Wooden Personalized Jewelry Box
I've been making my living for the past few years making fairly
unspectacular cedar bird houses and feeders and selling them
on the local craft show circuit. I'd like to change my category to
somthing else and also start selling to shops. Bird houses are a
low profit item and they are difficult to wholesale because shops
don't usually carry them (not the kind I made). I'm wondering if
anyone has any thoughts on what might be a good category
for me to switch to. I have a full shop and can make just about
anything within reason except I'm not really a carver. Large
furniture is out because of lack of space. I have a lathe but I don't want to
get into drying green wood. Pretty much anything else is a possibility. I have
a book that says the top three most popular wood items in shops (in 1991) are
jewelry boxes, desk accessories and occasional tables. Someone
suggested to me that high quality Noah's arks would be a good seller.
Any opinions?
Also, how many different items should I have before I begin to approach
shops? Is it better to have a lot of different types of things or a line of
similar items?
-Wooden products for kids is always a big seller for me!!! Benches, flip stools, coat racks(standing or wall mounting)...let me
know if you do get into that in the future. I'm always looking to buy wholesale to add to my selections. I have a few sources
now, they're not yet up on my web site, however, only the personalized wooden products are.
-If you live in an area where there's much fishing, I've seen carved out
topographic representations of lake beds. Lightly burned or stained to
make the contours stand out more. I'd imagine the same thing might be
done with hiking trails in reverse. You'd need really good topo maps
to start and then have to decide how much to leave out. But tourists
on the Appalachian Trail, for instance, might very much like to have
a representaion of some segment they've walked part of. Or even seen
part of. The lakes one sounds like a better seller to me, though.
You'd have a market of all the people with houses or cottages on the
lake and, in the more popular ones, anyone who's fished or boated it.
Then again, I live in Minnesota and we're crazy about lakes up here.