Shop Talk

Talking Textiles builds a brand.

Singapore based Talking Textiles specialises in beautiful hand silk-screen printed home textiles including cushions, photo albums, notebooks and even furniture. And while their beautiful work does speak for itself they realize the importance of marketing and have implemented a strong integrated marketing strategy.

Over the past 6 months they have been refining their strategy and have done an excellent job in building their brand profile and increasing their orders. While they do operate independently, they have successfully integrated WeFew into their marketing tool kit in a few key places:

Packaging - Every Talking Textiles product comes with a 'Singapore Story'. This hang tag builds the story behind the selected print and gives important brand information including contact information and the URL for the Talking Textiles online shop at WeFew.  If your product is given as a gift will the recipient know who it is by or how to reorder? Will they buyer be able to brag to their friends about your work? 

Make sure your packaging not only promotes your brand, but where to buy it as well.

Website - Their newly launched website also builds the brand story and links directly to their WeFew shop. This is a great cost and time savings over building a custom online shop.

If you don't have an online shop on your website or blog link directly to your WeFew shop. If you already have an online shop be sure to include WeFew in your stockists section.

Lifestyle photography - Shopping and buying online is not like it is in a traditional high street shop. As the buyer can not touch and feel the item, they need prompts to help them visualise themselves owning, wearing or giving the item. Lifestyle photography is a great way to achieve this.

Consider updating your photography with a combination of warm and inviting lifestyle shots and basic yet detailed product shots. 

These simple activities combined with their overall marketing strategy have lead to a few recent successes for Talking Textiles including orders from Banyan Tree Resorts and a contract with a leading international media organisation. Congratulations!

What are your greatest marketing successes? Have you tried something and it failed? What tips can you share with our community?

Create discount codes for product or shop wide promotions.

Discounts are a great way to generate interest in your shop and stimulate sales. With a discount code you can

• offer a discount on a specific item for a limited time, such as a holiday promotion
• have a shop wide sale to clear out last the last collection's inventory before launching your new collection
• test price points
• create a reason to communicate with your database  

We'll share more details on these in later posts, for now, let's look at how to create discount codes. 

To create a code

1. Go to the Discount Codes tab in My Shop and select Create New. 
2. Enter the percentage of discount you would like to offer
3. Select what product or range of products you would like to apply the discount to
   • You can offer the discount one a single product or across your whole shop
   • At this time, you can not select multiple product to apply the discount to
4. Click on Create Code
5. A 12 digit code will then appear in the listing.  You can then post this code in your Shop Message or on the individual product detail pages. This is then a great reason to contact your database to let them know about the promotion and share the code with them.
   
   • The code must be entered exactly as it appears, including the hyphens, so include this when promoting your offer

If you no longer want to offer this discount you can simply deactivate the discount in the listing or even activate it again at a later time.

Also, let us know when you have a promotion as we can help by promoting it to the WeFew database.

Look out for following posts on how to use discount codes for marketing campaigns.  Or share your thoughts now in the comments....

Marketing Idea: Give products an online presence.

If you haven't seen them already check out the Karma and Sutra profile pages on Facebook.  These pages were set up to promote Casey Chen's KarmaSutra dolls and are a great example of giving your products an online presence, and personality. 

Just launched this week the duo only have a few friends at the moment, but it will be interesting to watch the numbers grow.  One 'friend' has already taken the opportunity to showcase how they use their dolls in a Kamasutra inspired photo shoot. 

Casey says he hopes that the dolls' new friends will write in with comments and questions in a bid to build product awareness and of course ultimately lead to more sales. 

WeFew hopes to help with this campaign and we have already posted the pages to our blog, Facebook group and fan pages.

How can you give your products an online personality?  Share your thoughts with our community - and let us know how we can help!

Communicate with your buyers via Private Messaging

Next in line for our new features is private messaging between you and your buyers.

When an order is placed you can use this feature to

• let the buyer know the status of their order
• request clarification on their order
• alert them of any delays
• follow up after the shipment is received to request feedback 

The buyer can also contact you with questions should they need to.  If a buyer sends you a message via WeFew you will receive an email with the message details and a link to log into WeFew to respond.

At this time all messages are linked to orders and can not be initiated on a general query or just because basis, but we plan to offer this in the future. 

This feature can also be used to offer bespoke and commission based orders.  We'll post more on this soon...  

A great way to test this feature now would be to send your past buyers a message and ask them to leave feedback for you on your profile page.  Give it a try and let us know what you think!

Add application products to your shop.

Once you've been accepted as a member you can easily convert the products from your application to items in your shop so you can start selling as soon as possible!

After you've set up your brand profile go to the Products tab in My Shop.  Here you'll see a prompt asking Would you like to add the product(s) from your application to your shop? 

Click Yes! Add them to my shop.

The products will then appear in your product listing as inactive - so you will need to edit each item to add more information like product description that help sell the product to consumers, shipping information, pricing etc.  When you're done save the product as active and your item will immediately appear in your shop.

If you select No thank you the option will disappear and you will not have the option to do this again later so if you aren't sure just yet leave it be and decide later.

If you've been accepted but haven't found the time to set up your shop give this feature a try and you'll be pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to start selling on WeFew.

New features and updates make selling even easier.

I'm thrilled to kick-off Shop Talk with the exciting news of site updates!   We've listened to your feedback and we've developed new features, streamlined some of the more tedious processes and made a few updates to the layout of the site too.  We hope that these changes will make selling via WeFew even easier!

The next time you log in you'll find...

• updates to the MyShop area to make updating orders status and adding/editing products easier
• a feature to create discount codes for a single item or shop wide
• private messaging so you  can provide improved customer service for your buyers and accept bespoke orders
• updated dashboard and navigation to allow with easier access to important information
• streamlined information on product listing and detail pages for easier viewing
• an easy way to add products from your application to your shop

You'll find detailed explanations of these in forthcoming posts. 

Please let us know what you think of the updates and continue to let us know how we can make WeFew even better for you.

Welcome to Shop Talk!

We've created this space to share tips on setting up and merchandising your shop, ideas to help promote sales, business advice and of course news on the new features we add to WeFew.net. And of course you'll find our inside news and developments too. 

It's also a place where you can share your thoughts with the WeFew team and your fellow designers. If you have some news or information that you would like to share here just let us know.