fbpx

One month into selling ceramic balloons

Ceiling hanging ceramic balloons
The latest order I shipped out last week to Princess Cohen in Chicago: an orange ceramic balloon to hang from the ceiling of her room.

It’s been slightly more than a month since I started selling my ceramic balloons on Etsy. A rough start and a good start.

First of all I need to thank all the customers for their interest and for giving an opportunity to work on their orders despite the fact that I was new, 0 sales and had 0 reviews on the site. Some customers are truly amazing, they are understanding, forgiving and encouraging. My first customer ordered one balloon for her friend who is about to give birth to a baby. She (the customer) had many pottery classes before and she understands there’s always a chance for things to go wrong in ceramic. When I told her the last firing did not go well – and offered her to re-do everything all over again (which means it will take us another 3 weeks until the final product), she was so appreciative and insisted that it was not my fault. I wanted to thank her – besides completing this gift for her friend. I asked if she would like one balloon for herself – she said yes! That made me very happy and I am halfway through the making of this balloon for her.

I was under pressure. When I started taking order was also when I changed to a new type of clay. I started experience breakage and that worried me. Breakage in the last firing means I was only 1 step away from completing it – after completing 99 steps, and now I have to start all over again. I needed to figure out what went wrong, fix it and communicate with the customers. The challenge is that Dat Set for now is still my part-time job, I have a full-time job which requires 9-10 hours of work everyday. Getting away from the desk to experiment or even to talk to some experts to figure out what happened with my ceramic balloons was not easy. But with some luck, I managed to have some precious pieces of advice. I also made some back-up pieces so when a piece break, I did not have to start the process from wet clay. Instead, I had the next pieces ready to be fired. The experiment to prevent breakage is still an ongoing process – just like everything else in ceramic, but I am glad that the advices that I had helped for now and I could ship out my ceramic balloons in time.

The pressure also comes from the fact that selling is totally different from making it for fun and giving it away to people as gift. Very few customers would understand or would be interested to understand why you are late on an order, and even when they know what the reason is – it doesn’t mean that they accept it. When I can’t ship out an order on time, I communicate with the customer in advance with all the fact of the situation. And I would offer something else – something extra. I am fortunate in the sense that I am making all these balloons under no financial pressure, so if a customer is very upset and wants a 100% refund, I would do so since it would be the right thing to do. But so far I have not had to be in such a situation yet.

One month in, it’s been fun, pressuring in a good way, and meaningful. In the past I created memorable experiences for brides, grooms, families and friends with my wedding planning business. And now I have the opportunity to make things that many moms and moms-to-be love for their children. I find it a bit funny looking at how my career evolves that way.

Every order is a story, memory for me. I will share more of them in the next blog posts, but for now I need to work on two balloons that will float to Panama! 🇵🇦

24 Replies to “One month into selling ceramic balloons”

  1. Great website you have here but I was wanting to know
    if you knew of any community forums that cover the same topics talked about in this article?
    I’d really like to be a part of community where I can get advice from
    other knowledgeable people that share the same interest. If you have any suggestions, please
    let me know. Appreciate it!

    My homepage: vpn special coupon

  2. You actually make it appear really easy along with your presentation but I find this matter to
    be really something which I think I’d never understand. It seems too complicated and very
    huge for me. I am having a look forward for your next
    post, I will attempt to get the dangle of it!

    Also visit my web page vpn special

  3. I just could not go away your website prior to suggesting that I extremely loved the usual info an individual supply for your guests? Is gonna be back frequently in order to check out new posts

  4. I carry on listening to the news broadcast talk about receiving boundless online grant applications so I have been looking around for the finest site to get one. Could you tell me please, where could i get some?

  5. Fantastic goods from you, man. I have understand your stuff previous to and you are just too great. I really like what you’ve acquired here, really like what you’re stating and the way in which you say it. You make it enjoyable and you still care for to keep it wise. I cant wait to read far more from you. This is really a terrific website.

  6. My coder is trying to convince me to move to .net from PHP. I have always disliked the idea because of the expenses. But he’s tryiong none the less. I’ve been using WordPress on numerous websites for about a year and am concerned about switching to another platform. I have heard fantastic things about blogengine.net. Is there a way I can transfer all my wordpress content into it? Any kind of help would be really appreciated!

  7. I am really loving the theme/design of your blog. Do you ever run into any web browser compatibility problems? A few of my blog visitors have complained about my site not operating correctly in Explorer but looks great in Firefox. Do you have any recommendations to help fix this problem?

  8. Unquestionably believe that that you said. Your favourite justification seemed to be at the web the easiest thing to bear in mind of. I say to you, I certainly get annoyed even as people think about issues that they just do not realize about. You controlled to hit the nail upon the highest as smartly as defined out the whole thing without having side-effects , people can take a signal. Will likely be again to get more. Thanks

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *