ExorStitch: My Brief Time in the World of Online Business

A while back (November 2014), Conklederp convinced me that some of the the cross stitch patterns I had created were good enough to put up for sale on Etsy.com.  This is a story about the rise and fading of my Etsy shop, ExorStitch.

ExorStitch wasn't a store to sell completed cross stitch pieces, but instead, to sell cross stitch patterns.  So I PDF'd a number of cross stitch patterns I felt worthy of being sold and bundled them in a digital packet which included the pattern, a key for the colors I used, a little blurb about the specific pattern., and a generic-ish form thank you from me. 

So the store opened up some time in November 2014 and Conklederp mentioned it back on our old site.  Today I wanted to talk about why I did not update the listings when they came up for renewal back in February of this year.

One of my biggest fears about running an online storefront that sold cross stitch patterns was that people would not know that they were buying only patterns and not a physical product.  One would think that by offering a pattern for the (somewhat) low cost of $4, or $10 in the case of the Plants vs. Zombies triptych, that that would be too low of a price to charge for a hand cross stitched and framed product.  I did make multiple mentions on the storefront page that I only sold digital products (being PDFs that were sent to the customer from Etsy) and that the store did not sell any physical products.  This was a fear I had when I opened the shop and continued until the day when my patterns in the store expired.

There was only one instance where someone asked when I was going to ship them their product; this was about 12 days after the purchase was made.  After a handful of emails (5 in total), I sent them a refund since they said they thought they were buying a physical product.  Now, I do not know if their plan the whole time was to acquire a cross stitch pattern for free (a gamble on their part), but I genuinely feel that that was not the case here.  I was catastrophizing (a word from Conklederp that I've appropriated) that this was going to become the norm.  Again, in the year and four months ExorStitch was open, I was afraid after each notification of sale (of which there were 14 in total) that the person was going to message me about when they could expect their framed cross stitch product shipped.

One other fear, of which I had never received any, was that someone was going to complain that the pattern didn't turn out the way they thought it would based on the image from the store.  Not that their product turned out bad, but that they didn't like the pattern.  The easy way out of this would be to respond with "All sales are final."  Not, "I'm sorry you were not happy with your purchase. . ." or "If you are unhappy with your digital purchase, a full refund will be issued. . ."  But, that's not how my brain works.  I want people to be happy with something that I made that they purchased from me; which has always been my excuse when asked if I sell the tie-dyed shirts I've made.  I know that trying to please every single customer is something that nearly every person in the business world will tell you is impossible. Should you try to please as many customers as possible?  No.  Just please the high-paying ones; now I'm just channeling the cynic-businessman from my classes.

Which brings me to my next set of points.  The pattern that sold the most was the $10 Plants vs. Zombies triptych which included patterns for the Sunflower, Peashooter, and the Jalapeno.

I decided on the Jalapeno over the Wall-Nut and Cherry Bomb mainly because neither of the latter looked very good when scrunched down to a two inch square (roughly 50x50 when using 22 sized Aida fabric).  The frequency with which this set of patterns sold then lead me to a handful of thoughts:

1. People who cross stitch love Plants vs. Zombies and vice-versa.
2. When given the option of paying for three individual patterns for $4 each or for three patterns for $10, people will pay for the option which will give them the greatest value.
3. I should up the price of the individual PvZ patterns to $5 a piece, and increase the PvZ triptyc to $12 in order to increase revenues.
4. Hope to hell that EA/Pop Cap doesn't sue my ass for potential copyright infringement.

I could have gone this route and if I took anything away from any of my business classes over the last two years, it is that I should have followed the above points and continued to rack in (somewhat minimally) the digital dough.  

I however did not.

In the end, the feeling I got in my gut every time I saw that someone had purchased one of my patterns filled me with a feeling of accomplishment, but was then somewhat tarnished by a sense of dread.  That within a few days I would receive a message asking for their money back, or a low Etsy ranking, or a C&D letter from EA/Pop Cap along with a forfeiture of all revenue from sales of the PvZ patterns that I had sold up to that date.  There was also a feeling a guilt, that the patterns I had made along with the blurbs I had written were not of a sale-able quality

So presently the ExorStich storefront remains empty, although there are times when I think that I should reopen the store as I did make a bit of money from each pattern (after Etsy took their justified cut from the cost of the product), and it is a bit of an ego boost knowing that I was able to design something that someone else would want to spend their own money on.  



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
The Past Ahead Of Us