Thursday, January 10, 2008

Confession: shameless marketing

Last fall I found a gorgeous strand of smooth rock quartz crystal beads. They were really unusual because they were drilled on one end rather then through the middle. They really looked like large drops of water! As soon as I saw the strand, I had this vision of exactly the kind of earrings I'd make with these beads.

Even with the vision (no, schizophrenia does not run in my family), it took me a few tries before I got the earrings how I wanted them. This is what they ended up looking like:


I thought they turned out well enough to list in my online shop. But I still needed to name them and write up a description.

I generally have a hard time writing descriptions of my jewelry. My tendancy is to list the materials and dimensions and not go for any cutesy descriptions and not over-embellish. My husband, who is a writer in real life, offered to write it for me. And he came up with this item description:

"Wouldn’t this be a wonderful pair of earrings for the holidays! The quartz crystal stones glimmer and the red crystals add the festive color of the season -- notice the little silver spacers on the tips of the red swarovskis -- don't they remind you of snowflakes!

Be sure to wear these under the mistletoe!"

Pretty good, huh. After he wrote that, what else could I do but name the earrings, "Christmas Kisses".

Well, I don't know if it was because of the earrings or the name or the description , but during the holiday season, I ended up selling quite a few pairs of my Christmas Kisses. (My husband, of course, claims it was his description.) But now it' s January and it's time to put away all the holiday decorations - as well as my Christmas Kisses.

So earlier this week, I was going through my stock of jewelry, wondering whether or not I should bother creating some Valentine-themed stuff, when it hit me! Why not rewrite the description of the Christmas Kiss earrings and rename them Valentine Kisses!

And if this works, after Valentine's Day, maybe I'll rename them Summertime Kisses!

(In my 9 to 5 job I work with a lot of people in marketing. I like to refer to them as "The Dark Side". With what I just did, I guess it indicates that I must too be turning to the Dark Side. )

Oh, and meet the latest addition to my listings, the Valentine Kiss (soon-to-be-Summertime-Kiss) Necklace:

3 Comments:

  1. Journey of Love Designs said...
    nice jewelry and great blog!
    njm said...
    What a great idea! I like your marketing scheme as the concept is applicable to each of the seasons/holidays you address. I am struggling with that concept for my shop. How do I take traditionally winter items and market them during the warm weather months.

    I believe the way to go is cotton, but we will see.

    By the way, gorgeous earrings and necklace.
    Jen (Mama's Magic Studio) said...
    ooh, those are really lovely (even without the excellent description) and i love the multiple variations on the name.

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