Dinner Time Chimes

Etsy Shop Name: Dinner Time Chimes

What you sell: Our primary focus is windchimes created from silverware, hence our shop name. A few other silverware creations are added from time to time also. We’ve recently expanded our creations to include other recycled creations for the garden (bird houses and bird feeders).

Tell us about your featured item: “Working Man’s Bird House” continues to generate the most views in our Etsy shop and turn heads at craft shows. The bird houses have been created from old boots collected from friends and purchased at thrift stores. Even the wood is recycled, since the lumber is from demolished barns. These bird houses are a unique addition to the garden and they quickly become the talk of the neighborhood. House wrens and other smaller birds welcome an exciting new place to build a nest--and, yes, we’ve actually had birds live in the ones at our house!

What role does creativity play in your marketing methods?

Before Etsy, we relied entirely on word of mouth advertising by family and participated in a few craft shows to sell the windchimes. We’ve recently joined a couple Etsy Street teams (EcoEtsy, CAST, NCTriangle), which is great for networking. In hopes of reaching out to shoppers around the world, we’ve been making simple promos for our shop that can be given away at craft shows or slipped into packages shipped by fellow team members. In keeping with the “eco” theme, we’ve created a couple versions of promos for our shop that are made from recycled items. It took a lot of thought to come up with these promos, but we hope that our creativity will be appreciated and potential buyers will enjoy what they see in our Etsy shop.

Do you enjoy, loathe, or simply accept the necessity of record keeping for your business? Why?

This is the first year that we’ve been a ‘real’ business. While that is exciting, it does come with a lot of responsibility and additional paper work. Since crafting is only a hobby for us, it’s very important that the recordkeeping doesn’t become overwhelming and we still have time to focus on the crafting (and life in general). We must admit that we rely heavily on an Excel spreadsheet to keep everything straight!