Happy New Year!

What a great holiday season we had, very busy. In fact the last 6 months have been crazy. The website has done well from the restructuring and I have been able to get new woods added. Still need some pictures and descriptions for a few, but overall we are progressing well. I will also be adding a way to order a gemstone ring with an inlay in the next few weeks as those are the majority of my custom orders.

I wanted to thank everyone for your great support and comments. I hope you all have a great 2013!

Website Restructured

Well another busy few months have gone by and I have accomplished quite a bit. The website has had another facelift and is restructured to be easier to navigate and order a ring. I have added a premade ring section for immediate sales and created a flow for creating your own ring. I am pretty happy with this design and will probably stick with it for awhile. Some of the old links on this blog will no longer work, but I will get to that when I can.

I actually had a ring accepted by the NC Museum of Art for their Art of the Auction and that went very well. We had a great time at the auction and got to see a lot of great pieces.

Over the next few months I will be focusing on adding some new woods and designs. I want to thank everyone for their continued support and I am looking forward to a fun and busy summer.

 

Hectic Holiday Season!

I want to thank everyone for a fantastic and insanely busy holiday season. I have just caught back up and am able to focus more on the other aspects of the business. I’ve actually had to stop advertising for a little while because of how busy we are. I have had about 5 or 6 offers from retailers to start carrying my rings in their stores. Unfortunately I am not currently structured in a way that makes that easy, so that is my next project.

For the next few months I am going to be restructuring the business to be more fluid and consistent as well as for allowing a better retail environment. The good news about what I plan on changing is not only will it allow for the rings to be sold in stores more easily, it will actually allow for more creativity in my designs because I will have an outlet for one of a kind designs. The website is going to go through some major changes in the next  couple of months as well and hopefully a more consistent workflow will also evolve from this.

I should be updating the blog fairly regularly now and again I want to thank everyone for their support.

Ready for the Holidays

The past two months I have been trying to get my list of things to do to the website completed so I could focus on the upcoming holiday season. I am happy to say that I have accomplished quite a bit in September and October. I was able to get the Gallery up and a lot of rings and options added to the site.

For the Natural Collection I have added three new wood types; Teak, Tulipwood, and Kingwood. I have also added several new types of inlays for the Inlay Collection;  Lapis Lazuli (Fine), Metal Inlay, Paua Shell. I have FINALLY gotten rid of the generic birthstone pictures and have actual ring pictures for all of the Gemstone & Birthstone Collection. In addition to the new pictures I have also added an option to choose the setting material of either silver or gold, plus Moonstone, Opal Mosaic, and Opal.

The Unique Designs section also received a nice boost from adding new designs and revamping the old ones with new options. I wasn’t happy with how “Water” was represented so I actually changed the design to include a moonstone and added the option to choose many different types of stones. I did the same with “Air“. I also added three new designs; Mystic, Tri-stone, and Tri-wood.

For the Various Items & Options section I was able to add the option of cursive script for inscriptions and two new box types; Elegant Wood Ring Box and Elegant Double Wood Ring Box.

I can safely say that the website is now pretty much complete in structure and now I can focus on making the rings and growing the business. I will now be able to add new designs and woods in a more scheduled and natural manner. Having to do all this extra work these past two months along with having the busiest two months of orders has been rough, it will be nice to focus only on the orders for the holidays.

To help save some time I actually ordered parts for a ring dryer I designed in July, but it took over two months for me to get them from the manufacturer. I have to say I thoroughly love it now that I have it put together as it saves me a ton of time. I will be ordering more parts to make a second one in a few days.

Overall I think I am in pretty good shape for what I suspect will be a very busy November. I wanted to thank everyone for their continued support and wish you all a happy holiday season. I will be taking the last week of December off, but will try to get a new post up around the new year.

Very Busy August

It has been really busy this past month. Not only with orders, but with getting new things added and the website updated. I added four new wood types Koa, Red Cedar, Macassar Ebony, and Olivewood. I have a plan to add eight more in September, in fact I already have some made and photographed. I just have to find the time to write the descriptions and add them to the site, time is the one thing I always need more of. I also added an Inscription option and a new wood ring box. Both proved instantly popular as I have already received several orders with them.

This next month is also going to be exceptionally busy. Not only do I plan to add eight additional new woods in September, but I also want to finish up the Birthstone/Gemstone section. I plan to have all the pictures of rings up this month (no more generic gemstone pictures) along with a few surprises. I told myself I would have the website complete in structure before December and I am hoping I can get there a few months early. I still have a lot of work to do in that area though. I am trying to get a Style Guide together and I will also be adding a Gallery as well. If I can complete everything I want to this month I will be set up nicely for what I am sure is going to be a busy holiday season.

I want to end this entry by thanking everyone for their continued support.

Revamped Birthstone Ring Section

I completely redid my birthstone ring section. The lack of options and the higher starting prices was really affecting the orders and also stifled the whole section. My ultimate goal is to include as many options as possible on as many rings as possible so people are able to freely create a ring they love. This will allow for happier, more satisfied customers and it will also save me time with custom orders.

I lowered the starting prices and added the smaller stone sizes to make them more affordable and varied in the options. It’s been something I have wanted to do for a while now, so today I finally bit the bullet and sat down to do it. Adding the options and calculating the new prices took awhile, but I think it will be worth it. Not only in new sales, but in customer satisfaction and in an opened up category that will generate more enthusiasm.

New Workshop

It’s been a busy few weeks and I upgraded my workshop this weekend as well. Had to build a couple of new workbench’s that will help with my workflow. The time that will be saved was definitely worth the investment in time and money now. I now have a very smooth workflow that will allow me to not only be more productive but enjoy my work more.

My workshop now has five different areas. A storage and cutting area that allows me to store my wood and cut the raw material as needed. A “blank” area where I make my raw ring forms. A shaping area where I do all the ring shaping. A finish area where I do all the ring finishing and finally a package/shipping area where I finish it all up. By setting up my workshop into an actual workflow I will be much more organized and productive.

I also just got in about 15 more wood types so look for more woods to be put on the website as I gradually make rings and add them. I wanted to thank everyone for their support and I will post more soon.