We are hand-picking American crafters (USA only please) who are willing and able to produce and ship their quality crafts in the USA. We are *not* looking for mass-production factories that crank out useless trinkets and widgets. If so, we'd just import from China and Taiwan. Instead we want only genuine, top-quality handcrafted items made right here in the USA. Here's how it works:
- If you haven't already, make samples of your handcrafted items.
- Take quality pictures of them.
- Send us the pictures (mail, e-mail, or post online and e-mail the URL).
- Send us a brief narrative about yourself, your crafts and your commitment to quality.
If we are interested in you and your crafts, we will follow up via e-mail and/or phone call so that we can get to know you better. If you are selected, then here's how it works:
- We negotiate wholesale prices (what we'll pay you for your crafts).
- We gather required information (turnaround time, photos, descriptions, dimensions, weight).
- We add your crafts to our website(s) and promote sales.
- We process secure retail orders from our customers.
- We immediately forward a copy of the order to you including our official invoice to be shipped with the product.
- You fulfill the orders (pack and ship with our invoice/label).
- We pay you immediately (wire transfer) upon shipping confirmation.
The idea here is that you get to do what you do best -- quality crafts -- and we get to do what we do best -- online promotion, sales, order processing and related customer service. The only "business activities" you perform is checking for orders (daily) then packing and shipping. We can help you obtain the appropriate shipping materials. In some cases we may even provide them. There will be no paperwork to do except for printing our final invoice and the shipping label. Depending upon our relationship we may even decide to provide you with the resources required to generate the invoices and labels. We might even provide you with an entire PC, printer, and internet connection. We may even be willing to pre-pay for your crafts. These benefits are all negotiable once our relationship has been established. We'll do whatever it takes to ensure that 99% of your time is spent working on your crafts.
There's no catch. It's this simple. As long as you produce quality items and ship them in an acceptable time frame, we'll live happily ever after. You have absolutely nothing to lose. We both have everything to gain from doing what we are supposed to do and anything else we can think of to help each other. If either of us are less than satisfied for any reason, we simply terminate the relationship.
Please respond via e-mail and include your preferred e-mail address, phone number, best time to call you, and any information you are willing to provide about your crafts. Please reply to "Quality Crafts at MetroEast dot Net" (remove the quotes and spaces and replace words with the appropriate characters -- we've listed it this way to make it harder for spammers to pick up our address here in the newsgroups).
All aspects are open for discussion and therefore your thoughts and comments are always appreciated. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Kevin Sawyer, General Manager American Crafts Direct * Handcrafts Direct * USA Crafts Direct
PS - Feel free to forward this message to other crafters.