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Yet another way for small businesses to lose money! Don’t think we can afford that. Who is it that dreams this stuff up?
You sure sound like you had your hands full last night. I hope you were not badly injured by all those stampeding little hooves.
If I can say (and I hope no one throws anything at me for this) but anyone who managed to get one from this batch really shouldn’t even try for one from the next batch. Eveyone deserves a chance at ONE of thes pretties.
Yes. Thank you. Those who managed to get one this time, please do not order any from the next batch (which will be a ways off) until everyone has gotten a first one.
And, we suspect , once again, that the site was crashing from people running some kind of auto refresh programs. We are working on being able, in the future, to detect who is doing that so we can move their orders to the bottom of the pile, or just outright reject them.
Is there 2 kinds of the Red Panda Large Bird-Winged Flap Cats in the store right now? The ones painted by Melody say in stock and there’s ones not painted by Melody that say more than 10 in stock.
The ones for sale in the store are all painted by an artist named Jordan who works for us, so they are not signed. But they are really nicely painted (just as nice or better than Melody’s). Jordan will be painting things for eBay as well as special and limited production for the store.
Thanks for the kind words. I have, for a long time, wanted to find a way to showcase (and offer for sale) some really special pieces, so I am thrilled to see how this has been received. As the list lengthens, we will obviously have to go to a different format or somehow create a gallery space to move the sold pieces into. Actually, I hate the list format of web stores but know of no great alternative to it. I do hope that one day we will have the time and money to maybe make a more graphic and dimensional gallery space that one could navigate through. More museum-like.
And do we ever need to publish the Windstone Book! We have certainly reached new heights for quality and decoration and it needs to be properly memorialized. However, the painting seems to improve daily and I am guessing that the best is yet to come, unless Melody gets sick of painting and stops. Should that happen, I am sure that we will showcase and enjoy Windstone pieces with other artist’s work.
If we did use In-house studio photos for a calendar they wouldn’t be the eBay photos exactly, but cropped and posed to be a bit more exciting. We have had so many really great special pieces lately that I was feeling they deserved a calendar. But, I don’t know if we will even have the time and manpower to put one together. I will see if we can muster the talent and time as it would be really good to continue producing one every year.
I can do a complete rundown of the steps sometime but the basic casting process happens fast and they are only in the molds for a half hour or so. It is everything that follows that takes time. The day they are made the castings are cleaned up and any defects dealt with before being racked up to dry. The smallest pieces take a few days to dry and much longer for the largest pieces, some two or three weeks. So the PYO’s… maybe a week to a week and a half. We can’t cast quantities of anything like we used to and getting them scheduled for production is a problem as we are behind on most everything. Sometimes we speed the drying of small quantities in an oven or heated area.
Is this the animal you guys are talking about?
Wow! This guy is beautiful! We didn’t have them in Los Angeles and I have never seen one in Oregon either.
This isn’t fun anymore. 🙁
While I understand both Windstone’s position about not being able to control social media use, I can also see other forum members frustration. The voting is way off between the 2 categories and past quests. 🙁
Can’t we just behave and respect each other?
Sorry for the problems with this quest. None of this was foreseen by any of us, but I really don’t like how this is turning out either as the contest was conceived as a contest for the best artwork, not the most friends. And, if there is evidence of true cheating, then what do we do? If we toss that person’s entry, what about all the other legit votes? Would we re-vote it? Or can the staff take over and vote? We will discuss all of the above before this is over and see if there is a solution that is fair to all.
Like Wolfen, if there is an ebay piece that I want I will set a maximum price and bid to that amount. I usually set a snipe when I see the piece but sometimes bid in person. Often the ebay pieces I win are for less than I was willing to pay.
If the ebay pieces in general have not been bringing a price that justifies the time and labor required to create and list them, why is Windstone still starting ebay bids at 0.99 instead of the minimum price you hope to get?
*** ducks tomatoes and other thrown objects ***Hey, we have to have some fun too. Kind of like gambling but, If something sells high we are happy, and if we should lose, someone will get a bargain and that also makes us happy. Don’t you think that should happen once in a while? And, no, nobody has ever have accused us of running a predictable or rational business here.
*facedesk* .. I never thought I’d miss ebay, but is there a chance some nice pegs will make it to ebay? I held out on store Buckskins to get a shot at the nice ones.. but I can’t even fathom justifying $400 for a peg. At least on ebay I have a chance…
I won’t say the rest of what I’m thinking cause I’ll get jumped by the throng of diehard fans.. but as a customer, I don’t like the new special items feature, not in the slightest. I can ignore it if some of the nice things Melody does makes it to ebay though.. some ppl have the money to toss $400 at a peg.. I don’t. I don’t want to hear the lecture of ‘luxury items’ either when I’m willing to pay $250 for a nice piece, cause in reality, that is NOT being cheap.
As I tried before to explain, the special piece category is not intended to replace eBay and we will continue the eBay auction as usual. The intended purpose of the new category is to make things available to those who do not like auctions and who do not buy on eBay, and to show off extra special pieces. As we get used to this new area of the store and get it properly stocked you will find items for sale that almost nobody can afford, and other things that are closer to the more normal range of eBay prices. We are still thinking this through but I have a feeling that, as time goes by, more of the pieces that Melody paints will end up here rather than eBay. She needs time to sculpt new work and not be worked to death trying to cover both bases. We have made our best effort to keep Melody’s personal work available to all and maybe, if someone else can paint the grab-bags (we have an artist intraining for this), she will be able to keep ebay supplied for a while.
I don’t want to see everything we list in the special items category vanish within hours, I want some amount of special pieces to always be in the store and available to those who prefer to shop this way. I don’t like the idea of raising the prices to outlandish levels just to keep the category stocked, but that may be what needs to happen!
As to the question of profitability, it is true that everyone working here is underpaid, and we have personally covered the business losses for the last seven or eight years. The real estate bubble and other business related costs at the start of the recession, and then the lack of customers with disposable income, has put most of our wholesale customers out of business. As a result, we have had to reinvent the business with an emphasis on retailing, and that has been an excruciatingly difficult and costly process. I think that we are slowly turning the corner, but we still have a long way to go.
I also have to express here how grateful we are for the following and support that has been created on this forum. Without you guys we would have no reason to continue the struggle to exist in this economy. But, as we fight the battle to create better efficiency in the factory and resolve issues with material quality and the like, we also need to grow the sales. We need to reach more collectors and we need to broaden the product range and price structure to include a higher value line of Melody’s work. We do not intend to neglect the usual offerings. The normal product line will continue to build with the addition of pieces like the new little dragon that Melody has posted.
If anyone wants an in-depth rant, as I see it, about the struggles faced by small businesses such as ours let me know and maybe I will start a thread or add to the blog. These are interesting times and unlike any others in the forty-two years that I have had a business to run.
The buckskin stayed up for a while.
Three more pegs are going in tonight hopefully. On these it will be a set price with no offer option.
Or maybe not. I will work it out with Pam, but the offer option shouldn’t affect anybody until the time frame to make offers has expired, at which time interested parties will have had a month to save, count up or earn some money and make up their minds as to whether or not they want to put in an offer. I don’t really see the problem with the offer option. You have a whole month to figure that out. Unless the piece sells. Those who want to make an offer don’t want it at asking price so I just don’t see the problem. Am I missing something?
This may be a little tough to get flying right but, again, it was not intended to be an auction. The offer idea is just to move anything that doesn’t sell in a reasonable time frame.
Well, as you can see, this is a work in progress and the buying/bidding format may change as we get some experience with the concept of offering higher priced special items. I hope to have a good sized inventory of really great pieces build up in this category, so I am not sure that we would want to shorten up the duration of the store time. This wasn’t intended to be an auction but more of a showroom for the best of the best, where those who refuse to play on eBay can shop for exceptional pieces.
We had also discussed the fact that our painters (Hi Jennifer, thanks for jumping on board again!) don’t always want to deal with the risk of a bum price on an eBay sale and this will satisfy that issue as well. As to the idea of accepting offers, it seemed to me that, if we happened to over-price something, we should move it out of the store at some point so we always have fairly fresh pieces. We may, or may not, do that with every piece. If we get something that is just too good to sell through quickly we may leave it in for a longer time, or forever. In fact, I have been sorry that we didn’t hang on to a few of the best pieces for our own collection, but I guess we are supposed to be in business to sell things. We do own a couple of pieces that Jennifer painted and some others, but there are some of Melody’s dragons going into the store that I am going to be sorry to see sold… you know how it is when there is too much good stuff.
Hi ! It will be a beautiful contest, there are a lot of artists in the forum 🙂 I have a little question. For peoples who are overseas, traditional submissions have necessary to be mailed by post? It get three weeks from France. Thanks for the answer, the quest and your work 🙂
Yes, traditional media submissions must be mailed regardless of where you are located. We need to have the entries by no later than 9/19 to be included in the judging.
Good luck!
If she is three weeks out by mail can she take a digital photo of the colored piece and submit that? We would have to trust that photos aren’t digitally altered but, otherwise, I don’t see why she shouldn’t be able to submit it as a photo.
It will be a while before we can implement this, but I want to have a second way to shop that is simply the whole product line in thumbnails. You see something that you like, click on it, and buy it. I hate long lists of products like we now have but, as that is what most people are used to, we will keep what we have and just make shopping by pictures an option.
When I am searching on Google for tools and materials I have started to just go to Google Images and quickly look for what I want or to find things I have never seen before. So why not the store?
