Things I Never Considered As A Shop Owner

The other day I stumbled across an article called “5 Common Ways Crocheters Break the Law“. It brought up some good points and made me stop and think about how I wanted to operate my business.

When I first opened my shop, I created hats that sat in a grey area of what I am allowed to sell. This was before I knew any better. Since then I’ve taken the time to educate myself further on licensing and copyrighting. It was also the inspiration to design my own characters and the patterns to make their hats.

At the time I was also following Repeat Crafter Me’s situation with her free Minion hat pattern. She was given a cease and desist letter from Universal Studios to remove her crochet Minion hat from her blog. Thankfully, she was able to come up with a solution. She describes her experience on her blog.

In the meantime, however, I have some character hats that I feel need to be moved from my inventory.

I wracked my brains and thought, how can I clear out the inventory in a fun way and not waste all my work but also consider my lesson learned and not create such characters again?

My Solution

As I write this it’s a week before Christmas and the anticipation of not knowing what’s in the wrapped presents with my name on it under the tree is making me wonder and get excited about the big reveal.

As I considered what to do with the inventory, I had a thought – why not clear them out and offer them as mystery hats so my customers could get the same sense of anticipation?

All you have to do is choose the size of the hat that you want and then patiently – or not! – wait until it arrives for the big reveal.

This post was featured on Guelph Local on December 24, 2019.