Craft-Mart Club

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     Have you ever wanted to take your hobby and make it self sustaining or turn it into a business to bring in extra family income? Craft-Mart Club can help you do that. Craft-Mart Club is a local organization that allows crafters to buy and sell or trade products with other crafters for the purpose of growing each others businesses. To help you understand us better. I would just like to share a couple of experiences with you: 

Story Number One:

     When I was new in this business, I had an idea or goal to not only make and sell my own handiwork, but to make it into a larger business. I realized that to do so, I needed to sell more than just my own crafted products, so I started looking for other suppliers. Naturally, I turned to the internet, where I found a company in India that advertised that they were the E-bay or Amazon of India, something like Alibaba is for China. I thought that sounded good. So I went through their website and found some stuff that I thought would be a good test order. Things like wall hangings with various kinds of pictures and designs. I ordered 4 things, a couple of round wall hangings with designs and a square wall hanging with a picture of an elephant with some smaller elephants in patterns along with some stuff called Radiki that was inexpensive but looked interesting. They said these wall hangings could also be used for beach towels, picnic blankets, or bed covers. The wall hangings looked like they were made out of terrycloth or other good material and maybe some hand stitching or something. Which interested me because I thought that would be a nice family type product. I'm sure you can guess what happened. After weeks of waiting and trying to track the package with the company, it finally arrived pretty worn by the trip. I opened it excited to see the new merchandise I would have to add to my business stock or inventory. I kid you not, the square pictured wall hanging looked like it had been cut out with a machete. The edges were all crooked and there was no way I could sell it. I was embarrassed to even show it to anyone let alone sell it. The round wall hangings looked better but were made of a material more like what bed sheets are made of and the designs were just cheap prints not worth much either. Of course nothing like what I was hoping for or expecting. Please read on to Experience Number Two.

Story Number Two:

     Now I want to share another similar experience with you that I had with a local crafter in my area. She makes and sells fantasy figures and related objects including wands that look similar to the ones in the Harry Potter movies. I purchased 3 wands from her as a test order like I did with the India Company. She normally sells the wands for $10.00 each but she agreed to sell these 3 to me for $25.00 about 20% cheaper than her regular price. I included these wands in my stock of merchandise for my popup store I run on Saturdays.

Create your own pop-up store!

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Story Number Two Continued:

     I had good success with them and was able to sell the 3 wands at $12.00 a piece for $36.00 in total. A gain of $11.00 in a couple of weekends with a mark up of about 33% a typical mark up for a retail business without a lot of overhead.

Not bad I thought. So, I contacted her again and purchased 10 more at $7.50 each of which I have sold 6 more. She had also looked at my website and was interested in my wooden hammer and pegboard toy that I make.

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So, I traded one with her for a couple of more wands. So in total I have sold 9 wands for $108.00 with a gain of $38.00 more than I would of made just selling my own crafted goods and I have 6 more wands to sell in the future. I feel this opportunity is just getting started. Over time this could prove to be a very fruitful relationship and what I consider to be the most important benefit, we've formed a new friendship something that never would of happened with the India situation. The wands look good and are of good quality. They go well with my own merchandise because I sell some toy products, like the one we traded for, and the wands are toys that appeal to older children and youths. So over all this has been a successful venture for me and I think for her as well.

These two experiences help you to see how the club benefits club members.

To learn more about us or our club please proceed to our ABOUT page. Thank You