Ask Kat: Do You Ever have a Sample Sale

So…

As you might imagine, we get inquiries about selling our handbag samples on a regular basis. So I thought maybe it was time to finally address this question in this public forum.

And here’s the thing… even though selling off our handbags is something I NEVER enjoy doing, its a little known fact that we do indeed conduct a handbag sample sale every now and then (otherwise we’d have no place to sit in this house). And if you’ve had your eye on one of our samples and are interested in making it your own…

Here’s 5 things you need to know about our Sample Sale!

1. Our sample sale is NEVER pre-announced. Call me crazy, but I like to think that the sample bags we sell are either going to be on display in a quilt store where they’re inspiring customers everyday, or on the home of a delighted customer. The absolute last place I want is to find them is up for resale on some website. By running an unannounced sale, it’s more likely that the buyer will be one of our regulars.

2. We NEVER sell our cover samples. Let’s face it. The cover sample is the bag that defines the design and with few exceptions, its also the most recognizable. If for no other reasons than sentimental ones, I could never sell the sample that graces the cover of any of our designs.

3. We NEVER sell our samples any other way than thru this sale. As you can imagine, we receive all kinds of offers for our samples, but I have no desire to sell them to dealers. I’d much prefer to sell them either to a Quilt store where they might help a retailer sell a few patterns or to a customer who will love it and carry it with pride.

4. Handbag samples are sold on a first come-first serve basis. Each bag is one-of-a-kind. There is no reserving samples in the event of a sale, and there is no bidding of any kind.

5. Handbag samples are sold to US customers only. Many of our international customers have been with us a long, LONG time too, and I really wish they could be included in this sale, but the problem boils down to shipping.  It’s VERY expensive to mail large packages overseas (no surprise there, right?), and our website’s shipping chart is geared to work accurately for handbag patterns and notions that fit into small envelopes. In other words, if I pack up a handbag in a large cardboard box, the website is going to ALWAYS undercharge for shipping and there’s not much way around this. If I adjust my chart accordingly, then its going to greatly OVERcharge for a pattern order. There’s not much I can do about this for right now. 

And finally, and this is key…

6. The ONLY way to be notified about our sample sale is thru our email (newsletter) list. Some of our most loyal customers are on our newsletter list, and believe it or not, some of them have been on that list for over 8 years. The list also includes a whole lot of store owners and these are relationships we have cultivated over many years as well.  So… based on reasons 1-4 listed above, our email list is a perfect target audience for our sample sale. It’s true I have a huge FaceBook following but if I publicize our sample sale there, the very nature of the way the FaceBook algorithym works means that the sale announcement could also end up in the news feeds of THOUSANDS of folks who have no prior relationship with our business. Twitter and Pinterest present similar drawbacks.

So there you have it!

And here’s the best part! We’d actually love for each and every one of you to join us! There’s no hoops to jump through… no questions to answer… and no approval process! All you have to do is…

Click HERE to join!

Or are there other questions you still might have about our handbag sale?

Check out the best sewing pins with me on Pinterest, join in on discussions or show off your work in our FaceBook Group, or get your daily sewing fix on our Facebook Business Page or get behind the scenes scoops on Instagram, and be the 1st to know about new patterns, discount codes and sample sales by signing up for our monthly newsletter.