Sometimes You Use What You Have

     I have mentioned before that I do a lot of work in my room. When I was packing up purchases from the live sale it was not different. I set up a wrapping station on my bed. I don't have a lot of space anywhere in my house, and finding a full flat surface is tricky. I actually set up my sales on my bed. Camera and all. If I had a room with a large open table, or even some small empty shelves, it might be easier. But sometimes you have to use what you have. 

      While I was endlessly packing stuff after the sale I ran short of packing materials. I had to go out and get more bubble wrap and I ordered boxes from USPS. Though I was not going to make people wait for USPS to send me more boxes, they take a while to be delivered. So while I was out getting more bubble wrap I looked for more boxes. Walmart was all out of any reasonably sized boxes. Of course. So I decided that some pencil cases, which I knew very well fit dolls in them, inside a poly mailer would be the way. So 3 people are going to get getting very pink packages in the mail. And it amuses me. The pencil cases were not much more expensive than the boxes would have been. I like free boxes but when that is not an option I think I like pencil cases. 

      Wednesday I finally made it to the post office to get the first big round of packages shipped out. I love my postmaster. He knows me, greets me by name and asks how I am doing, and he never gives me any crap about how many packages I am sending out. You would think that would be a universal thing but I have heard from other people that the postal workers at their local post offices will whine and complain about packages. I don't understand that. People mailing things are keeping the post office in business. Anyway, my postmaster, Bill, is awesome. He loves that my packages also come pre-done and all he had to do is scan them to check them in. After we got through the endless scanning (35 packages went out on Wednesday) I took my incredibly long receipt and said I would be back with more soon. Bill said I won customer of the day. I have no idea what my prize is.
     So finally the live sale is starting to wrap up, though not quite yet. Breyerfest is starting to kick off and I am not ready. I don't know how into it I am. I don't know what I want to do, if I want to do anything, or how it all works. I am tired too. The endless rain we have been having makes me tired. The temperatures that swing 20 degrees up or down from day to day make me tired. The higher humidity we have been having since the rain started makes me tired (and a little sick feeling at times).
    I have been mulling over the way the live sale went and trying to figure out how I can make them run more efficiently. Everything I do I want to figure out how I can make it more efficient. It's a major life goal for me. How can I make the dolls faster, or more of them faster? How can I maximize the time I have in the day? How can I make the live sales interesting and also shorter? Here are some new things I learned this time around:

People really love the "catalog" that I put out ahead of time. I heard that it was a good way to decide ahead of time what they wanted to try for.

Doing share prizes during the live takes way too much time and I just can't do it anymore. I spend the first 25 minutes of the sales trying not to miss anyone, probably doing a bad job, and furiously scribbling names on bags while simultaneously trying to keep them alphabetized. It's too much and takes too much time. So next time I will either not do share prizes, which sort of bums me out because I love prizes, or I will just check the list right after the sale ends. Facebook will tell you who shared your post. Some of them I won't be able to see because of privacy settings. There is nothing I can do about that. I have a bit of time to decide if I am doing away with share prizes all together or just grabbing the names off the list at the end. But they will no longer be during the live.

Kylee Parks had some super ideas for her S.T.A.G live sale. I don't know if I have the skills to make a printable PDF schedule ahead of time (or at all) to show roughly when different items will come up for sale during a live, but I already decided the catalog would happen again and I already made a schedule for myself. Maybe I can make a schedule that I share with people. Not sure I can make it printable, but I can make a schedule I think.

     My goal, as always, is to make the live sales fun for everyone who comes. I hear over and over that people have a good time. That makes me happy. I know very well that when I do those sales I am performing for an audience. But I assure you, I am exactly like that in person! My other goal is to be quick, I have been to a lot of different kinds of live sales that drag on and on and I get really bored and want to leave them. I want people to keep coming to mine! So I will keep on doing my best to make them interesting and not too long. I will keep looking for ways to make them easier for people to shop. Is anyone interested in a single post on how to host/run a live sale? Sort of like a time-line?I wrote a how-to-host-a-show guide, which was written like a wedding planner. I wrote it around the time I was planning my wedding, lol. Anyway, if there is interest I will do a guide. If everyone is sick of me talking about my live sale(s) I will stop for now. But I have not yet done any doll work yet this week so I don't have much to talk about. Soon maybe I will have something interesting to talk about with the Breyerfest show. Maybe I can just talk about the tough competition.