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How to Handle an Evolution in Your Craft

So what constitutes an evolution in your craft? So there's a lot of different ways that you could evolve. It could be a new style, a new product line, a new price point. Maybe it's a completely new type of product, but it's doing something different that is gonna require a little bit of nurturing on the part of your existing audience. Like that's really how I look at the difference between focus and evolution. If your entire audience is going to be gung ho for it, even if it's a different product type, that's really not an evolution. It's just expanding your focus a little so you can do this evolution in one of two ways, and again, one is not better than the other. It's just kind of important to know where you're at. So one is you can go from a focus, have a little evolution, and then you're still focused. The 2nd 1 is that you have a focus. You go through a period period of experimentation, which then requires an evolution because you're leading to a new focus that's a little bit diff...

erent, right? So an evolution kind of a focus evolution focus definitely looks more like keeping a product line tight. So when is it okay to make an evolution in your craft? So, first of all, if you're evolving every few months, this is an evolution. It's experimentation. Let's call a spade a spade. Okay, so if you're like I keep evolving a couple of months isn't enough time to do anything to stick, so acknowledge that you're in experimentation phase and go back to those pointers that we talked about. Okay, but sometimes you do need to make an evolution, and there's a couple reasons to do that. One is that sales have flattened. I talked about this. If you don't evolve every so often, suddenly it's going to be 30 years from now. We'll be making stuff that look like you designed it in 2010. You're gonna hit a recession, and that's it. Game over. So at some point you do have to evolve. Sometimes customers start asking for something new, and I don't mean they're asking for something specifically new. I just mean they're literally like I'm ready for something new. The first words out of the mouth of every buyer when they walk into your trade show booth is what's new. Let's talk about how to handle an evolution in your craft. There are a couple of challenges, so the 1st 1 is that it's getting your audience to recognize you for your new work and different audiences. They're gonna understand this differently than others, and it also again depends on where the evolution comes from. If you're at a point of focus and you're just going through an evolution that doesn't feel such a big leap, it's pretty easy, right? You might also have a challenge of getting rid of excess inventory of old work. So maybe so you might have this problem, right? Stuff sold, and now you don't have any warm. People still want it or stuff didn't sell and you're over it. And now it's sitting around your house so you that may be a challenge that you have to encounter. We'll talk about that in a minute, and you also might have to think about overcoming major changes in price point. If it's very different, that creates some challenges. So how do you handle sharing the new direction with your audience? It really depends on your audience growth strategy, but no matter what I like to think of this idea of, like teas, then release. So don't just fling new products out from left field, right? Let people know things. Air coming now teas Then release is super easy on social media, right? Especially on Instagram. So easy to tease, then release. This is what I'm working on. Guys here, it's coming. You can join the mailing list you can get on that. It's happening right. It's just feels really natural. That's the whole point of something like Instagram. It's also pretty natural via email. I authority these in here, but literally in the same timeframe where I was teasing out those new pieces with the stones on social media, I was also teasing them out an email. And I actually think that, um, in my class to make a living selling what you make. I go actually really dive deep into the entire launch strategy for that new line. So if you want more, resource is you can definitely check that class out as well, but it can, so it works easiest in those platforms, but it can and should be done with other audience building techniques as well. So maybe you have been working on pitching the press, and now you've got a few media contacts. You can reach out to them, letting them know that something new is coming. And they may even then want to feature your product on the day it's released. Good way to make some money, right? Thing drops here. Some press. You should also think about sending preview images to your stores. Don't assume your stores air following you on social media out of them. Aren't there busy? Yeah, it's hard to be a store owner. They're busy. They have stuff to Dio. They're not all paying attention. Actually, send them emails. Send your stores emails, letting them know that new stuff is coming. Get them excited about it. So let's talk about the other one. First, let's talk about demand, but no supply. This is something that's been happening to me lately where I'm like, I want to get rid of this thing and people still want to buy it. I have nothing left, Right, So you have a couple of options here. If this is the case that you're in, um and this happens, I think a lot of places were demand but no supply happens. A lot are things like if you are selling two stores, right stores. Stores won't keep buying the same thing. Um, and so because they know it sells, they like things in the store that sell. This happens a lot if you're really well optimized for things like search. This is a problem that Tiffany had for a long time in her work. Like people. Still one of those feather hoops, man. And she's like, I'm so tired of making further hoops. Uh, so they're certain audience growth strategies where this happens, Mawr. So you can kind of be mindful that that might happen. And I know those of you are in the supply, but no demand problem are like, so jealous of this problem. But it's still an issue is still something you have to make decisions about. So there are a few decisions that you can make. So one is that you could outsource production. You can say I'm going to make this available, but I'm gonna let someone else do it. I'm gonna hire a seamstress to work on this for me. I'm gonna hire an assistant, outsource production in some way, another one. It's to raise prices toe, hopefully drop demand a little. Now, sometimes this backfire. Sometimes you raise prices and you still have more of a demand. That one. Then you might end up jumping into another one. But that's always an option where you could always raise prices. I'm if you really want to get rid of it, you can announce a cut off date for ordering. But the thing you have to remember with that one is that's actually going to increase demand. All right, so if you have the opposite problem, you have supply but no demand. You know, a couple of things. One is you could hold a time sensitive sample sale time. Sensitive is the big key. With this kind of sale, we're gonna talk about that more in a minute. The other one is, quite frankly, just give it away. Seems you're like, I'm so tired of this being in my house. Merry Christmas, everybody. It's a It's a viable option. I know we want to get paid for everything we've made, and truly I want you get paid for everything you made. But if it's really like creating a lot of baggage for you just give it away, Give it to someone else, Let them get excited about it. But of course, we want to try to recoup some money. So a couple of Jews and don't for the sample sale. First of all, duties your audience so they know the sale is coming. Right? Get people excited. You are the biggest driver of science to my email list is when I do my sample sale. Like my sample sale, My birthday sale. They get to shop first school. You get the sample sale an hour before everybody else. Yes, please put me on your email list. I want to be first because stuff sells out. So tease them. Let them know it's coming. Have them get so excited that they put it on their calendar. That's the goal. Don't make the sale last longer than a few days. I actually like to make mind 24 hours because, truthfully, if you've done this first step right, most of your sales are going to come in the first hour anyway, First hour or two, if you've done this part right, so I like to keep it short 24 to 48 hours anything after that, people forget. Do you make sure you've done a thorough inventory? There's nothing worse than like putting something in your sample sale, getting the number wrong and then realizing you have to make one now because you only had to in the box and you put three right and then don't be afraid to email your list and post on social media multiple times about the sale. So what I do any time doing something like a sample sale is I push it out on social media, let people know, get on my email, lest they get it first. So then say it like 11 oclock. On that day, the email goes out. Then if it's a 24 hour sale, I might send one more email. So what I'll do is the next morning I'll send a second email. Here's why I love male chimps so much because I can go into male chimp and I can say on Lee, send this email to people who haven't bought a product in the last 24 hours and mail Chimp and Shopify talk to each other and they know that. So I'm not bothering people who already bought. Right? So going, I'll send the email. If I'm doing, say, a 48 hour sail, I might go first day, second day, you know, maybe, or like that that morning of the second day on Lee to people who didn't open the first email, and then I'll do say like 1/3. This is ending email to everyone who hasn't bought in the last hours. So not all those emails go out to everybody. But I'm not only emailing once because people miss things. Same thing with your social media posts. Send post multiple times if there's ever a day where you're going to do, like three or four posts in a day when you're having a big sale like this. The other thing to keep in mind is that it's okay now, obviously, if you have a ton of inventory, this is not what I'm talking about, but it's okay to keep some of your old work for your archives. I feel like this is a thing we're like none of us think were important enough to need archives, right? But you don't know you won't get really famous in the next 20 years, and then you're gonna wanna have held onto some of that old stuff it cause it could be worth more. And because someone's gonna come along and be like, I need to, like, curating document all your stuff cause you're so famous. Now you guys are all getting famous in 20 years, so, like, sell most of it. But it's okay if you have a few pieces laying around, it's OK to have some things in your archives. I'm because you just never know. Um said something to keep in mind.