Well it's time for my annual blog post! I always was a terrible diary keeper, but I have missed blogging a little recently so you never know I might fire it up again...
March already and I still feel like the year is just getting started.
You may see that my website is looking a little static - I suspended my shopify store this time last year to concentrate on my ebay store and it really paid off - I managed to almost double my takings through the course of the year, But as with all things ebay as soon as you think you've cracked it, the algorithm side swipes and then you're back to square one with a massive downturn. I'm not sure if it's reflective of the current economic downturn, or more of a reflection of eBay's dwindling customer base / increased competition. I certainly want to expand my Depop store but listing there always falls down on my to-do list. I'd also hoped to get my handmade range on etsy but that's so far down the list it's laughable. I've paused the creating side of my business for now.
Sometimes you just have to realise your own limitations in life! With my old business M&Yu I worked 24/7 but Kitten VIntage comes in third in my list of priorites with parenting and my other part-time work higher on the list. The reality is I only have a couple of hours a day that I can dedicate to Kitten Vintage so I have to make that limited time count.
I've spent some time working out what to do with this store and whether to invest some time into creating a new wordpress site but realistically it will take too much time and money to make it pay. It's always such a tricky thing selling vintage - everything is individual and it's very labour intensive to get a basic site stocked with enough product.
But I am going to spend a bit of time investigating is my square website. Every square merchant gets a dedicated website for free and my plan is to utilise this domain as an online portal and feature / link products in some way for small collections. I've been enjoying curating some small collections for my instagram page so this will be my starting point this year - watch this space!
2025 Update