Thanks, Ottawa! You’ve made this a pretty bangin’ Fall/Winter season!
The Winged Beast will rest soon… there is still time to get your last minute holiday orders in! But you will have to be fast.

Looking forward to 2012!

Cheers,

The Winged Beast (Stirling)

Next weekend is the beginning of the fall season for Winged Beast Outfitters. And, I’m kicking it off with a little trip out of town. I’m heading to Canzine 2011 in Toronto!
Details:
Sunday, October 23
Toronto – 918 Bathurst Centre
918 Bathurst St. @ 1 – 7 pm
There’s a $5 cover, but it’s worth it.

Everyone who reads this and lives in Toronto should come. And, tell a friend to come, too.

Here’s why: it’s been a few years since I’ve made a stab at the Big Smoke, but I think the timing is right, or rather I have the time (which ever). To sweeten the deal, I’ll be rolling out new stuff for the sellin’.

There’s this wicked toque, entitled simply “My Pants!”.

Click on this pic to find out why it’s so awesome.

There will be four new post cards. Some are new, and a couple are variations on old themes. Either way, I’m pretty happy with them. Look out for a limited run of Squid Menace posters.

And last but not least, there will be kitten army t-shirts. Finally, I got off my duff and made these. I had to after I got a lot of demand for them at the Wolf Island Music Festival.

I’m looking forward to this! Hope you are now, too.

Winged Beast Outfitters is heading to the Wolfe Island Music Festival August 5-6. It’s a great little festival on an island near Kingston. I was a vendor there last year, and it was an amazing blast. The line-up is pretty awesome looking. Personally, I’m excited about the Wooden Sky and Jenn Grant.

What will I have that’s new? Well, there will be new cardigans and some new t-shirt prints, as well as more up-cycled retro pillowcases and tea-towels.

New up-cycled retro pillowcases!

Also, a couple new one inch pins… and, of course the return of the classics!

So, if you’re in or near Kingston-town and looking for a great weekend of music: a) come to this festival and b) drop by my tent!

This Saturday, Winged Beast Outfitters will be doing a select engagement (likely my only show for the summer months!)…
So, come on down for the Idle Hands: Spring into Summer Craft Sale!
Here are the deets:
St.Luke’s Anglican Church 760 Somerset Street West (in the heart of Ottawa’s Chinatown).
From 10am till 5 pm, Saturday June 11 2011.
Admission is $2 with a chance to win one of our fabulous door prizes!
(Please note that this is a cash only event).

I’m going to have a few of my new Bear vs. Squid shirts. As well, as some other new prints and items. I’d come down just to see what I’m talking about!

Come for the great makers, then get some great food…mmm… Chinese food! or Korean… or, well, there’s lots to choose from.

See you this weekend.

This weekend, I’ll be doing a charity craft show this Saturday, March 19th.
@ Bronson Center –Mac Hall
10am- 5pm
211 Bronson Avenue – main floor

Proceeds from the show go to support:
The childrens aid society
Autism Ottawa
The Glebe Center
The Heart and Stroke Foundation

I will have some new stuff for kids. I also have some shirts and scarves on sale! So, come on by!

The first of my 2011 shows is next weekend in Montreal!

Here’s the skinny:

February 12th & 13th
11:00am – 6:00pm
105 St. Viateur West corner St.Urbain
St. Michael’s Church.

This is a good chance to get that someone special something amazing, because, you know…Valentine’s Day is imminently approaching.

Well, it’s time to get back at it.

After Christmas, I was planning to take a couple months’ hiatus from Winged Beast Outfitters. I used the time to get my new blog off the ground, Drop The Reference Bomb, off the ground. I’ve been writing about my other life as a librarian.

Anyways, my break was cut short. A couple shows have fallen into my lap this past week, and I couldn’t pass them up. So I’ve dusted off the screens and am getting ready to launch 2011… which is in fact the FIFTH ANNIVERSARY of the Winged Beast!

And since it’s the the fifth, I’m going to do some auspicious things. Auspicious, besides the usual hustlin’! New Website(soonish)! New designs and prints! A special limited edition anniversary print coming out this spring! More music festivals (maybe)!

Amazing, right? It’s a lot of new stuff to learn and a loooong to-do list. Still, I’m looking forward to a great year!

More on up coming shows later this week.

These are pics from the Christmas cards I made my family this year.

The cards were to contain my thoughtful offering to my family. This year I wanted to nix the whole gift thing and go with a donation in their names. I chose the charity Kiva because it provides a little bit more interactivity in how the donation is used. And, as a newish small-small business person, I get why Kiva’s microloans can be essential. In the spirit of things, I chipped in to support a Mongolian underwear merchant. Plug over.

Setting up my Esty account in 2007 was so straight forward and fast, that it won my heart. In fact, I would describe it’s simplicity as winsome. I had Winged Beast Outfitters’ web store up in about half an hour (discounting the time it took to do the first photos and the banner). I think this is probably the truth for most sellers and buyers on Etsy.

The site is growing. A recent NYtimes article on Etsy said that there are close to 400 000 sellers and that’s quite a herd in which I must stand out. The quirky tshirt market is already pretty saturated and capturing market share is tricky. On the other hand, Etsy expects to do about $400 million in transactions this year. So, there is definite merit in maintaining a presence here. It’s a big sea with a lot of sizes of fishies.

I’ve wonder if clearer pastures might not be a bad idea. I’ve casually investigated other selling options, such as Artfire (a clear Etsy knock off, but with a little more power when it comes to shop appearance). There’s also Big Cartel, which focuses exclusively on clothing and has a fairly powerful set of tools of customizing the look of your shop.

As a design-first sort of person, the ability to control the look and feel of my shop is a big draw. Etsy has only a few options by comparison. There is a catch. If you look at the pricing for Big Cartel you see that it’s scalable based on how much you want to build and expected volume of sales.

At the same time, you would need to maintain your monthly sales to pay for the site. Artfire has very similar price points. In both cases, the free site is a nice draw in, but the pay as you go attitude at Etsy seems to work for the amount I sell, right now.

It’s not just look-and-feel or pricing, it’s discovery. Etsy was more or less first to market for the craftster niche and has the benefit of recognizability and trust. Also, it’s had longer to build up the meta-data(tags and catagories and user inputted ‘like’) on its site. This makes searching for something more fluid between items, shops, and lists, as well as giving power to Etsy searches.

Big Cartel for instance has no option that links between stores through common themes, materials etc. other than the search function. This mean people searching for Robot themed shirts will land on one site and not be easily linked to other shirts of the same theme! This is not great. Not if the goal is to be stumbled across(which is a big chunk of the new artist/businesses customers).

No site will be perfect. I accept this. I like Etsy and for my level of sales it seems to work well. Over the next months, I think I will start up a site of both Artfire and Big Cartel using their free accounts. And, I guess we’ll see.

Business, like science, is a process of experimentation. So, if I’m gonna be in it for the quiche then I’d better get on that experiementin’.