Working Wednesday: Post-Holiday Planning

It may be almost a week until Christmas, but I'm already thinking about next year.

Scott and I are cautiously optimistic that 2013 will see our business become self sufficient and ideally even profitable. :-) Of course, I expect that most of our Foster's Beauties income will get reinvested in supplies and materials for awhile more, but things are definitely looking potentially rosy.

Meanwhile, I have been slowly listing more of Scott's Chai Variations in our Etsy store -- take a look! Those are truly works of art that he created. I keep getting comments from folks who think they look like intricate pottery and are simply floored when they realize they are wood.

Here are a few of the newest listings:

This is the second (but still unique!) Blonde Chai Variations (SF111).

Chai Variations II, featuring the beautiful red-brown colors in bubinga as its main wood, complemented with maple, Oregon black walnut and wenge.

And of course you've seen Rhythms of the Heart in previous postings, but it's officially listed now! :)

(I love the little diamond created in the feature ring where the woods meet up to point down. There's got to be a name for that, but I have no idea what it is.)

What are your creative or business plans for 2013? I'm currently trying to figure out how much inventory we need to have completed by September if we want to do craft fairs once or twice a month for the last quarter of the year. I'm terrified of registering (and paying!) for, say, six shows over a 12 week period, and doing tremendously well in the first or second and running out of inventory. (I should get so lucky, right?) But how do you figure out how much inventory you need to have on hand to commit to multiple shows?

Meanwhile, although our online sales have been slow throughout December, I'm delighted that we've finally achieved one of my goals, which has been to break 1,000 pageviews in our shop during a calendar month. As I write this, we've had 1,193 so far in December, the first time we've broken past 850/month since we opened our Etsy shop. Woohoo! While views aren't nearly as good as sales, you can't sell anything if people aren't seeing your work!