Finding your Niche

It's weird when you find a niche.  I was used to our store getting maybe 50 hits a month, in 2 weeks if we were lucky.  Then I started making apron dresses for the store and everything kind of exploded.  Now we (usually) get at least 50 hits a day an a lot of interest in our stuff - not just the dresses.  And this is one of those completely random things because, well to be honest, I never intended to make apron dresses a staple of our store.

The first apron dress I ever made was for a woman that I LARP with.  I was generally unimpressed by it, but it's what she wanted.  Then another woman that I LARP with said she wanted one, but with lacing up the sides so it was more form fitting.  Well, the Dagorhir homepage has a very simple pattern for one, so after a few modifications to their pattern, it was done.  I liked it much better than the first dress I made, but still I had wanted to focus on basic garb in our store and apron dresses didn't fit terribly well into that business model. That said, sometime business models need to be adjusted.

Then it was time for Ragnarok (a nation-wide Dagorhir event) and my husband was going to be away for a week getting beaten and inebriated repeatedly.  Before he left I asked him what projects he thought I should work on while he was gone.  He (to my surprise) immediately said, "Make a bunch of apron dresses. Bitches love apron dresses."  Well, I may be taking liberties with that last bit, but that's the gist of it.  

I was a little shocked.  I'd think that Bocksten tunics, cloaks, or mantles would sell better.  I mean, look at the demographic that we're essentially aiming for - LARP, SCA, Dagorhir, Medieval Reenactment.  I'd think that focusing on men's garments would yield more sales.  WRONG.  Sometimes I'm a damn bonehead.  As a woman LARPer, I should have been more open to the idea of focusing on items for female clientele.  My husband saw that and he's generally an oblivious kind of guy. 

Now I generally make 2-3 of these a month, whether for a friend or to sell in our store.  They are, hands down, our best seller and the one item that brings people to our store.  While they're there, they tend to browse our other stuff - to my husband's surprise (Out of the blue he sold a handful of mugstraps and skirt hikes a couple weeks ago.  He was giddy like a little kid at Christmas.).  This is the power of finding your niche.