One day: Okay we are unstoppable.  We are on  fire.  Literally everything we make sells and we are going to make a fortune.  We have a successful business by all standards.  Boom!

Another day: Are we stupid for even trying to do this? We are barely keeping above water.  Can we afford all this overhead? This might not work

and somehow we press forward hoping we are somewhere in the middle...

Whoa! what a ride the last couple of month have been.  We started off this holiday season signing up for Amazon Handmade and not knowing what to expect. We pressed forward blindly.  Little did we know that it meant hours of order fulfillment and going from the two of us to having to hire two employees. At our peak we were moving 20+ sales a day.  The shipping...oh the shipping.  Imagine having no process in place and having to scramble to send out countless items daily.  We learned a few quick lessons.  One major one was that Amazon will flag you if you do not mark all items as shipped on time. We get one of their emails threatening our account was in danger of being suspended because of it.  It required an apology email and point by point reply of how we would rectify the problem going forward.  Despite the few hiccups we faced we made it out of the holidays with over 500 sales and a good boost in our ranking.  Now the next phase begins.  Survival in the off season.  I look forward to letting you all know how it goes. Here are a few photos from the holidays.

So we had the lesson of the failed customizer under our belt and we ventured on. We always seem to stumble forward.  While doing so we came across a sign request from a customer that was different from the others. They wanted the a quirky sign that said "how to Tell Time" and listed AM and Pm with a coffee mug and wine glass respectively below the writing.

So we officially launched in January of 2017. Since then we have come a long way and faced many challenges along the way.  Never did we realize all the pivots we would make ad how our business model would change.  Back in February we had a revolutionary idea to allow our customers to create their own wood carved signs online.  We had an online customizer that put the customer in full control of what they could create.  This meant they could start with a blank canvas and create to their hearts desire.  After a few months and thousands of dollars in research and development and service fees we realized we had a flop on our hands.  We decided to scrap the customizer because we learned a valuable lesson.  often times people don't want to create something from scratch.  They want to e given some inspiration and make small tweaks but it become overwhelming when every option is available.  We often heard "let me try to decide what I want and I will use your customizer".  It's like that tattoo that you always wanted to get but you don't now quite what it is until you see someone else's or a photo online. So we had a dud on our hands and although it was a tough decision we had to scrap it and change directions.  This part is always extremely tough in entrepreneurship.  When do you say when? Through building Denver Sign Design we have had many of these moments and only through repeat failures (we call them learning experience) we have found that change is a constant. Don't dwell.  Recognize it adjust and move forward.  That seems to be our outlook and has been working so far. So after we scrapped the customizer.  In retrospect it may have had some limitations as well.  take a look and let us know what you think.

Our most popular sign. Basically you no longer need a clock or watch anymore.  The how to tell time sign breaks things down into a very simple and easy to understand AM and PM functionality.  For the AM you will you use the coffee mug to energize you throughout the day and keep you jacked up on caffeine.  At night is when the real fun begins and within arms reach the wine glasses are ready. These are just suggestions feel free to reverse the AM and PM if you feel like drinking during the day or vice versa.

Your Welcome.,

While we are far from experts we have had some success with Etsy that we would like to pass along. We learned most of these tips and tricks by making mistakes, and a lot of them. So let our mistakes be your lessons. 


1. Photos Photos Photos!

Did I mention Photos? When we first started Denver Sign Design we definitely learned this lesson the hard way.  We took some poor photos with not the greatest lighting our first go around an the results reflected it.  We seeked out suggestions and kept hearing the same thing.  We had to improve our photos.  We went back to the drawing board and sure enough sales started to slowly trickle in. You can see some of our before and afters here.  Notice the difference that photos and staging make? Well we definitely started to see our sales increase once we found out that Photos were a major driving factor in our Etsy Shop.