We recently announced that we will be launching a new site on the 26th of March. We’re very excited about the new site (and we hope you are too), but we do have some other news that may not make you quite as happy. When we move to our new site we will be changing the prices on all our products (some will go up as much as $25). Now, we don’t want you to think we are doing this because we’re being greedy. To continue to deliver the same quality you expect, and the quality you deserve, our costs will be going up. There are a whole bunch of reasons we are moving to a new website and there are many benefits as well (both for you, our lovely fan, and for us, your faithful crafter). You can expect an article about that in the next couple weeks.
You might be asking yourself why we’re raising our prices, and there are several reasons. The first one is to give the buyer a better indication of the quality of our products. Admit it, when you see a low price on a handmade item you immediately think, “What’s wrong with it?” In the handmade market, low prices aren’t seen as a bargain, they make products seem cheap, flimsy, and/or low quality. We want our prices to match our quality. We stand behind the quality of straps, and our bags come with a lifetime guarantee on all the stitching. They’re made with durable upholstery fabric, so they should be able to hold up to anything you can throw at them! When a purportedly handmade product is priced low a buyer will generally think at least one of the following: 1) The product isn’t actually handmade, you are using the term to appeal to the desire to support crafters and/or buy local or 2) The producer is underpaying workers or outsourcing to other countries. Our straps and bags are stitched in America and made with as much American-made material as we can reasonably get our hands on. All of the products we currently sell are lovingly handmade by our founder, Kyle, and his mom, Kris–we really are a family business!
With our price increase, we will be able to do some things we’ve been looking forward to since our business began, in 2015 (can you believe it’s been almost 2 years!?). We will finally be able to launch a referral program! For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term, here’s a run-down of what that will mean: Now, there are various ways to implement a referral program, and they all have their merits, but this is how we plan to run ours. To start, when you buy something from us (or if you already have) we will send you a referral code, say PNMLGR1. When someone places an order and refers to that code they get a discount at checkout. Once their order is completed you get credit towards your next order! Now, the details aren’t all hammered out but we’ll be doing some research on the program and we plan on releasing it to a few people to see how it works as soon as we can.
Now, you may be worried because we almost never run sales, and there’s a good reason for that. As you may know, there are a lot of costs that go into selling a product online. There is website upkeep, advertising, photography, copy writing, and a few others. Right now are prices are very close to what it costs us to physically make our products, with little else built in. Because of this, we have been unable to run sales without selling a product for less than it costs us to make it (which is a terrible idea). The good news is, moving forward, we will be able to run more sales, including one that will start when we launch the new site. This sale will be 30% off for our mailing list subscribers (you can become one at the bottom of this post). If you don’t want to join, that’s okay too (though we’re not sure why). With the launch, you will able to find a code on our site, and across our social media accounts for 10% off everything on our site. The subscriber’s launch discount will bring our prices close to where they are right now and both of the discounts will run for 1 week following our launch (not valid on custom orders).
Finally, one of the other things we’ve been unable to do with our current pricing is make use of any kind of advertising. As we said previously, right now there’s almost no cost extra built into our prices. At the moment, if every strap cost us $3 to advertise and sell we would very quickly go into the red. If we want to become a brand that people recognize when they see we need to be able to get ourselves out there more. Now, where is the benefit for you, the (potential) buyer in us advertising? Advertising should allow us to expand our business by hiring more people as we sell more. We will be able to provide you with quicker responses to your questions. Right now we only have one person able to answer emails and social media messages, and he’s got a lot of other things on his plate (he’s our founder). Another benefit is that we will be able to develop new high-quality products more quickly, which, if you’re interested in what we’re doing, should be a major plus. Advertising will also allow us to make more posts like this one, on a myriad of different topics. One more benefit is faster order processing and mailing, as well as custom order fulfillment. Having more employees has a lot of benefits, but as we mentioned, being able to advertise isn’t all about making enough to be able to hire more people. Advertising will also enable us to improve our existing products by being able to meet minimum order quantities, allowing us to get higher quality materials at the same, or lower cost.
Now, in just under a week (3/12) our current site will be going down, and our landing page will be going up to collect email addresses while we work on the site in the background. If you’ve had your eye on any of our bags or straps, now is the time to order before the prices go up. If you don’t order your favorite bag right now it may not be available when our sale offically starts on March 26th.
If you like what we’re doing at PinMail Gear, with our handmade and one of a kind bags and our unique safety pin straps, please sign up for our email list so we can send you a quick reminder when our new site launches and our sale starts–just one of the benefits of being part of our mailing list!