OK - I don’t really agree with black friday but seeing as it is going to be promoted and I am using this shop to sell off stock of items I no longer make, (my current makes go into my other shop @OrchardFelts which won’t be taking part), I might as well make use of it. All my prices are at rock bottom prices anyway but I will offer an additional 10% over the period. Now to get searching my boxes and stocking up!
Forgot to add my link. We’ll be offering 50% https://folksy.com/shops/hollypicthall
Hello - I’ve changed my shop name so I’m re-posting my message.
I will be offering 20% on my jewellery at https://folksy.com/shops/curiousmagpie
Thanks! xxxx
I am happy to participate. I am pleased to see that Folksy is realising the benefit of “keeping up with the Jonses”.
I will be deactivating some of the items that I don’t have room to discount, but the rest will be on the BLACKFRIDAY promotion. We will be offering a 35% Discount throughout the shop.
It is too bad that more are not participating. I think it is a great way to get out there that Folksy is here and I am sure that all shops will benefit from this promotion.
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Ah, good thinking! I had forgotten that I want to close my second shop, Dandelion’s Miniature Gallery, so although I don’t to participate with my main store (I’m mega busy with commissions at full price, so don’t see the point of discounting the prices for those items) I can offer a discount on the items I need to clear from DMG as they don’t fit in with my main shop 
@folksycontent I will offer a 50% discount at Dandelion’s Miniature Gallery, as I am clearing that shop to focus on my main shop
@folksycontent
I also totally understand the reservations about the American fad of Black Friday and am confused as to why it’s reached UK shores but in a bid to move with the times am up for giving it a go! I hated the idea but tried it somewhere last year and it was a good sales boost so maybe it will help get my quiet Folksy shop moving! https://folksy.com/shops/StormTeacup I’ll be offering 25%
I think the bigger question it seems to be raising is pricing. It’s taken me 6 years (and a big nervous gulp!) to learn to price my items correctly having spoken with countless successful handmade businesses learning there is a standard pricing model. But also speaking with customers who made it clear that if they saw a ‘too cheap’ item online they assumed the quality would be bad. Imported Ebay tat, not quality handmade.
Undervaluing handmade work is a big problem (yet totally understandable in our humble world of handmade work! We all find it hard to be bold and confident about our worth!) But people under pricing their items has a knock-on effect on other crafters who don’t and can’t under price their items with next-to-no profit, only covering costs like a hobby.
I think its so important to have a proper, workable pricing structure (materials + labour + overheads + profit margin etc) and if items are priced correctly they should be able to withstand a small sale and still make some profit. There are some great pricing guides online. Even people like me, who very rarely has wholesale orders for local gift shops, should be pricing their items based on what they can afford to sell it for at wholesale then multiply this for retail therefore factoring in the ability to occasionally run a discount. This is a model most handmakers use so it’s completely fair and normal and means everyone’s on a level playing field.
It’s so nerve wracking changing your pricing model when it means you’re charging more but I was lead by customers and experienced makers and it was definitely for the best. I’m by no means earning a living yet but it’s a start!
I hope this helps. You all work hard producing unique items that our customers can’t make for themselves so be proud of your work and don’t under value it! xxx
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Depressing, yes, but obviously for you its also true. I hope that your new trading platform works well for you.
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I can answer that question for you blame Asda or should I say Walmart which is the supersized USA company that bought out Asda. They are the company that bought Black Friday to the UK.
As for Wholesale must handmade business are unable to do Wholesale for 2 reasons:
A) We hand make everything which is not ‘Time Effective’ ie it takes us more time to hand make an item unlike mass produced items
This means making 1 or 100 of an item may take an 2 hours to make so making 100 would be 2hours x 100 items we can’t make them any quicker so why should we then work for less. As that is what selling at Wholesale prices equates for those of us who hand make rather than mass produce.
B) Often because we are hand made rather than mass produced our items are often one off’s. or we make 3 or 4 of an item. If we made the same item over and over again it loose’s it’s uniqueness which is what people who tend to buy handmade are looking for. Otherwise they’d being looking in the high street stores and buying mass produced cheaply turned out items.
Wholesale is really for mass production in factories items not handmade special items.
Interestingly, asda aren’t having a black friday this year …
Absolutely agree with you Eileen. It takes me 10 times as long to make 10 stars as it takes me to make 1. It costs me 10 times as much in materials and if I priced my stars to allow a 40%ish wholesale margin on top of the very high material percentage cost I wouldnt need to bother making any because nobody would buy them.
PS I also get bored making the same thing repeatedly - that’s why there are 26 naked angel bodies waiting for my attention and I need them for a market on Tuesday. Tomorrow…
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I think that has been driven by the fact that Back Friday caused so much bad press on the news. I don’t know if you remember but the behaviour of some shoppers was dreadful with people being crushed and fights braking out. With many managers refusing to hold the Black Friday because of fears it would happen again and their staff would be put in dangerous situations and having to pay out more for temporary security staff. These where the comments from one of a couple of managers on bbc1 news of stores that had run them. I think they learnt a valuable lesson.
did they invent it then - or is just a general shopping thing in usa?
I think it’s because the American don’t start anything Christmassy until after Thanksgiving so they then want to get the season off with a bang ?
Now I always thought that you had your sales at the end of the season not at the beginning… all a bit odd
Yikes , I’m going against my principles of jumping on the band wagon and promoting a US ‘thing’ ( aren’t we gradually becoming 'Little America ') ???, but this has been such a slowwww year , I’ve decided to give the BF promo a go . We shall see !!!..
At least there will be no issue with regards to safety - no one will get trampled / fight over items on here !!! 
I will be using the code BLACKFRIDAY and offering 15% off ( what I consider my already reasonable prices !) in the hope that it will tempt??!! for the 5 day period .
https://folksy.com/shops/AliDufty
Good luck to those that take part AND those to don’t !!! Let’s hope more folks are in a more general gift-buying mode by then anyway !!!
Ali
It’s a USA shopping thing it’s the day after Thanksgiving when most Americans start their Christmas Shopping. It gets stuff off the shelves makes room for new Christmas lines and is supposed to get their Christmas shopping started. It was mainly for the large mainline shops in the USA that sold big items but it grew a bit now there is a blacklash of people in the USA who are boycotting it. So I feel there is a small tide turning away from it in the USA and it’s growing every year.
We have a far longer run up to Christmas here it’s far more gradual and then of course we have the Boxing Day and New Year sales.
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We’d like to give it a try - it’s not that we agree with it but we’ve had terrible sales through Folksy compared with our Etsy and Webpage sales, so we’ll give it a go to see if it makes a difference…BirdcageBarn
Eileen although this isn’t wholesale, I think it’s relevant to what you posted.
I used to think the same, no-one would buy my items if I actually costed up for time, materials, profit, fees and the potential for wholesale. But I really wanted to get my stuff in a local art gallery, which charge a 35% commission. So I took the plunge and adjusted my figures so I could do this. In fact I almost doubled my prices, and I didn’t see sales drop off a cliff at all. In fact I found there were people more than happy to pay a good price for my handmade pieces, I just had to find them. And that meant looking also at my branding and image (and photos!). Not everyone can afford handmade, that’s what makes it a luxury buy, that (some) people desire.
I also read Dixie Nichols’ blog “Handmade Lives” and it helped me develop valuing my work/time etc. She’s stopped blogging for now, but her last blog entry ended with “Put your bloody prices up” 
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The whole discounting handmade thing makes me so uncomfortable. As makers who love what we do, we already tend to feel guilty about charging a proper hourly amount for our time (it would be interesting to know whether that’s a ‘female’ thing too, do male makers suffer the same conflict?), and here is a way to devalue it even more.
I must admit I also feel a bit queasy about the fact that the featured seller invariably seems to offer a discount these days, is that a condition of being chosen?
And I have to agree with whoever it was that said that increasing prices seems to generate more interest than the opposite, that has been my experience too. I haven’t always agreed with everything Dixie Nichols has said but on pricing (put them up) and discounting (don’t do it, ever!) she is spot on.
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You’re dead right there. I once tried to give away a car for free, there were no takers until I charged £300 for it! go figure, as they say in the US. I will not be discounting, for the same reasons you give, I have virtually no profit margin whatsoever and am in fact thinking of increasing prices in the New Year. But …I do hope to benefit from any increased traffic, though I doubt there will be any. As a shopper, personally,.I would probably not really be bothered about a discount on a handmade item. All rules go out the window when shopping for handmade Arts.
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This is from the guy that runs John Lewis - “his main anxiety is that Black Friday will erode Christmas profitability, that purchases made during Black Friday week would have been made anyway, and at a higher price.”
(Full article here http://www.standard.co.uk/business/markets/chris-blackhurst-why-retailing-has-to-control-the-black-friday-monster-9958034.html)
Totally agree with him.Totally agree with all the people above that are against it, and their reasons too. And don’t like the way this thread seems to be becoming the answer to some shops that are struggling for sales. A shop without many sales and discounted items wouldn’t look great to me. A guide to promoting would be more useful for the new shops at this time of year than encouraging them to slash prices.
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