Sunday, February 22, 2009

Welcome to Washi Urushi

Well, it took me the better part of a year to cajole my best friend Masaki (AKA Max) into the merits of setting up an etsy site for his artwork.

I struggled with the etsy staff because they did not want to allow me to do this. But after seeing other stores doing the exact same kind of thing (i.e. one person makes the art, another makes the store) I decided to just do it.

Finally today I got the store up and running, and listed nine of their pieces of art. They have hundreds, and pretty much do everything on a custom order basis, but I convinced them to lend me some cheaper, and medium-priced pieces of their art to start with.

Please feel free to visit and link to "WashiUrushi" on Etsy, or maybe you can copy and paste this link: http://www.washiurushi.etsy.com.

If you have any suggestions as to where I might be able to get their site a "shout out", or any other advice, please do let me know! Thanks for your support.

I love you!

CamSwitzer

5 comments:

Andriques said...

Good one Cam! I added one of their pieces to a Japan Art Treasury
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=41520

I hope they get some clicks.
cheers
Andrea

flapjacs said...

wow! cool stuff ! good for you

Cameron said...

Thanks, Gang. More items coming very soon... the problem is calculating the shipping because each piece is radically different and requires different kinds of boxes. I can't make a guestimate, unless I overcharge for shipping and I don't like to do that; it goes against my policy (profit on the product, not on the cartage).

Cam

Andriques said...

Do you use the online postage calculator on the JP website?? I have found it to be very accurate.

Cameron said...

Andrea, no I don't. But it won't solve my problem because I cannot calculate the gross weight of the packed items until they are made. Each product, even if it is an order for the "same thing" will have a very different weight as the shape and size of the product depends entirely upon the roots and wood that Max can find.

This means that I cannot know the actual shipping charges in advance for the customer to place the order and pay for it unless I overcharge.

So once I have the gross weight, the online calculator is excellent, but until I can calculate the weight of the item ordered, I can't even use it.