Twitter is the answer for small business news!

As a small business, Twitter solves a lot of issues for us. How can we get information across about what we are doing now without bothering our customers?

When Twitter first hit the scene, I did not think it would be something I would join, I mean honeslty, who cares what I am eating for lunch?! But when I began to think about how it could help my business I truly got excited.

Our business, unforgettaballs.com, sends out 4 email newsletters a year that contain info on our newest designs for purchase, happenings, and latest retired designs. We only send out one a season b/c we do not want to inundate our customers with email. But throughout the year, btwn newsletter mailings, there is no way to let our customers know what designs are being currently worked on. We do not put the new designs in our newsletter until they are available for purchase, so it is many months since they have been painted.

Now that we have a twitter account set up for Unforgettaballs, people can choose to follow and get updates of what is being painted right now! It is also an excellent way to get feed back about our latest decorative baseball design ideas.

Looking forward to tweeting!-

unforgettaballs.com

Taking my painting on the road!

As a small business, I do a lot of my painting alone in my studio. I have decided to take the advise of my cousin-in-law Tracey and paint a few days a week out of my studio. My first destination will be to Tracey's catering store where I plan on bringing my paints and folding table, and working there for a few hours. I am not sure where else I will try, perhaps my local Starbucks, where there are always a lot of tables open....I think the important part of this experiment is to see what it is like to paint in a different setting with others around me.

First of all, I am excited to just be in a different location, (I have been painting here for 15yrs, same table, same chair, same wall to look at it!)- but just to be out and around people will be very exciting. I also look forward to feed back on my latest painted baseball design that I am working on, it is always intersting to hear different points of view on your work. Generally I receive most of my artist advise from my husband who knows nothing about painting, but over the years, by fielding hundreds of my painting questions, he has actually gotten to be a very reliable source for opinions.

Luckily, my baseball designs are small, and easily portable. So I will report back with information on how my first excursion went, and if it has added to my creative juices, and need to be with other people, or if it only accomplishes the need to be around other people, without actually getting any artwork done!

To see an artist out painting is really not that unusual, but then they are painting the scene around them, -I may be the first traveling baseball artist painting scenes outdoors of baseball stadiums hundreds of miles away!


http://www.unforgettaballs.com/

Why do I paint better when my desk is clean?

Ok, here is one for the books- I seriously paint better when my desk is clean and orderly. Now I don't mean clean from the 'just Windexed' sense of the word, but I mean straightened up and orderly. Clearly I have issues here. The problem is not that I don't have enough space to paint, it is just that for me a clear desk, offers me a clear piece of mind, and a calm sense of well being.

How crazy is that?! And just to explain it all a little clearer, when my desk is messy, I find it very difficult to focus well on creative tasks, or even just to embark on new tasks. I shouldn't need much space to paint my baseballs, they are relatively small and I work on very tiny details, but this goes well beyond space issues.

My desk is very orderly, stacked with papers in different levels of 'things to do piles'. But by the end of a very busy day, the piles will start to blur around the edges, and until they are all back into some level of organization, I feel very uneasy thinking about continuing to work. Now, make no mistake, the piles don't need to be completed for me to feel organized, they just need to be straightened, and I have to feel that I know what is in each pile so I feel 'on top of them'.

So there is my crazy confession for the week! My goal is to organize my desk every day before I leave it, so I can come to it in the morning with a bright outlook and sense of calm that only organization can give me! For all those other organization suffers out there- take care- you are not alone!

www.unforgettaballs.com

How do you let people know you are out there?

What is the best way to find customers who would be interested in your product? How do you get them to know it exists? In the age where there are fifty gagillion websites, how do you find the people who would want to know about you?

Products don't get much more unusual then mine- artistic baseballs for the baseball fan, or collector of all things unusual!(unforgettaballs.com) But if no one ever sees them, it doesn't matter how cool they are!

There a two main ways I work to get my baseballs seen: PR and Advertising. Lately I have been debating which I think is a more effective way to reach people.
Advertising is great b/c once you pay a specific amount, and then know you are going to get something out there for the public to see.
PR on the other hand, Is much more of a risk. It can cost much more, and at the end of the day you don't know for sure if anything will be written on your product or not. From a money standpoint, it almost seems to make more sense to just pay to have the advertisement, b/c it is a guarantee that people will see something. Unfortunately, you can not deny that it is always more humble to have someone else write about how great your product is then to have you do it!

Small business advice for the day:
Decide how much you would like to spend per year on getting everyone to know what you do. Then take this number and divide it between PR and Advertising. Track for your self which helped more. (Use analytics on your website through google, etc. to track-if you don't know how to do this- get a web master to do it for you.) Don't put your whole budget in just one of these- it is just to risky.


www.unforgettaballs.com

Do men like receiving gifts?

Can't decide on this one. There seem to be a lot of gifts men receive that they tolerate with a polite smile, and then stick under a stack of papers on the chair in their bedroom. What are the gifts that make it out of the stack?

The first factor is something that is useful or purposeful. Clothes are a good, safe bet as a gift. Of course it needs to be something they would actually wear, but this is a completely passable gift. But it won't be the most exciting thing they will open. An improvement would be team related clothes (if they are a fan) as a step above the average sweater, b/c now you are putting more of their heart into it, and it is still useful.

To create a meaningful gift that is not clothes, but more of a decorative item for a man is much harder. But what if you began with a play item, such as a baseball, then covered it with art work that was about their favorite team, you could then create something with a great deal of meaning. An artistic baseball can sit on your desk or shelf, and have meaning just representing whatever team is painted on it. But it also has the dual purpose of something that you can pick up, play in your hands while you are thinking or talking on the phone; it has multiple uses and meanings.

We believe creating a gift for men, or anyone for that matter, can be a much more interesting if it has many purposes. Our decorative gift baseballs for example, have images of a favorite stadium on them, which then evokes a memory, but it is also an unusual decorative piece, while also acting as something to play with! (Something about walk around an office with a baseball in your hands to play with just makes you think better!) Also anything that is a throw back to your youth is a good thing.

Small business advice for the day:
How many purposes does your product fulfill? How unusual is it? Know your audience, so you can offer the best product possible to meet there needs.

www.unforgettaballs.com

A collection is born

Why do some people live for collecting and others just see them as clutter?

Out of my four sisters, 2 of us are die hard collector's, (never met a collection we didn't want to start and master) while my other two sisters seem very happy to take or leave them, ...preferable probably to leave them. Now part of this came from necessity, my youngest sister moved several times in a row, so it seemed optimal not to have too much to move. And my oldest sister, having been to her house recently, seems to have mastered living the clutter free life- but the other two of us find such meaning in our pursuit of perfect collections, that you can hardly walk into our houses without finding one in each room- from dolls from the 70's, to PVC plastic figurines, and everything in between.

Maybe it is genetic. We got the gene from my dad who loves to collect with such a passion, that he has dozens of unopened VHS movies in his collection. He does not keep them unopened b/c of collector value, but just b/c he enjoys owning a full collection! My mother on the other hand, has a certain glee about organizing, alphabetizing, shrinking, and then hopefully removing his collections!

I think there is a pure, and possibly unexplainable, joy to some people in collecting things they love. I myself get an undefined pleasure out of looking through my collections. They have meaning to me in so many different ways. Most of them begin b/c they represented some memory to me of childhood. But other collections having meaning in my current life of something that I love to look at, making me smile every time I see them. I think that all people have these possessions that they drag with them from house to house, and apartment to apartment, not quite being able to let go of them. Even though they don't look at them often, there is some comfort in knowing they still own them.

It is a meaning I hope people find with my baseballs. My latest line that I have created really speaks to this idea. It is centered around great moments in baseball that will have such special meaning to people who were at these events, or are fans of these teams. Seeing them will bring back that joy, because we all have a soft spot for collections that remind us of something we loved.

Small business advice for the day:
If you create a product that is purely decorative, be sure that it speaks to people, that it touches some part of them that when they look at it they smile and think, I'm glad I still have that.

And by the way, I just remembered that in my parent's front hall, on a small wood table, stands a collection of a half a dozen little penguin statues that have been there for years, a favorite animal of my mother's.

http://www.unforgettaballs.com/

Licensing, does it help or hurt?

I met with a buyer today for a large company. We had a very interesting discussion about licensing. My decorative baseballs are a well selling item for this company, and the buyer brought up the question of licensing. Do I think that my designs would be better with the team logos on the baseballs?

It is a concept that has come up a lot in my years of business; it usually sounds like 'why don't you use team names? A big logo of the team would really be a big selling point.'

But I was never asked the question I was asked today:

Did I think the baseballs would sell better if their team logo was on them?

I truly believe the answer is no. The licensing world is a powerful, huge business, and nothing can deny the pull of seeing a familiar logo on something. But from the collector stand point, I think that leaving the big logo out makes our pieces unique, and in an interesting way, even more collectible. Baseball memorabilia has a powerful pull towards licensing and big team names, but artwork that is talking about the town, the stadium, and the feeling of the game from that city, transcends any logo. I think these baseball designs provide that.

Logos are on everything, and although I do think they appeal to the fan, I think there is something deep felt about the memento that captures the spirit of a team's city, stadium, and feel that makes it special. The true fan knows without a doubt that the piece speaks to them, they don't need to turn it in their hand to make sure they have the right team.

Small business advice for the day:
There are more then one way to do things successfully; licensing is not always better. Be true to your vision- and the sales will follow.