Showing posts with label Black Friday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Black Friday. Show all posts

Wednesday, 22 November 2017

UK Chancellors Budget, Corporate Black Friday = Killing the Small Indie Creator?

Is Combination of UK Tory Chancellors Budget, Brexit & Corporate Black Friday = Poisonous to Small Indie Creators? 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/263333040020?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
Kuriolgy Laboratory created steampunk spider
There I was ticking along quite nicely gradually building up sales in a definitely positive way in steady build towards the Christmas season.  I was releasing the back catalog of personal 
sculpture creations built up in years of being disability housebound. Not so much a business as a downsizing on the accumulated result of creative therapy.

Quickly a precious handful of enthusiastic return buyers had been gained since starting to 'sell off'.  Auction items were generally increasing in the amounts realized.

For the first time in years  things were looking roses for the Kuriology Art Laboratory creative process.  

Then BANG!

It was like someone had unplugged the Kuriology  computer.  Views plummeted, pre-auction end bids dried up. Off-sight sales froze! Gallery sales ground to a screeching juddering halt.  

Who?  What? How had the brakes been slapped on?

Bird on driftwood

Casting around in various indie creative chat rooms & forums a pattern began to emerge in the already expressed opinion from other diverse creators & indie sellers. 

  •  (i) Sales for indie (independent) creative persons seemingly often ground to a near halt just prior to Black Friday as buyers switch their attention to massive price slashes the big corporations & multi-retailers dangle as carrots on high price tech items (made in China)
  •  (ii) In the UK, after years of Tory strangulation of the UK economy by austerity, suppressing wages, punishing under 30yr olds, persecuting the poor, disabled, weak & disenfranchised....the threat of UK Chancellors autumn budget & negative effect it has & would have upon most peoples dwindling available spending power.... whilst Tories absolutely insist on staunchly defending & still  lining the pockets of their friends in the banks, corporations, big business tax dodgers, & super elite wealthy.  
  • (ii) Plus......the uncertainty of Brexit on horizon?

Many people seem to carry out equivalent of holding their breath, but with their wallets.


Anatomical Heart Curse Fetish

Independent creators & sellers seem to take a hit.  On etsy the startled cries from some were loudly expressed in forums as sales dried up quicker than a puddle in the Sahara Desert .  

Old etsy hands made reassuring noises - 'this always happens' - just before Black Friday.  Sales will then pick up - they say.  The hiatus in sales only temporary?

For UK sellers, the added pressure of people waiting with baited breath to see how the Tory government was going to yet further punish the average person with this Chancellors budget. 

Squeezing with the normal conservative government disregard of the effect of their osmotic one way process of extracting money from the majority to the financial benefit of an already wealthy minority 1%. 

Not so much a 'Trickle down', more conservative policy of the majority surviving on the crumbs that fall accidentally discarded from the banquet table of the over indulged wealthy minority. Ever the way it was with Conservative policies & principals - persecute & punish the poorest, placate the rich & elite.  Not so much the conservative 'nasty party'  - more downright bloody Evil party...

  • The Kuriologist could never with a clear & principled conscious vote conservative - Ever!  (I still remember the abusive years of the evil witch Margret Thatcher)

Kuriology Paper Snake

Then there is the question of a Brexit effect...the absolute mess created by, initiated by, overseen by, caused by, instigated by = the internal Machiavellian back stabbing within the conservative party itself - lets not even go there...just yet?

So is combination of UK Tory  Chancellors Budget, Brexit & Corporate Black Friday = Poisonous to Small Indie Creators? 

Probably? Possibly? Inevitably?

Who knows but you can cast your vote by bidding HERE!

Saturday, 18 November 2017

Black Friday? Cyber Monday? How about Sofa Shopping Sunday?

Black Friday? Cyber Monday? 
How about Sofa-Shopping Sunday?

The internet is not quite all just about likes, selfies, porn & cats caught on video.  It has unquestionably become the go-to place to browse & shop...especially for many time pressed individuals, & equally for  those who do not enjoy the 'push & shove' of shoulder to shoulder urban shopping, especially Christmas shopping.  But are the corporations & big business  squeezing the genuinely original, different & original to the very margins, even on the internet.

Kuriology sculptures on ebay.co.uk

Personally, I tend to do 99% of my shopping in front of a reasonable size screen, in a comfy chair, armed with copious mugs of coffee, snacks & my tobacco (Yes, I still smoke at home & I can't do that in shops!).  Definitely, an advocate of Sofa Shopping Sunday.











 Call me old fashioned, but I still like eBay auctions.  Although the belting bargain basement 0.99p acquisitions to be had a few years ago are fewer & far between.  The style of eBay shopping trends having changed away from auction format to that of 'buy-it-now'.  

I still crawl through the auction listings, basically because I cannot be bothered (with the type of things I'm looking for), of having to filter out 100's of 1,000's of often poor quality Chinese items in the Buy-it-now. That said, ebay seems to be regaining some of its former popularity.  Hopefully it has at last stopped trying to be just like Amazon & may encourage back some of the quirkiness & individuality which made ebay so much fun in the past. 



I've tried etsy & been monumentally disappointed with it.  The etsy expectation to constantly & I DO MEAN CONSTANTLY, tinker, fiddle, alter, change, adjust, & manipulate as a seller the titles, SEO & descriptions of the same product, again & again & again. 

There is something broken with the esty search methods. Many of the sellers which attracted me to etsy in the first place have either gone, left or are un-locateable under the morass of designed/ but Chinese-made bangles, beads, baubles, jewelry, & sugar/saccharine coated sweetness on etsy - sufficient to induce a diabetic coma just looking at it. Hurrrumph!











I seldom buy new tech, clothes, or new fashion items. Especially not 'designer' clothes made in their multiple thousands in far eastern factories by persons on weekly wages barely more than Western countries hourly minimum wage. I have never quite understood the mentality of paying more for an item of clothing for its label, where the punter is PAYING a huge multi-national company (which probably avoids its tax obligations) to advertise the corporate product for them - madness? 

Vintage, antique, obsolete & sometimes - the unloved = quirky, strange & bizarre are still items of choice for the Kuriologist both in their creation & acquisition.