Selling what you believe in and are proud of

I have thought about this alot.  Why making beads and selling beads has worked for me…How I made it to where I am in less than six years.  I mean, really…think about it…I made myself a career in less than a year.  Within a year people in the jewelry/bead world, many anyway knew my seller name “koregon” and that I was a eBay power seller.  By the way  “koregon” is a blend of my first name and where I live.  Kaye-Oregon…shortened to koregon…and pronounced like K and the word Oregon blended as one (kayeorygun).  The amt of income I have brought in during that six years tells me my eBay and business practices where a success.  I only believe this happened for me because of my love for the product I make.

Actually its kinda funny.  Locally we know of two people who took classes to learn to do what we do because of us.  They came by and saw us making beads, and knew approx how much money/income we brought in from this at home business and thought they could do it to.  So, they hook up with my teacher and take a class, buy the stuff and make an at home biz and have a plan to have the added income to.   But It never really panned out for either like it did for Dan and I.  Do you want to know why? They learned and did it for the wrong reasons.  Sure, anyone can probably learn to melt glass into a bead shape.  But can just anyone learn color, style and know what a jewelry maker want’s?   Maybe, but then maybe not.   To know how a buyer of beads thinks while shopping is an important part of eBay and selling your beads.  I was a buyer of beads on eBay before I sold beads….so I knew my thinking process, my wants, my wishes when shopping.  Also does just anyone have plain ole business sense? The kind needed to market your own product?….I was raised by self-employed parents, so I had a big idea of what it takes to succeed, sure you can learn that….but for some its more natural and you don’t even have to be trained so much to realize all the hard work and disapline it will take.  To be driven, the want to make beads and keep going week after week is only part a business decission for me, I found that out when trying to take a break.  I still wanted to torch….it was the selling part that was getting to me.  The want to have a job at home is another driving force.  Trying to take a break didn’t work well, I broke down and posted four new auctions on eBay within ten days because the business side of me said, “hey, you can’t just not have anything on eBay, we need something!” 

I would say I do what I do because I want to create beads and feelings and expressions in glass, artsty object’s that people can wear, and because “I LOVE BEADS” and wearing them myself.   I started out making jewelry first, then learned to make beads for myself and not as a business plan…I wanted my “own” beads in the jewelry I created and designed…my thought’s and idea’s in beads brought to life for myself to use where my sole purpose of taking my beginning lampwork class.   All my likes in color and style, my vision of what I want to wear was so awesome to be able to do and bring to life.  The color, shapes, styles, feel of them….vacation, earthy, beachy, blingy….I create what I like…and thats what makes my business work…I believe in what I do…I live and love what I do.    I think sometimes you can tell the difference between a beadmaker who makes beads to adorn themselfs…and beads to just make beads.  Your beads have to have a special ingredient to rise over others, and that is “part of you, your vision, your feelings”. 

It doesn’t mean I won’t struggle, heck I am doing so now…I really want to grow and come up with something “new”.  But I feel at a standstill with what I am creating, stagnant…in a rut.  That is happening right now with me…and it’s very hard to work through this…I thought it was burn out.  It’s not burnout but frustration from not creating any ”new and exciting” beads for a long while…but safely making popular good seller’s again and again.  Business wise, there is nothing wrong with that, it brings in a great working wage….and selling while your struggling is a good thing, it keeps the moral up.  It’s just nothing has come that changes my work, and I want it to….I feel inside it’s time to create new, explore and find a “new” style or “thing” I do.  Transition is always hard…to move forward and create new….a new level, a new layer of who I am.  I am working through that, yet keeping business going and trying to find that “spark” of something new to excite me and to run with.   Juggling the business selling side and the beadmaker creative part of me is very hard at times.  The two like to fight with one another, the creative beadmaker and the business side.   I think all of this is important to “believe in your product” you have to advance and create a product that is going to entice buyer’s to buy and spend their money on….so juggling business, creativity and the whole working for yourself and keeping it going is a more advance package than most would realize.  It’s not as simple as just buying boxes of stuff to sell and selling them.  Not when your making your own product.

Dan, my husband…learned to make beads because he wanted the extra income (basically enough money to pay for a truck payment each month).  His evolution in beadmaking makes me smile, because he is not the same guy that learned to make beads, he has grown into a person who appreciates color and style.  He knew what style of bead appealed to him…and went with learning to do it the best he could.  He had conversation’s with Pat Frantz about clear glass, encasing and how to’s….I remember those and they make me smile.  he came home with this new information and perfected it to work for him.  He likes to make twisties of color and encase them.  He also enjoys making marbles now and then.   He makes beads to unwind from his regular “semi stressful” day job…working full time already, he comes home and torches with me…to decompress and we talk about our day while doing so….so making his style of beads works for him really well.  As he winds the glass on the rod, he is unwinding from the day at work.  Actually it’s a very good quality time for us together.  The hiss of the torches, the pumping of the concentrator’s…and coversation of how are day’s went.

Anyway, on the thought of training someone to be a beadmaker….yes, people can be trained…trained to understand color and what the bead buyer’s want, really!  Dan is proof, his first beads five years ago are nothing compared to what he makes today.  I think his very first set where white beads with red, yellow and blue…I called them “Primarily Circus” and yeah, they did sell.  Over the years we have done a lot of talking, discussing and imagining color combo’s in our conversations in the car, when we are out and about we build a lot of idea’s for beads.  We talk in color names and feelings and how they will look together.  Sometimes he throws out an idea for me….and I tell him what we need in colors to put up for sale….Tropical’s…Hot’s…Pink’s etc…and sometimes he just plain dazzles me with a surprise.   Having a partner in beadmaking to shoot idea’s off…someone who is totally different from me is really  nice.  Dan’s goal each time he torches is for me to really fall in love with what he made…so he is expressing himself in his beads to try and make beads that appeal to me….which works for me ya know what I mean? LOL Yeah, I really trained him well.

I can’t always take his opinion’s though on my work…oh for the most part I can…but I have to rely on my beadmaking girlfriends to.  Especially when I make a focal I think is very cool and different and very interesting and “artsy”….Dan many times will not find those appealing at all….so I show those to my friends and get their opinions…most of the time finding out my gutt and heart instincts already knew what they told me.  Dan and I both can have a deep appreciation for what the other does…it’s just mostly its women who buy my beads.  So sometimes you have to get a woman’s opinion, even though deep down you know in your heart if you like it, someone else out there will like it to.  Thats been my feeling on the whole selling thing from the start.  That if I really love the beads I made, then my buyer’s will be someone who likes what I like.  

All in all….sucess in beadmaking/selling your work….comes from believing and loving what you make….standing behind what you do….selling a part of you.  If you dont have those things going for you…I doubt you will ever rise to the top of the heap/or there abouts.   Learning to make beads just because someone else does it and is successful isn’t the best reason.  Just because glass is turned into a bead, doesn’t mean it will make big money.  Its so hard to explain that to people who see you as an example and want to do what you do to.   Now I am only writing about this because of two local people in a very small town who because of Dan and I, and our success on eBay and in the bead world….learned to do what we do/well sorta.  I figure in a town of 3,400…if that happened here…in larger towns it happen’s all the time.

Just food for thought….not everyone can make a business that someone else has made successful, successful.  It might not be the right “thing” or product for them to sell.