Along with so many others here and other online forums, I too know all about slow online sales. It’s nothing you’re doing wrong, it’s just a huge number of vendors and too few buyers with too little money. There’s also demographics at work. Those people with bags of disposable income who bought like crazy on Etsy and eBay and their ilk in the past 10 or 12 years are now married with kids, mortgages and other spending priorities, and there haven’t been enough potential buyers to replace them. There’s also been this disastrous economy of the past few years and we’re still not out of the hole. On the other hand, if nothing else, even in a crappy economy people still have to buy gifts. The trick is finding those people.

I still think face-to-face contact is of primary importance and building personal trust in an ongoing relationship with customers. It also puts you in the way of finding customers “addicted” to your style. It’s taken years, but I have several of those. It’s not just women. I have guy customers too, who like what I make for them. However, it took me four years of Saturday markets with many weeks of zero sales to barely covering the table to build that tiny customer base. But they’re “mine”. These people won’t go anywhere else, even if I tell them where they can get something if I don’t happen to have it in stock — they’d rather wait or even pay a little more to buy from me. That’s gratifying.

Actually, you could use your initials — and call the business Dewdrops.com or something like that. And then the tag line could be some kind of play on fine jewellery, fun jewellery, sparklies… by Diane E. W… fill in the rest of your name, with the “drops” part of the name connoting drop earrings. Maybe you could have a picture of drop earrings on your card… Swap some jewellery to get a graphics buddy to make you a picture of beads and jewellery with little dewdrops and the sun coming through crystals… I dunno, something like that?

Barbara

I don’t really have a specific gemstone that I use plus I also use seed beads, glass beads and glass focals in addition to the semi-precious stones. I was originally going to stay with only natural stones but got side tracked by sparklies (crystal beads). I also know of a few businesses that use the names of stones for their business name. My favorite stone is Azurite but I’m not sure a lot of people are aware of that or it’s value as a semi-precious gemstone.

I thought about using my initials (maiden name) but DEW doesn’t exactly flow. I get told one place that I shouldn’t use the word “jewelry” in my name or use my name and Rockhound doesn’t evoke images of fancy jewelry.

I am still very stuck. I like making the jewelry but I don’t wear much jewelry or even get interested in buying jewelry so I’m sort of out of touch with my target market.

I really wanted to come up with a good name before December so I could start selling on another site (besides Bonanza, where I’m getting no where fast with no sales in the past year). That’s another story entirely. I’m so frustrated and feeling like I want to just give up but I know I don’t really want to do that. Any help would be appreciated.

Elena, hope you have found your business name. I feel a little funny that I seem to have hijacked your “thread”.

Then the problem with “Diane’s Designs” is… designs of what?

Why don’t you use your maiden name for your business? You can use any other name. There are a ton of Barbara MacDougall’s out there in the world. I was amazed what a common name it is but http://www.barbaramacdougall.com was available. Your name is your name. Just make sure that you look carefully at whatever you choose when it’s all run together into one word as in a website address to make sure it’s fairly readable and doesn’t give you a nasty surprise when certain letters run together. Readability is also why you would want to stay away from apostrophes.

Is there a specific stone you like or that you mostly use, or a primary characteristic or colour of that stone that as soon as people hear it, they think of the stone or jewellery? There are businesses I know of that use their primary high end stone as the name of the business, even though they carry all kinds of other stones and silver findings, as well as finished jewellery. The point, though, is that their business name exudes connotations of high end and superb quality.

The main thing is that whatever name you use, you have to market it nonstop.

Have you tried saying “Beadiality” out loud? It doesn’t actually indicate “personality” at all — as it’s not “personiality”. What about dropping that first “i” and going with Beadality? That has much more of a ring (so to speak) to it and is much easier to say.

Just a thought. I will be very interested to hear what other people think.

#1) was the flaw in how the name is interpreted into the “what” the business does. I only make jewelry and its strictly glass or crytal bead necklaces and bracelets on either beading wire or memory wire and earrings on simple earwires. My Yahoo! website was listed in Google and other search engines that sent me many many phone calls, ALL from customers who were looking for beads and not one single jewelry call in 2 years. (so clear to me now, but no one has ever pointed it out).

#2). Having a 20 letter name (that has to be written as all one word for the email and website) makes printing promo or ad materials quite a challenge when it comes to having the actual name with spaces, stay the focal point and trying squeeze it in two more times for the website and email address and still be visible to the naked eye. I also did not take into consideration just how many times that I would be writing or typing the name of my website and email or how tiny the spaces usually are to write them in.

The new name will not be much shorter this time. I will use a “slogan” and “quote” to describe what I offer and to explain the name at the same time.

I would very much appreciate any advice and input on the name choice which is BEADIALITY (I combined the words beading and personality).

“Show off your…”
B E A D I A L I T Y
“with handcrafted, beaded jewelry designs to”
“Bring out the Bling in Your Personality”

I have my “real” job listed, I have my artwork there, and I have my jewellery. I have my original line of PMC flowers and leaves which I had called Gifts from the Garden right from the beginning. I then came up with Artefaccio, which is kind of an umbrella for everything else (mostly the one-off stuff) and which is also the name I use for my blog and any other internet presence (deviantArt, etc.). If I get any more into hammering stuff, then I will probably come up with a name for that.

The point is things change. As you experiment with new and different techniques over time your direction will change. Keeping it simple right from the beginning and allowing for potential lines and directions makes so much more sense.

Don’t worry if people don’t understand your name at first — it’s absolutely true that the more you can draw people in by talking with them and personalising the connection, the better they’ll connect with you and your jewellery.

In view of your further explanation, I think you should go ahead with your name as you came up with it. It seems like you’ve really thought about it and considered it from quite a few angles. And it’s a neat name – there’s nothing wrong with a name with a bit of whimsy to it. It endears people to it, and draws attention.

It makes me feel closer to her and Dad so I went with Rosehills Jewelry and rosehilljewelry on EBay. I had my business cards, booth banner and just about everything else made to reflect that name.

One aside and that is the fact that I made mink teddybears for years and sold at fairs, special orders and on EBay and the name I used then was Appalachian Bears. I quit making bears when my parents became a full time job to care for and I consulted withy EBay who gave me all the information needed to change my EBay account to my new line of business.

I hope this helps even if I know zilch in Italian.