I've been designing some new cards for the shop lately. With Valentine's Day over, business has been much quieter, so I've had a chance to do more drawing in my free time. (Yay!)
January, while completely awesome and up-to-my-ears-busy-with-orders, didn't leave me much time to add anything new to the shop. I was spending all my time trying to figure out how to stream-line my shipping procedures to make life easier... I was going through 800-envelope boxes in a week! Next year I'm definitely going to have to order supplies in much larger quantities than expected.
With Easter, Mother's Day and wedding season on the way (apparently a lot of people get engaged on Valentine's Day, because I've been getting a lot of "bridesmaid card" hits in my shop) there are plenty of opportunities for new designs.
Speaking of Valentine's Day craziness, I've been keeping tabs on where my cards get shipped. For a while I had a map on my craft room cork board where I pinned order locations, but I haven't been keeping up with it lately. Instead, I keep a running tally in a spreadsheet that shows every state and country that I've shipped an order. For a long time I had every state except Arkansas, Delaware, Idaho, Montana, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Over January's rush, though, I managed to get even those stragglers and have now officially sent cards to all fifty states! (Woo!)
Just for fun (and because I like collecting stats), here are the Darkroom and Dearly shop stats for January 2013!
- I've mailed orders to all fifty states plus Puerto Rico! The highest number of orders goes to California (by a large margin), New York and Texas. The next highest in sales falls to Illinois, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, Washington, and Massachusetts.
- The East and West coast make up a majority of shoppers. With the exception of Texas and Illinois, I get very few midwest orders.
- International order make up about 25% of my total sales.
- The most frequent international orders come from the UK (mostly England, but also Scotland and Wales) and Australia.
- I have counted over 67 different counties in the UK that my orders have been sent to (some more frequently than others!) My favorite county name thus far is: "Dumfries and Galloway" (in Scotland). The most common is probably Cheshire or Lancashire (in England).
- 23 of the 67 counties I have listed for the UK end in "shire." The longest being "West Dunbartonshire" and "Northamptonshire."
- I have shipped orders to all of the Australian states/territories, the most common being Victoria and New South Wales.
- Other countries I have shipped orders to include:
- Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, and Switzerland.
- Highest day of sales on record was Wednesday, January 30, 2013, followed closely by Tuesday, February 5, 2013. (Sadly I closed my shop on Feb 6! I wonder if I would have beaten my highest record if I hadn't gone on vacation??)
