Dublin Meet Up, March 2011

Hi Anne-Marie here with the promised write up on the goings on at the Dublin meeting last Saturday, 5th March 2011. Mo and I have pooled notes. Please convo me if anything important has been left out or is incorrect.

(Apologies for purloining this photo from a previous post)

12 team members met up at the super funky, Cafe and Gallery, Foam. Some of us got so excited by the natter, we forgot to take photos. By 'we' I mean moi, sorry!

Apart from Mo and Myself, present were:Margaret of Irish Sea Glass, Carla of Ava Rose Designs, Eimear of Ella Green Jewellery, Fi of Patchwork Delights, Elisa of Elimare, Mary of both Queen of Cuffs and A Wish for You, Natalie of The Blue Sylph, Irina of both Kaftan.Sarafan and Project Sarafan, Diana of Diana Marshall Fine Art and Driven to Abstraction and Gionvanna of Tirabaralla. Everyone was buzzing with ideas and a lot of useful hints for selling were shared. Here are the hightlights:

PROBLEMS PHOTOGRAPHING
Most of us fessed up to having difficulties with our photos. A previous post about photography by Ruth of Nice Day Designs was sited as invaluable. It was suggested that a link to this post be more visible on the blog. Our Blog Editor, Brigitte of Purls of Colour, has suggested including the article in the link 'New to Etsy' over in the Category list, found on the left hand side of the blog home page. Any comments/feedback on this would be most welcome.

TREASURY VIEWS
I'm on a mission to discover why some treasuries get 100s of views. If you know the secret please do spill the beans!!! Fi suggested we set up a treasury team to make and promote our treasuries. This treasury game seems to be working for the European Street Team and others. It was also mentioned that everyone ought to promote our own and each other's treasuries by using the provided links to Facebook, Twitter, Kaboodle, etc, regardless of whether you are feautured or not. We are on a mission to get our treasuries on the front page and get our wee team noticed! Perhaps these ideas could be developed by commenting on the existing treasury discussion thread.

SKILLS SWAPSHOP
Elisa suggested we get together to trade skills, something she has done successfully with friends. She has followed up on this fab idea with this Skillz Swap thread. Why not pop over and check it out!

THE YEAR OF CRAFT
Everyone is keen to do something to link in with the Year of Craft 2011 and to promote Etsy in Ireland. Again, please post ideas in this Year of Craft discussion thread.

I suggested we link our current St Patrick's Day Treasure Hunt in as a good starting point. I followed up with the Craft Council who were very helpful and have added a listing on their site as well as tweeting our link etc. We hope to be able to add more events to their calandar, though we would appeal for anyone with experience writing press releases to lend assistance please????

Several of the group are keen to organise either an Etsy-only market event this year and/or take up a corner of an existing market under an Etsy banner. The topic of a pop-up shop also came up again. Interested parties are looking into possibilities. It was suggested that plenty of time be awarded this, ie looking at the run up to Christmas as the target. Again, perhaps this is something that can be followed up with a private discussion thread to enable those who can be and wish to be involved to find each other and to develop the ideas.

We discovered that both Natalie and Mary are skilled graphic designers. They discussed designing a funky postcard together to promote the team, one that could be left in places such as Dublin Tourism, hotels, craft markets etc. Ideas as to the purpose and distribution of such a postcard are sought, again via the discussion thread for the Year of Craft. (eg a competition/blog giveaway - eg send this card to x address to be entered in a draw?)

THINK TANK
The team still needs a 'think tank' to pull promotional ideas together and to write press releases etc. I don't wish to put anyone on the spot but there was some exciting potential among the attendees. Anyone with experience in Marketing, Pr, Press releases, Event Management etc who would like to be part of a Think Tank can please comment below or convo our Team Captain, Letizia of ooak.ie.

SUPPLIES
Box Displays were recommended as another supplier to add to our growing list of recommended suppliers

BLOG CONTRIBUTIONS
Mo asked for any craft event news from your area to be sent to her by covo please. Crafty News is posted every Monday. I also reminded everyone that your contributions to the blog (How Tos, Trade Secrets, Eyes Open Ireland or anything related and relevant) will be welcomed by Brigitte with open arms. Contributing to the blog is great exposure for your shop too!!!

Treasury of Attendees

After much natter and coffee the highlight of the meeting was the show and tell. Everyone agreed how cool it was to actually see and touch each other's beautiful handwork, having seen the photos. We really are a talented bunch!!! Some of us couldn't resist making a purchase.

The above treasury is my way of making up for the sorry lack of photos.

We agreed that we need to meet up more frequently to follow up on these ideas or just to share hints and tips. By the way, any team member is invited to the Dublin meetings or perhaps you would like to call a meeting in your own area.

Off to Dublin in the Sun

A sort of report on the proceedings in the Snail Bar on 14 August 2010
I headed down from Belfast to Dublin on a gorgeous summer's day, and this made getting up at 5.45am for the 8am train so much easier. After a pleasant train journey spent knitting and snoozing, I arrived in Dublin at 10am, and headed to my favourite yarn shop This is Knit. There, I looked at lots of beautiful yarn, and shopped...a little bit!

After time spent in shops, charity shops and St Stephen's Green, I was so hungry that I arrived in the Snail Bar early to tuck into a delicious brunch - the food is really really REALLY good and I can recommend it highly.

The first one to arrive after me was Elke, another German, who like myself has been living in Ireland for a long time (I think we arrived the same year). While we chatted on the terrace, more Etsians arrived inside, so we actually missed the first bits of conversation. However, we surely made up for it - often two conversations went on at the same time...

The following team members were present:


Fiona from Patchworkdelights
Angela from Artysmarty
Judith from ABoxForMyTreasure
Mo from Huggleknits
Tanya from TanyaMac
Hazel from Hazeldonnelly
Elke from dragonfly1760
an Etsian whose name and shop I didn't catch (sorry, please enlighten me!)
That would be Mary from A Wish for You (Etsy shop being rolled out sometime before Chrimbo!)
and Brigitte from purlsofcolour behind the camera.

Sarah from Redpossum and her daughter Poppy were also there, but had to leave early, so they are not in the photo.

Tanya also took some photos, and hopefully she'll add them to this article. Only one for ye girls - the rest were super fuzzy! (P.S This is me, TanyaMac, in green - in case you hadn't guessed already!) :P

Fiona from PatchworkDelights, Our Dublin Rep Angela from ArtySmarty,

Judith from aboxformytreasure and Mo from Huggleknits.

We had a great craft swap, and I now have some lovely fabrics, and bits for making more stitchmarkers! Mary (etsy shop on the way) brought in a whole bag of the cutest teddy bears she had once used for teaching. She also added lovely Etsy Ireland blog ribbons to them. The idea came up to leave the bears in prominent places to advertise the blog, or bring them on our journeys and take pics of them in front of famous landmarks a la Amelie.

So here's my bear...sunning himself at the Liffey!

However, although I took two bears, I couldn't just leave a bear behind in the train, so I gave my extra bear to a friend of mine who will display him prominently on her desk.

I had great fun planting my teds around the city - here's a couple of pics... ;)

Ted 1 fancied a spin to feel the breeze on his fur,

it was a very hot day in the city...

and Ted 2 had developed quite a thirst in my handbag!

(The tourists all went loopy when they saw him left there!)

I'm trying to recap what we discussed and decided, but if I have missed something, feel free to add it in the comments:

• 
  
  Sales are slow for everyone, and we had a good moan about it. However, to stay positive, we tried to focus on the Christmas business, and ideas floated around for an Etsy Ireland pop-up shop in Dublin sometime in December. A few people are looking into it.

• 
  
  Some people who are also selling on DaWanda talked a bit about that. Elke is really successful there, so she can be our DaWanda guru...

• 
  
  I brought up a few things relating to the blog. Letizia (Ooakie) reported that some people had encountered problems with the shop directory, and she and Francis (ShineSpinner) had investigated a few options in relation to changing the shop directory:
  1.) a long list of clickable shopnames on the side - simple and clear, but takes a lot of space on the blog
  2.) a link to categories and these link to Etsy pages with all the team members that do that. The disadvantage is that if you have not listed for a while, your shop is not likely to appear
  3.) The third way is to have a single link to another page with a full list of all shops (and a pic for each)
  
  Most people are happy with the drop down list as it is, and therefore Tanya will look at the code again to see if there is a glitch somewhere. Of all the options, number three was seen as the best, but the consensus was that it's a hell of a job to do, and it would be a huge page to scroll down to, unless we have more than one page or links to the different categories at the top of the page

• 
  
  We decided that if a shop that isn't one of the team or an Etsy shop wants to be added to our Craft Supplies page, we ask them for a 10% team discount.

• 
  
  The question of having some discussion forum on the blog also came up. However, since our Crafty Ireland team thread on Etsy is pretty quiet these days, we weren't too sure if we need one. I suggested we could use the discussion forum that is available on our Etsy Ireland facebook page, because that's already there. We didn't come to a conclusion on this, but Letizia and I will open a new Crafty Ireland team thread on the Etsy forums - after 114 pages it is about time...
• 
  
  Also Hazel brought in a copy of the Sunday Business Post, where our lovely Judith was surprised to find her lovely jewellery featured smack bang in the middle!  

It was great to see everybody, and hopefully more local meetings will be underway shortly.

I for my part stayed a few more hours in Dublin and spent some happy times at the Designer Mart at Cow's Lane (thanks to Hazel, who told me about it) and knitting at the Liffey.

However, it had been a long day, and when I got home, I had the earliest night in ages! When do I ever get to bed at 11pm???