The fall season brings lots of shows to any jewelry maker, I have a few that I am scheduled to do and I’m awaiting confirmation of some others. This means pricing new work for sale.
Kiddies, I have a word of advice for you: Always, and I mean ALWAYS input newly purchased materials into some sort of inventory control system. This may seem like a “no duh” piece of advice but I can tell you from experience that not doing this will result in frustration down the road.
I just spent the better part of my Sunday pricing a few pieces very inefficiently due to having to page through several lists of materials that I jotted down on paper when new materials were bought. It wasn’t until a little while ago that I started entering materials into a spreadsheet onto my Google Docs. You don’t need a fancy and costly program for inventory control, you can use any spreadsheet program. I like spreadsheet because you can have one page for each type of material. I have a page for pearls, another page for loose stones, a page for clasps, etc., etc., etc. I like Google Docs because you can access your spreadsheet from any computer that has internet access.
I wish that I had entered all materials, the minute I got home with them, into a spreadsheet as one of the pieces I was pricing yesterday (the Morning Glory Necklace pictured in my previous post) took over an hour to price! This is a lesson to me that as I go along pricing my work I will add any material that I am looking up retroactively to my spreadsheet.
For a list of upcoming events that I will be showing at please go to my website.