2016 marks my 10th “Etsyversary,” and as many of you may have noticed, the Etsy shop update activity has been more sloth-like than that of a gazelle. It’s not that I don’t have a lot (a lot) of inventory, but with my move back into the daily-grind workforce, I simply don’t have the time to attend to it.
But there is that inventory. Enter: Wink Warehouse. A clearance outlet for all things Tiddleywink Vintage. No models, no DSLR, no studio, no retouching, no steaming, no mending, no frills. My goal here is threefold: rediscover the far side of my storage space, make back my investment, and get these beauties out into the world where they belong. And all in the most efficient way possible. (Yes, you must have an Instagram account in order to participate. Now all of you Facebook people know how it feels.)
I’ll post as frequently as I can but there’s no set schedule. I’m hoping to add new items every week. And as always, let me know if there’s anything specific you’re searching for. I just may have it!
Hello, Readers! I miss you so. Here I am, popping in to say, “Hi!” And to write about…well, a little insight into how my addled brain works.
I have a huge (to me, anyway) inventory of vintage goodies in my storage space. Some is listed in the shop, but I’d guess that about â…” to ¾ of it is known only to me. Which really isn’t the point of having it all, now is it? No. But getting it all cleaned, mended, steamed, photographed, measured, and listed…well, that’s rather daunting. Overwhelming, really. My plan of attack in the past has been rather wishy-washy: I grab the closest X number of items that fit a theme (Blouses. Aprons. Party dresses.) and try to haphazardly work from there. But…
My last big shop update was Everything Red. Didn’t matter what it was. I posted dresses, napkins, neckties. All red. My storefront looked like a bordello a bouquet of poppies. It was days of photography, and a few weeks to get it all listed. But it is, and it’s done, and I was feeling pretty accomplished. The plan was to next move on to Purple and Coral. But…
A few of my wedding dress listings expired. They tend to be pretty popular in the Search stats, but a wedding dress isn’t the kind of thing a gal can wear every day so they don’t sell as quickly as a skirt might. Now, I didn’t want to leave those listings in the ether, but I also didn’t want to break up my color blocking on the storefront. Etsy allows shop owners to move listings around to various pages, but it’s a wee bit of a pain. So? So I sat and thought about it and stressed about it didn’t do a dang thing at all. Which is not the way to sell vintage clothing. So…
New plan of attack: Relist the expired wedding dresses. Photograph a few “new” wedding dresses to add to the category (I have 6–7 of them lingering in storage). And then wash/mend/steam/photograph/measure/list Everything White. Great! A Plan! But…
White tends to be a warm-weather color, so while there’s at least one beaded cardigan in the mix, most of this stash is summery blouses and whatnot. And here in the States, it’s nearly Labor Day with crisp Autumn weather nipping at its heels. But…
I do love my AU and NZ customers. They (you) make up an inordinately large percentage of my sales. And I really do apologize from the bottom of my heart for the cost of shipping, but that truly is the cost of shipping to the other side of the planet. Most of you understand that. So, yay! An update for the Southern Latitudes! But…
I know me, and I know how much time I have available to dedicate to the shop. I do what I can when I can, but it’s not my day job. And if I take pretty much the month of September to list Everything White, I’m afraid that I won’t get to autumn wear until winter and so on. So…
With apologies to my AU and NZ customers: I’m going back to a Theme for just a short break. Wedding Dresses (also not the high season, but hey, people get married all the time) will interrupt the color blocking for a short time. After that: look for, say, Navy. And Black. And Olive. And as always, if you’re looking for something in particular, just ask. I’m always happy to go through storage to search for something special for you.
…It’s got to be a rose ’cause it rhymes with Mose.*
Holy smokes, it’s already been a week since my last post? And I promised you then that I would try to clear up some confusion over my assortment of online names. Taking a chronological trip in Ye Olde WABAC Machine… ::insert wooblie soundtrack and WavyVisionâ„¢::
Once Upon A Time, circa 1998 or ’99, I unofficially name my freelance company Ampersand Ranch. Technically, the full name is Ampersand Ranch Graphic Design and Prairie Dog Refuge. Which is a teensy bit funnier if you, like me, are living in Boulder, Colorado during the Great Prairie Dog War of the late ’90s.
It isn’t until 2006 that I officially register Tiddleywink (consciously misspelled to avoid run-ins with duplicate names, HA-HA) with the State of Colorado, to encompass both my freelance work and my first Etsy store.
Thanks to the gentle shoving encouragement of my techgeek friend Dave, I join Twitter in early 2007 (pre-SXSW). This is back when all Twitter users combined post an average of 20k tweets a day. So you see, I can have just about any username I want. And, since Twitter is purely social, I go with my now-purely-social name: AmpersandRanch. The frequent mistyping by a Twitterfriend of my username leads the change to Ampersandwich shortly after (obviously, before a Reply To shortcut becomes a feature) so Bryan should get all of the credit for that bit of portmanteau genius.
By 2009, Twitter is more business-friendly. I decide it would be a good time to switch my username to Tiddleywink to encourage my clients and customers to find me socially as well. Except that, however unlikely, someone has by this time registered my misspelled name! The account is inactive: no tweets, no followers, and following only 1 account. I send a message to the account holder, asking if she’d mind letting me have the name. I don’t hear back. I put in a request with Twitter to get the name switched over to me—they’re still small enough then that they will do this if you can prove cause—but I’m informed that there is a backlog for the service. Before my position in the queue (ticket #600496) comes up, Twitter has stopped assisting with inactive-account-name-takeovers.
Instagram comes along in 2010. It and Twitter are very good friends, sharing user lists and all, and having a common username between the two is logical. Tiddleywink is still being squatted upon at Twitter, so I open my IG account as Ampersandwich. I briefly change it to Tiddleywink but, fearing confusion between followers, I change it back.
Present Day: Instagram and Twitter are no longer friends. I rarely post to Twitter anymore, and while I have half as many followers on IG, the IG community is much more interactive. I decide it’s safe to change my IG username to Tiddleywink…only to discover it’s been taken. The account is private and the user photo appears to be a blurry, 1979ish snapshot of Prince Charles in a trenchcoat, but at least the account has posted some photos so I don’t feel as though my “rights” are being squandered.
As for ShoesAndPie and Winkorama…well, this post is already too long. See you next week! Maybe with a post about pie!
*If you don’t already have this song stuck in your head, you can watch the movie clip (a loose a-rose-by-any-other-name reference)Â here.
The World of Wink 