Stress Free Holiday Shopping
You may think it’s early to start thinking of the holidays, but it is not too early to take a few small steps to make it easier on yourself. When it comes to personalized gifts, there are a couple of ways to ensure it’s stress free.
Make sure your address on file (Etsy, Amazon, etc.) is correct. This may sound like a small thing, but I am always surprised at how many people have moved since they last logged on and placed an order. Sure, you can always send the follow up email asking to edit your address before we ship, but when a small business has a stack of 200 orders on their desk, you can see how it gets complicated. On Etsy, simply log in, and go to “Account Information”, then click “Addresses”. Make sure your default is set to your current address, don’t leaver any part of it out, or the shipper will have a hard time delivering to you and it may result in returned mail. Your DEFAULT should be your current home, and you might as well delete any old addresses while you’re in there.
You can always send a gift to a different address, but you can add a gift address in the “ship to” section while checking out.
Next up! Is the name on your account accurate? This sounds silly, but it’s not. A lot of customers start an Etsy account before they’re married and then never change the name on their Etsy profile, or “about you” section. The name on your order may not match the name on your payment method if you’ve never updated it. Don’t make a new account, which would then prevent a seller from viewing your order history, simply make sure your name is accurate.
Now, for personalized gifts. The biggest thing I can say is START EARLY. We makers hate to turn people with great ideas away, but at some point every small business has a holiday cutoff date. Ours has been getting earlier every year, and we have a few things up our sleeve to try to stay open later in December this year.
Start thinking about your personalized gifts around Halloween. I’m not kidding. Custom orders take time. You may think the turn around time is 1-2 weeks, but when November 1st hits, all bets are off. We do our very best to meet your gift giving deadlines, but we are only a husband and wife team, filling a whole world full of custom orders. Think about that for a minute. Whew! I need a coffee just thinking about it!
When sending a custom order request, go the official channel route. What I mean by this is- use email, Etsy messaging, etc. Skip the text messages (even if you’re friends with them), and Instagram DM’s because it is FAR too easy for those messages to be forgotten or lost by the time the maker gets back to their workshop. For example, if you send me a DM on Friday night and I read it while I’m in bed about to fall asleep, I am hardly going to remember it on Monday morning when work begins. If, however, you email me on Friday night, I will see it and RESPOND to it without it getting lost in my brain over the course of the weekend. Again, when there’s a stack of 200 orders on the desk, that one text message will easily slip out of the brain.
Personalized gifts are so special to receive, because you know the giver really took the time to think ahead to give you something unique. Just remember, custom gifts, from any seller, will take longer to create than normal and plan ahead. We can’t wait to make you something special and lasting, out of our favorite material, metal.
