05/03/2026
Well, the whole shift from Etsy to Shopify has taken place. I wasn't wanting to move over so soon, as I wanted to build out the brand some first, but something happened to make me choose to leave Etsy. I signed up for Etsy's Pattern website just before the end of the month. Pointed my domain to it as directed. I've done this before to help out others so I knew what I was doing. And I waited.
I should have had it live even just for me within a couple of hours. No dice. Next morning, I chat with Etsy support. Oh, says that fellow, somehow you didn't get assigned a SSL certificate, I'll push it up to a higher level of tech support and they'll fix it soon, you'll get an email when it's done. Next day, no email and still not working. Back to support chat.
And I ended up with the RUDEST idiot. You got told you'll get an email. They're busy. And they closed the chat without so much as a by your leave. Ok, fine. I shut down the Pattern site before it renewed and immediately went to Shopify. I was going to do a lot of other things but my focus is really primarily the bookmarks anyhow. So no biggie if I don't do anything else. My print provider has a nice pendant necklace I might add later as well, but that is down the road as a big maybe. It's shaped well enough to use teardrop earring graphics on it. I'd like to do other things as well, but they are going to be really time-consuming to set up and create, and I don't want to deal with that right now, with the plans I have now for the shop.
A big one is getting set up and accepted to Faire for wholesale orders. Which means pricing things in the shop so I can make a profit there, but also a bit of profit on Faire for small quantities. For example, the bookmarks. Assuming an order comes in and it's a new to me customer there, the fees on ONE bookmark would leave me almost a dollar in the hole. Two bookmarks gives me a tiny bit of profit, so that can be the MOQ (minimum order quantity) for the bookmarks. Now take that times the approximately 50ish products I'd like to put bookish graphics on, and having to sit and figure out the MOQ for EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM, so my in-store pricing is where it needs to be to get me a profit, plus not be so high that Faire customers wouldn't buy the stuff. Then add in making all those products up in my print provider. HALP. It's going to be TIME-CONSUMING just to set up categories and add them to the menu and the home page for the website.
Which, by the way, was live within two hours of switching to Shopify and having it fix the DNS so it pointed to my Shopify store. THEY got me a SSL certificate right quick.
So to finish my weekend up, there's a lot of work to do to finish the shop up, and get things priced so they will work for me for the store AND on Faire assuming I can get in there.
There's also a ton of stuff left to unzip that I've bought over the last couple of years to put on the bookmarks in the way of regular graphics, though the bookmark and bookish sticker specific designs are all unpacked and sorted out. All 24K plus of them. Add in all the regular graphics that I can slap on a bookmark, and the text designs I have in mind, and there's at least 100K or so bookmarks alone. I could easily get by with just the bookmarks, lol, but there are other things I'd like to do as well - the usual mugs, tees, sweatshirts and sticker, but also tote bags, wall art, ornaments, tech and vehicle accessories, travel accessories, and a few other things. Whew. Good thing the bookish stickers are only a few thousand of the 24K plus.
So I need to get busy if I'm going to get the store designed out fully and start getting it stocked up. In the meantime, head to the store and take a look. There's a bunch of bookmarks there already, with plenty more to come.
bookish gifts, bookmarks, book lovers mugs, book lovers keychains, bookish tote bags, kindle covers, bible covers, bookish tees, bookish phone cases
