Hi everyone!

It's been a while since I updated my blog... I started a few drafts... felt like I was talking to myself a bit too much and then didn't end up publishing anything.

Anyway, today's blog post is about No Black Friday Sales.

I know it's one of the biggest shopping events of the year, and usually that's when a lot of savings can be made. Even I shop during this event, but for things that I really need. However for many small businesses such as myself, we don't really price ourselves with huge margins. All our items are slow made and Black Friday sales actually hurt us more than help us as a business, because it's training a consumer habit. It is not sustainable for small business to run frequent sales, and if anything it sends out the message that it's ok for us to discount our work, sell it at a loss and so on (and it really isn't ok - because it is certainly far from the truth).

When you purchase from a small business, you are supporting our skills, our work and in turn we are able to produce higher quality wares and make improvements to what we have on offer. Without this support, it is incredibly difficult to make anything good. For instance, if I were to make a collection of all $20 or less earrings I certainly could, but would it be anything good? Probably not. They will all be really generic, boring, nothing different - because that's what the price range commands - something really quick or big batch to make up for the time and materials used. By pricing my work correctly (or close to ideal), I can still make do without losing an arm or leg, and continue to make great things without worrying about what others think about my pricing model.

Having said that, I am running two promotions - free express post upgrade and free gift with purchase over $60 (until 21 Dec 2022). Postage is not free. It's actually a cost that I am absorbing - out of pocket - as an incentive to make everyone happy and receive your goods before Christmas. Postage is actually never free, and as a small business with orders every now and then but still not frequent enough, it means that I am generally very little or not getting postal discounts in some cases.

Secondly, I mentioned in the past that I do not offer Afterpay as they take 7% from the seller, as a service charge. If I were to offer Afterpay, it will mean that all my prices across the board will rise a minimum of 10% to cover for this, and that is not affordable. I don't want to raise my prices because consumers are willing to pay a convenience fee - it is a bit counter intuitive I think, and to be honest, the price rise still does not go into my pocket, it goes straight to Afterpay. This cycle does not support small business, and goes back to feeding into training a consumer habit of buy now pay later.

So in conclusion, I still have things in my Sale section. I am running the two promotions above, and I package your orders with a lot of love and care. Each parcel is personalised and that is something you will never get from a big company.

Thank you for reading this far and even if you choose not to shop small this Christmas, I still thank you anyway for your support of small business and handmade - help us to spread the word and let others you know - like, "did you know Afterpay charges their merchants like 7% of every transaction?" - and spread some awareness :) We will all be here when you are ready to shop with us and we really do do a happy dance when we receive an order.

Happy shopping!