This is my first official post to the Roseberry Creek Designs "blog". Since I had no idea what a blog was a few short months ago, I feel pretty odd having my own, at this point. However, I am so very excited about my new business and about the creative and business possibilities and opportunities I have before me, that I can't help but write about them. If you are a friend, customer, artist, designer or random viewer, I hope there will be something of interest for you here.
First, let me just say that so far, it has been a long journey to get here and second, let me tell 'ya that I'm not there yet! When I decided I'd build my own website on no budget whatsoever and no experience other than drafting legal documents in WORD and sending e-mail, I had absolutely no CLUE what I was in for. Thinking back, I guess I thought "if you build it, they will come", applied to websites as well as backyard ball fields. I certainly should have known better, since I had been in business for years before going to law school and had parents that had been in business all of my life! But website start-ups are surely different from a bricks and mortar store (huh!). Let me just say that the first read-through of the Yahoo Store 368 page "Getting Started Guide" was as tricky as reading a foreign language with someone on the phone trying to interpret for you .... As a matter of that, that's exactly what it was! I don't know that I've ever had to think so hard to try and figure something out. After a few weeks it became a challenge that I could not give up on.
Nine months of 50 - 60 hour weeks, 3 SEO tutorials, 3 website marketing tutorials, 5 E-books, 3 How-To books, 3 Web Forums, one instruction manual and countless phone calls to Yahoo tech support, and I have a real e-commerce website featuring some really cool stuff with more cool stuff to come!
My vision for the store is this: Feature really fun, innovative, extraordinary, handmade, gifts and decor for babies, children and mom's by artists and designers that don't have their work featured on every other baby website out there. After looking through tons and tons of websites for baby's and kid's gifts and decor, I noticed a distinct pattern among these sites - they all have the identical products by the same companies! What's not identical, is very, very similar and non-distinctive.....exactly what I want to avoid!
I had never heard the term "indie" in reference to art and design until I began research for my website business. There is a huge grassroots movement out there to back away from the big box stores, which sell the same cookie-cutter, mass-produced goods we are surrounded by in everything from Wal-Mart to Pottery Barn. People want more uniquely designed, handmade goods that you don't see everywhere you turn. That defines the very essence of the indie craft revolution. There was a similar response to the Industrial Revolution at the turn of the century that resulted in the craftsmen style and in the 60's and 70's with the hippie counterculture sort of a snub to the establishment. The indie crafters of today make everything from crocheted jewelry and handmade soap to punk rock clothing for infants.
You can be sure there are manay more funky, out-there indie websites with some much hipper and younger people running them (selling things I've never seen nor heard of before now!) but I certainly think Roseberry Creek Designs fits the definition of an "indie" store. We are independant from any company or manufacturer and make all of our items by hand. All of us live and breath our art/craft and love sharing it with the world! And, I can assure you, you will be seeing many more cool, unusual, innovative gifts for babies, kids and moms and decor ideas for nurseries and big kid rooms and whatever else we run across that we think you'll love!
Watch for posts showing some of what's coming in the near future!
