Non Fluffy Wicca

When one runs a Wiccan webshop, one often gets quite interesting emails, ranging from those who wish to "save" your soul, to those who want you to give them names and addresses for all your suppliers so they can go around you, to those who want you to be their guru, those who want free love spells, and finally, to those who have difficulty with calendars.

So here we are, after a VERY busy holiday season, where this year we had essentially FOUR holiday days. Solstice was 12/21, Yule was 12/22, Christmas was 12/25, and 12/26 was another holiday day. Most customers were very careful to order gifts they expected for any of these holidays well in advance, and those who needed things at the last minute contacted me to ask for overnight shipping, which I did my best to provide.

Imagine my surprise when I got an email blasting me to the heavens and threatening to give me bad reviews across the Internet because an item marked "usually ships in 5 to 7 business days" and ordered 12/21, wouldn't be shipped until next week. The shop that makes the piece closed for the week of the 25th so I won't get it until next week. *sigh*

After shipping a TRUCKLOAD of stuff this month, hopefully this is the only difficulty we will encounter. Hopefully our happy fun post office will have delivered everything on time and in the same number of pieces as left the shop :-).

Year end blessings to all, and to all a good night. Especially my mom whose birthday is today. Happy birfday MAAAAAAA.

Posted by mikki at 07:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ok, I'll admit that I'm rather confused by most of this issues surrounding this purported War on Christmas and Christians. Last night a friend suggested that part of the reason for this is that Christians are feeling backed into a corner, and are fighting back in any way that they can. The loud and vocal push to call things "Christmas" seems to fall into part of this purported struggle. The idea that there is now some sort of a backlash because Christians are being somehow discriminated against, and therefore they are now fighting mad, and taking it out on the "rest of us" is something that I really haven't considered before. I was told that perhaps this was a reason for my other friend not wishing to assist Pagans, for the newfound exclusionary "do not use Happy Holidays" rhetoric, and for the new pushes to install "Intelligent Design" and nativity scenes and 10 Commandments rocks everywhere possible.

But what is this so-called discrimination that they feel must be fought against? Is it truly discrimination, or is it, instead, a backlash to the backlash? I say this because we have a President who is a self proclaimed fundamentalist who invokes his God as evidence that what he is doing is correct. Nobody wishes to call him on that point for fear they will look "anti-Christian." Those who feel their President has a mandate from the people, then "push the envelope" by attempting to impose religion on others in public settings, often at public expense such as "intelligent design," nativity scenes and biblical rocks, as well as proclaiming trees and parties as "Christmas" and not "Holiday." If anyone objects to that, they are "anti-Christian" and "anti-American." Then, their failed offensive is re-cast by the screeching pundits of Fox News, not as a failed attempt by Christians to encroach further upon a secular state, but as those naughty evil ACLU lovers bashing Christians.

The idea that inclusion was Christian bashing is definitely a new one on me. My father's shrill statement that he was "offended" if someone says "Happy Holidays" to him is but one example of "in your face" confrontation for its own sake that I honestly don't understand. It MAY be the result of Christianity losing ground in the United States as other religious groups are rapidly growing (for example, the studies showing that Wicca is the fastest growing religion in the world, as Protestantism declines). It may be the result of the misplaced sense of entitlement because of the still held although disproved notion that America is a "Christian nation." It may be because of the "election" of George Dubya. But whatever it is, I just can't get over the double talk and twisting of facts that are being used to justify exclusion of others, and feigned horror that the holidays in December can still be called holidays and not "Christmas."

More later.

Posted by mikki at 01:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The orders are coming in, and I'm finding that it's getting rather exciting around here. Who would have thought there was just so much to do? Phase one is pretty easy - you generally find a wholesaler or two, sign up with them, "borrow" pictures off their website, build your own website (from scratch if you're someone like me) and sit and wait for orders. However, when you sit and wait for awhile, you tend to go look and see what OTHER people in your position are doing. Then you kind of find that all of the sites that are doing the exact same thing you are, kind of wind up at the bottom of the search engine results and are totally ignored. So, it's on to another strategy.

The new strategy was to offer quality products that I personally test to make sure they're what they say they are, and hopefully build a reputation as someone who offers useful really nice products at a good price. Of course, in order to do that, one must find wholesalers who don't sell the same crap you find on every website in the country, all bought from the same wholesalers, imported from India by the gazillions, etc. etc. And that takes WORK.

So once you get the suppliers together, have ordered the products, etc., you find that most of your new suppliers are small businesses just like you, and therefore they don't have really cool photos. You must then set yourself up as a photography business as well, and the pictures you take had better be relatively nice or nobody will buy anything at all. You get the pictures, you integrate them onto the website, and then you're done, right? Uh, not quite.

Continue reading "Enchanted Works Getting Really Busy" »

Posted by mikki at 07:33 PM | Permalink