After a brief hiatus, Your Fan Club is back open again as of this morning. I decided to close up shop & reevaluate everything during the holidays.
Your Fan Club was actually a pretty big source of stress for me in 2014. Once I factored in labor (there was, surprisingly for such a small, cheap item, a lot of work involved in making each pin) I was barely making any money from the sales, even though producing the pins was taking up a whole lot of my time. I also had a lot of supply-and-demand issues. My acrylic supplier got backed up around the holidays and even after I started paying rush fees & expedited shipping upgrades I *still* didn't get the supplies quick enough. UPS lost one of my overnight packages and USPS lost a next-day air one. I have the worst mail luck, I swear!
I realized that I'd have to close up shop or make a drastic change. Either stocking a ton of supplies so that I'd always have them on hand, which wasn't financially feasible, or coming up with an entirely new way to make the pins. So with some of my Flapper Doodle Christmas sales I invested in a 1" button machine. I've wanted one for a long time and I'm so excited about all of the new products I can make with it! But most importantly, I can make fan club buttons!
I think that most people who looked at Your Fan Club assumed at first glance that they were buttons to begin with (and then probably scratched their heads and wondered why a button would be $6) These are the same size, same design, same selection, just a different material. They're WAY easier for me to make, and, because they're also way cheaper to make, I get to sell them for only $2 a pop!
And here's the best part -- because I can afford to keep a healthy stock of supplies on hand at all times, these will be shipping super fast now. Like usually within 1 business day. Yipiee!! And shooting new product photos also gave me the opportunity to do a slight tweak in my branding as well. I have a new dark chalkboard background that really makes the buttons pop off the screen, and I'm carrying that texture over into my logo as well.
A lot of my products and projects evolve over time, and although sometimes the road can be bumpy I'm always thrilled when that "ah-ha!" moment eventually happens and everything falls into place. I've really loved the idea of "your fan club" ever since it first occurred to me, and I'm so glad that I found a solution that allows me to continue working on a project that I love without the accompanying stress :)
