What do you do with stock that isn’t selling? I know that I’m lucky that my product doesn’t have an expiry date but what do I do with stock that isn’t selling? I have a sale on my shop at the moment and I will be removing those items if they don’t sell before I launch a new range in September. In the past I’ve rotated stock through my shop and craft market box, but I’m not doing many craft markets at the moment and I have a box of necklaces, bracelets and earrings that have been slow to sell.
I would love to know how you manage your products and if you have any tips to move items to make space for new products.
I have a special offers section where I have a few reduced items to clear. If they still don’t sell I will remove them from the shop and sell off on Ebay or use as gifts. I only have a few items in this section at a time as I don’t want my shop to be mainly reduced items…
Kim
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I know that some people rotate their stock through multiple selling platforms (4 months on folksy, 4 months on etsy then on to ebay) I just have all my stock here and then when I do craft shows I rotate what I show depending on the amount of space/ time of year/ my mood. I’ve accepted that the more expensive items in my stock will take a while to sell but are very useful to show that I can make items like that if someone whats to commission something (eg cufflinks). If we’d been having this conversation a few weeks ago I’d have suggested getting a stall at a school fete but I think most of them are done by now. Occasionally I dismantle items and rework the components but only where I wasn’t necessarily completely happy with the design in the first place.
(If you want to try shifting your sale items on etsy let me know as I think I can get you 20 free listings)
Sasha
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Sometimes just retaking the photos using different props can make the difference.
Jo
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Thank you Kim, I’ve not tried selling on Ebay, have you found it to be good for selling your makes?
I agree with this completely.
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I agree too, re wording your descriptions, title, tags etc can also help
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I have only sold off a couple of items which weren’t selling here, and they went quite quickly.
I have thought of listing some items there more often, but the fees are higher so I would probably have to charge a bit more for my items, so I decided to just keep it for clearance stuff, although I might look at doing a different range of items to sell on there and give it a try nearer Christmas.
Kim
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I move my items around…start on here, then to the other side and then to the auction site…they keep going round until they sell…they all do eventually (so far)
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I found that sometimes an item won’t sell within the first 4 months just means the right person hasn’t seen it yet. I will relist and I did that once 3 times then I sold it within minutes of relisting the 3rd time. The lady sent me a email saying she’d seen it before and marked it for buying later only later it wasn’t in my shop. My guess was she didn’t look again till the day it expired so therefore wasn’t available until I relisted that third time… Thankfully she gave my shop another look months later and there is was all waiting for her.
So you never know, when the right person is looking at the right time to buy. I do change things around in my shop with the season ie at the moment my Easter and Mother’s Day cards are at the back of my shop and if they expire I’ll not rush to relist them straight away as I doubt people will be searching for those sort of items at the moment.
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Sometimes I will take a long hard look at the offending items and make alterations, and re-fashion, tart it up or take it apart and use the fabric to make a completely new thing. Sometimes I just take new photos. Most things usually do sell in the end.
Thank you everyone, I’m going to look at the staging of my photos, I’ve just got a new mannequin recently so I’m going to look at taking new pictures of my necklaces to start with.
I move stuff, redo photos and ultimately disassemble and salvage!
Due to over-making in the beginning I have quite a few unsold items. I reduce them online and put them in a “bargain box” at my craft fairs. I sometimes put them in a bundle giveaway too, it gets to the point sometimes when I just want rid for a clearout!