung on the walls to display my stuff. Most of the inventory stays on the walls while the trailer goes down the road, there are only a few things that I have to take down. The gridwall makes it easy to remerchandise to keep things looking fresh. It was an investment to buy the trailer and set it up, but I go alot and can make enough events to justify it. To keep track of sales, I enter all my inventory into Quickbooks. When I get merchandise in (or finish making something) I put a tag on it. I had custom hang tags printed with my store name and web address on the top part of the tags and a perforated section at the bottom where I could write the item number and price. When a customer buys a product, I just rip off the perforated section of the tag and put it into my cash box, jar, envelope, etc. The customer goes home with my store name and website on the product they bought...and I go home with the item number and price of each item I sold at the event. If you don't want to spend the money on custom tags, you can buy boxes of plain or generic tags with perforations. When you enter your sales into Quickbooks, you can check your inventory report to easily see what you have left. I originally did not accept credit cards and I KNOW it hurt my sales. I wasn't selling enough stuff to warrant a merchant account at my local bank. I already had a PayPal business account to process my eBay sales. I signed up for Virtual Terminal through PayPal so I could process credit cards from events and phone orders. Virtual Terminal is a page on the PayPal website were you manually type in credit card numbers, exp dates, amounts, etc to process sales. This service costs $30.00 per month plus a percentage of each sale. I did not have a laptop or a wireless card, so I used a 2-part sales book (with a simple address label with my business name and contact info stuck on the customer's copy) to write down the customer's name and what they bought, as well as their credit card info and phone number on my copy only. Then I took my copies home to process them after the event. It was a good solution at the time, but risky. I usually had to call a few customers after every event because I couldn't get their card to go through. Luckily, I never got burned. All my customers returned my calls and we got the issues resolved. But I knew it was only a matter of time! Finally this year, I upgraded to a credit card machine and an account at my local bank. It seemed expensive by comparison at first, but the fees per transaction are quite a bit lower than PayPal's fees. And the security of authorizing cards and capturing the money on the spot before the product leaves is definitely nice! Plus, I have a fancy credit card machine that looks very professional and helps customers feel secure. And no more hours spent plugging credit card numbers into PayPal after an event! Whew! Thanks and congratulations to all who read my novel!

I am a leatherwork newbie and I'm still doing VERY simple projects and having a great time! But I have run across a few questions... Right now, I'm working on making a noseband for a halter with hair on cowhide overlaid on the top and embellished with round metal spots and some conchos. Uhh...did I mention that I'm still only able to tackle VERY simple projects? Here comes the question: For whatever reason, I decided to apply the round metal spots to the cowhide only, then glue the cowhide to the latigo leather I'm using for the noseband. The prongs on the spots were not long enough to go through both the hair on cowhide AND the latigo. I was using the Craftool round spot setter tool and was able to punch the prongs of the spots through the cowhide without using a chisel. But I had a real problem with the hair on cowhide "warping" a bit from the metal spots. Hmmm...I went ahead and finished decorating with the spots, glued it to the latigo and placed some weight on top, hoping it'll flatten out as it dries overnight. We shall see... I'm not 100% sure that I'm using the spot setter tool correctly. I was laying the hair on cowhide over one of the holes in that piece of metal the kit comes with (technical jargon), centering the spot setting tool (loaded with a spot) over the hole and tapping the prongs of the spot through the cowhide and the prongs would pop through the cowhide un-bent. That part worked pretty good. Then to bend the prongs, I'd flip the piece of metal over to the side with the shallow round divets, put the prongs into the divet that corresponded with the size of the spot, centered the spot setting tool back over the spot, and gently tapped with the mallet until the prongs were bent. I was not getting real consistent results doing it this way. Am I using this tool correctly? I have seen pictures of people using what LOOKS like this Craftool spot setter tool WITHOUT the metal block thingy. And they were hammering the spots through a finished piece of work (i.e. multiple layers of leather) on a marble slab. I did not see a chisel anywhere near them, so I assumed they were not using one. How are they able to do this? I would really like to add spots to the finished piece and have the prongs go all the way through and crimp back nicely. Is a machine my only hope?

I was concerned about the 440R not being a walking foot machine. Is this why is wads up the lining? The price is definitely attractive but I want to get a machine that's going to do what I want! I'm also interested in doing some wallets and smaller items. Would a larger walking foot machine work for that as well as the tack?

I am currently setting rim set crystals and spots by hand. It works, but the results are not very consistent! What kinds of machines exist that can set these things?

Try www.conchos.com. They carry large conchos and lots of styles to choose from. Happy buying! Tim's got some neat stuff! His website is up now it's www.timcocorporation.com

Weaver Leather puts out an informative DVD that talks about types of leathers, costing, etc. Takes you on tours of tanneries too. Pretty interesting and it's FREE!! Just give Weaver a call and they'll send you one.

I currently use Quickbooks for my retail business. I like the program and would like to continue using it when I eventually start selling the leather items I make. I am a stickler for accurate accounting...I like to be able to look at my reports and see where I'm at profit and margin wise. I have made and sold a few small items and I have been receiving in my hardware (conchos and buckles) and selling them out individually when I sell an item. For example, when I sell a headstall I put together, my books show I sold the headstall and each concho and buckle individually. I can see where setting the books up this way may come back to bite me. I'm thinking I may need to come up with my own item numbers for the items I make. The numbers would reflect the amount/type of leather made and the cost of the hardware (i.e. base priced hardware versus sterling silver hardware). Am I totally overthinking this process? Does anyone else use Quickbooks for their leatherworking biz? Have any tips for keeping it all straight so you can tell if you're making money or not?

I am new to leatherworking and looking to purchase my first sewing machine for making tack and strap goods, no saddles. I'm interested in Ferdco's Pro 440R. Has anyone used one? What do you think of them? Thanks for the input!

Hi everyone! Been lurking for a while and figured I better start posting! I am currently a retailer (selling horse tack and other western items) on my website (www.runningroantack.com) and I set up shop at many events also. I have always wanted to get into making my own stuff and the need has become even more apparent in recent years. Many of my customers are looking for unique and different strap goods...something I can't always supply if I'm buying from the same sources as my competition. I have lots of design ideas, just need to learn how to make them come to life. I have very little leatherworking experience, so I am here to learn!! In trade for the leatherworking advice, I can provide input on web design, selling a trade shows and expos, etc. Great to meet everyone and I'm looking forward to learning! Heather