Black Friday

I want to go on record and say, “I HATE BLACK FRIDAY!”  I know some of you black friday shoppers are booing me right now, but hear me out.

There we are, all gathered for a wonderful Thanksgiving feast. Three of my four daughters are there and I am in heaven, surrounded by my girls and friends. Dinner was great and now it is time for games. My 23-year-old daughter says, “Sorry mom, I have to leave.” What? No, I haven’t seen her in quite a while and I don’t even get to spend the day with her? Isn’t Thanksgiving all about remembering what we are thankful for and spending quality AND quantity time with family?

Nope, she had to leave because she had to open the store where she works at 5 AM. for the Black Friday Sale. Then other friends had to leave because Wal-mart starts their sale at 10 PM.

I must say, this really put a damper on my Thanksgiving!

Now the Christmas season is upon us and that leaves many of us merchants in a dilemma. How do we market our products without making the greatest season of the year all about ‘commercialism’?

I mean really! The Christmas marketing is now starting around Halloween.

I don’t want to take away the meaning of Christmas but I also must sell in order to pay my bills.  I really don’t know the answer, but my husband and I have decided we will NOT do any holiday marketing until December 1st.

I would be very interested to hear what some of you do to do your part in keeping the ‘commercialism’ out of your business. I am willing to reward you for your comments.

Anyone who leaves a comment on how they avoid commercialism will receive a discount code that will be good for 15% off non-featured items at Ye Olde Lantern Shoppe.

Have a very Merry Christmas

To lantern or Not to lantern, that is the question.

Hi everyone, sorry I have been neglecting my blog. I see it has been almost a year. How bad is that?

Signal lanterns

There is a lot going on with our little lantern shoppe. It started a few months ago with all of the storms and such. People were buying up lanterns like crazy due to the power outages or to just to be prepared. At the same time, China (where the Dietz factory is) was hit with storms and the factory shut down. It is not expected to re-start production until after the first of the year. Put all of this together and you get a lantern shortage. My supplier cut off all of the wholesale accounts.

I was left scrambling. How can I have a lantern shop with no lanterns? Do I shut down the site? I do still have the beautiful Kosmos lamps but it is called Ye Olde Lantern Shoppe.  So I started networking. If I couldn’t find any lanterns then I would have to close my site.

Well the site is still up. You know what that means? Yup, I found some lanterns. Ye Olde Lantern Shoppe now has nautical and mining lanterns and lamps.

These are great because my husband is a sailor. No I don’t mean he is in the Navy, although he was, but that he loves to sail. He grew up sailing on Lake Erie. So he was able to give me his ‘expert’ opinion. He is also very knowledge about the authenticity of many items, especially anything nautical and any kind of weaponry. Long story short, he gave his approval. So we are now carrying them in our little shop. If you get a chance, check them out.

I love many of these new lanterns and lamps but I can’t wait to get the hurricane lamps back.

Until next time.

Don’t stay in the dark, come into the light

Clipper ship lantern

Serena

Great Kerosene Lamps blog

Check out this information on Kerosene lanterns. Chapter two has some detailed maintenance tips.

Kerosene Lamps for Beginners; chapter one.

I would like to know what you use your oil lantern or lamp for. Does it sit on your mantle or in your barn? Do you use them regularly? Are they strictly for emergencies? Let me know how you use yours.

Dietz Millennium Cooker Lantern

Check this out! This is our product of the month.

I have been looking for reviews for you guys. If you have any, please post them.

Until then…

Time Management

Hello everyone,

Well as you can see, I have been absent for a few days. Things have been a little crazy in my world. I had a sick kid at home and  this week my husband is working in the evening.  So someone was in the house milling about from morning till night. This makes it hard for me to get some things done.

Although I have worked from home before, I seem to have forgotten the ‘golden rule’ – organization and planning. I was reminded when I read this post from another blogger. There is some good information in the post.  Don’t get me wrong, there are many good tips out there. Just do a search on time management and see what comes up. But this one caught my eye. It made me say, “oh yeah, I forgot about that.”

Motivation is also an issue. When you have something to do that you are not looking forward to, it is easy to find other things that are a bit more important. Check out this post for some great idea to keep your workspace ‘work ready’ and keep you motivated.

So check out these posts and let me know what you think. Oh yeah, don’t forget to vote on a business card design.

Until then

I Need Your Help

I need your help. John and I are trying to decide on a design for our business cards. We can’t seem to make up or minds. Both designs have pros and cons. So I figured I would put it to a vote.

Please check out the two designs and let me know what you think. Any vote will be helpful but if you could tell me why you like or dislike a particular design, I would appreciate it.

Ok, here they are: Design #1                                         

 

This is similar to some brochures we have done up to put around town.

 

 

Design #2

This design uses the  avatar I have created for different forums.

Thanks for your help.

Product of the Month

So we decided that we wanted to ‘feature’ a product every month as part of our marketing strategy. I learned how to add the Featured product page and add it to my builder. Then came the decision…Which product did we want to do?

For me it was a little easier for the month of December. The Dietz Millennium Cooker Lantern is just cool. My family loves to camp. We are not fair-weather campers either. If we have set the time aside to go camping, we camp. Come rain, snow or high winds, you will find us snuggled down in our tents or bundled up by the fire. So there we are with the rain and wind trying to keep the flame high enough on our camping stove to heat up something to eat.

Generally, hunger will demand we move the cooking to the campfire. Don’t get me wrong, there are somethings that just taste better when cooked on a campfire. But soup is NOT one of them. So I was very excited when I found out about the Cooker Lantern. It is so easy and it doesn’t matter how much the wind blows or the rain falls, the flame stays steady. You just pop off the top of the lantern and pop on the grill and there you have it. A wind proof camp stove. How cool is that?

The second reason goes back to my girls. Of our four girls, three of them ‘never’ know what to get their dad for Christmas. What a cool and unique gift for the guy that doesn’t seem to want or need anything.

To be completely honest, we haven’t had the chance to test it out yet. But I am really looking forward to putting it to the test.

So that is why we chose the Dietz Millennium Cooker Lantern for December. Now let me issue a challenge to all you readers. If you have a Cooker Lantern, I would love to hear your experience. Good, bad or indifferent, I want to know what you think.

Until then…

Learning Curve

As I start adding my blog and website to the various directories, I am finding it difficult. It seems to be taking me more time then it should to just get the basics down.  I realize that I know very little about widgets, html codes, wiki, tags and the like.  In the last hour I have been able to semi-successfully add my blog and my website to one directory. How sad.

To all of you out there that are older, trying to break out in the e-commerce world. You are not alone. Be encouraged. Read the help files and the ‘getting started’ and any other tutorial the site has. It may have taken me a long time to get the first submission done but I sure learned a lot. With any luck, the next one will be easier and the next even easier. For now…I quit. I will begin the process again tomorrow.

Lessons Learned

Hello all,

Well we got our first  lantern sale on our website, along with it some lessons learned.

First lesson learned was this: when you move, don’t just change your address on the website of your credit cards. Call them! We recently moved and I did everything like I was supposed to. I changed our address on all the website and put in a change of address card. But when I went to open our merchant account I found that there was a fraud alert on my cards. Needless to say, it has been an experience. Now because of the alert for the next six months my payments have to be held for 7-10 days before they post to my account.

Second lesson: Make sure you check your merchant account. My first customer got an error every time she tried to submit her order. After several phone calls to tech support and to the new customer, it finally went through. WOO HOO

Third lesson: if you are using a merchant account that you have to transfer your money, make sure you do it directly after the sale so it has time to reach your account before you have to pay your supplier.  

Fourth and final lesson: Make sure you double-check your entries into your builder for your costs including any drop ship fees. I knew I had a 10% drop ship fee but only entered my costs.  So when the order was placed and sent to my supplier, the amount I had calculated and the amount I actually owed my supplier for the lanterns, did not match.

Even with all the problems that popped up, I was very excited for our first order.  Not only did it give me a chance to fine tune some things but it WAS AN ORDER. 

Tomorrow we will talk about our selection for product of the month.

Until then…

Hello world!

Hello and welcome to my new blog. Please take a moment to read the about us page and get to know me a little bit. As many of you will be able to tell, I am a newbie. So please bear with me and don’t be afraid to let me know when I have crossed a line. Let me tell you about the name of this blog “Into the Light.”

The tag line for our website is “Come out of the dark.” So the phrase “into the light” just seemed the natural choice for a blog that would talk about the website.

For this first blog I would like to tell you a little bit about why we decided to pursue an on-line business. If you read the about us page you know that my husband works for the US Postal service and we have 3 kids in college. The decision is really two-fold. If you know anyone that works at the post office you will understand when I say it is not a great place to work. I am sure there are some out there that are nice but I haven’t found any yet. So the first part of the decision was to create income so that John could leave the post office without having to worry about money.

The second reason is our girls. We want to be able to give them a helping hand as they start their own lives. Understand, we do NOT believe in giving hand outs. We have tried to teach our girls to be independent and self-sufficient. But it is really nice to go visit and take them shopping for the things that they cannot afford on a student salary. Not to mention our baby will be going to school 3000 miles away. I want to be able to bring her home occasionally, at least for the holidays.

So I lied, there is really three reasons. The last reason is kind of related to the second one. Our baby will be leaving soon. That will leave John and I by ourselves. Both John and I are veterans. As a matter of fact we met at the EM club while we were both serving in the Navy.  John was aircrew so he got to visit a lot of beautiful places in the world. I on the other hand stayed state side for my whole tour. There are many places that John would like to show me and I would love to see. If we have a successful on-line business we can travel all over the world and I can still ‘take care of business.’

So there you have it. That is why we chose to start an on-line business. Have a Blessed day.