That's All Folks...

Over the last few months we have had to make a hard decision in the Tomb with regards to +Dead With Tequila. After a lot of thought and consideration, copious amounts of coffee and chocolate, We have made the decision to close the store on Storenvy.

There have recently been some changes at Storenvy, that if I'm being completely honest, don't sit very well with R and myself, and we now feel that it's time we moved on. Dead With Tequila has been on Storenvy for nearly two and a half years now, so this was not a decision that was made lightly. Within the last couple of months, Storenvy have introduced what they are calling a "Storenvy Fee". This is a fee payed by YOU, the customer, basically for shopping on the platform. We already pay commission on the marketplace sales (this comes out of our profits) and we are fine with that. In theory that commission is because it is a sale that the platform has generated for us and it goes back into things tech support for the sellers, customer service, keeping the platform running. But with this new Fee, on marketplace sales they get the commission WE pay and the Fee that YOU pay. YOU still pay this Fee even if we have generated the sale ourselves through our own marketing in our own store. We don't feel that is fair that you should have to pay a fee because you chose to shop there over anywhere else.  

Now, just because we are not happy with this fee doesn't mean we don't understand why it has been brought in. This Fee is also suppose to go towards improving the customer service and all the other things that I mentioned before, and that's not a bad thing. In fact that's a great thing! The platform should develop and grow, and hopefully by doing so, improve. However they never actually told the sellers that they planned to implement this. We only got an email after some (understandably) angry people took to the Facebook group asking questions and demanding answers. The answers we were given didn't really address peoples concerns and still nobody seems to know exactly what is going on with it, and it's been a month.

The thing is it's not just the fee that has caused us to make this decision, although it has definitely played a key role. Storenvy is suppose to be the ideal place for "Indie" sellers. It even says so right at the top of the home page.

Okay, so it doesn't say it word for word, and this is an animation that changes. However the only bit that changes is the word "Brands". It changes to other words such  as "Artist", "Makers" and "People". As much as there are a lot of sellers that fit that description, there are also a lot of mass production companies; as in multi-million dollar companies. They have as much right to sell items as everyone else does, but in becomes an issue when these become the store that the platform pushes to the top of the listings, and repeatedly make them featured brands. (Every store as a limit of 500 products. If you become a featured brand you get space for even more listings.) What this means is the marketplace is swamped with mass produced items and small businesses that work hard to produce unique, amazing items get pushed down to the bottom of the pile and are lucky if their products show up in the first thousand pages (depending on what you search, you can have over seven thousand pages to flick through).

This is something that has been bought up by several sellers. Most wanting to voice their opinion, and others because they feel it's unfair and want the issue addressed. Basically the answer that they got was to do more marketing (I'm paraphrasing here. But when you take all the wordy filler out of the given answer this is what was said.). Indie sellers that consist of stay at home mums, and young artists, and companies that only consist of one or two people, were basically being told to do more marketing to compete with multi-million dollar businesses, who probably have a department of a couple of hundred people that focuses on just marketing, let alone having to make products, do inventory, plan sales, create ads, do the marketing, and be active across social media. I think that a lot of people started to feel as though the platform wasn't interested in it's Indie sellers anymore. There a few other small things that contributed to us deciding to close up shop here, but these are the two big reasons.

I think we have perhaps out-grown Storenvy. We stared Dead With Tequila with absolutely no idea what we were doing and no experience of the crazy world that is e-commerce. Storenvy was a great place for us to learn (and boy, was there a steep learning curve!) and figure out exactly what Dead With Tequila is suppose to be and get the vibe right. For the record, I don't think Storenvy is a bad company; I think it's great in fact. I believe that they have a lot of good ideas, and good intentions to go with, it's just their execution occasionally misses the mark. But our time here has come to an end, and we must say good bye.

So what does all this mean?

It means that Dead With Tequila is MOVING!!! As of 2017 Dead With Tequila will be joining Tomb Buddies on Tictail. In the new year items will slowly disappear from the Storenvy store and materialize on the new Tictail store.

The majority of items will make it to their new home, but some wont be so lucky. We decided that we need a bit of a tidy up of the stock. So we might do a clearance sale, or some giveaways we're not sure yet. With this move comes a new look for Dead With Tequila. A more simple look. I think after nearly two and a half years, I have finally nailed down the colour scheme. So there'll be a new store that will look completely different from the Storenvy one, and the blog will therefore get a makeover to match. I've already started work on these and so far I'm really happy with it all. It looks amazing!

This move should also open up more opportunities for us, and allow us to expand and develop the way that we want to with out so many restrictions. The store is completely customizable, the discounts options are more versatile, there are more category options in the marketplace and a good focus on the small business/indie sellers and no product limit.

R and myself are excited about the future of Dead With Tequila and hope you will continue to follow us no matter where we end up with this. There are a lot of exciting things to come, and we can't wait to share them with you. It's a whole new beginning...



Congratulations! You made it to the end of what my be my longest post ever! As per usual, if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below, find me on Twitter, send a carrier pigeon with your message, or perhaps a flying monkey, unicorn or even a magic carpet.

When The Voices Talk To Me

So I've been working away in the +Dead With Tequila Tomb lately mainly on my cartooning project that I mentioned ages ago. It come on a lot in the last few weeks, you'll be happy to hear.

Some of you may have seen this on the Dead With Tequila Instagram account (follow us @deadwithtequila) This a work in progress shot of that project. In the Tomb it has begun to be know as the Tomb Buddies collection. There will be eight characters in total: a Rhino, a Rabbit, a Bear, a Giraffe, a Rat, a Cat, an Elephant, a Lion and a Hippo. All of which have names, but you'll just have to be patient and wait and see what we have called each of them.

The reason that you can see random limbs and floating heads here is because this is essentially going to be a hybrid style of art. everything will be hand drawn, the old fashioned way, on paper and then scanned in and digitally cut out and posed to make the final designs. I have to draw each character then break them down into individual parts and then draw each part from every conceivable angel; hence the reason that things are taking so long. When it's done this will pretty much just be Posters, T-Shirts and Tote bags. I'm considering perhaps doing cushions and maybe even mugs, but I'm going to think on it some more. Cool handmade bookmarks were part of the original plan, but I still haven't quite perfected a design in my head yet, so that may or may not happen. We are talking about creating a separate store for this collection. Purely for that fact that already I have so many ideas of what I'm going to be doing with the characters, and also because we feel that as much as this continues the Day Of The Dead theme that we try and focus on in the Dead With Tequila store, we feel that it's different enough that it wouldn't necessarily fit in with the other collections. This is going to be kept really simple. Black and White, clean lines, and have an overall cute feel to it. There will also be a separate newsletter that you can sign up to, I'll give you more info on that at a later date though.

In other news, I added this to the the store earlier today. You can check it out in the store here. It's made in the USA, and ships from Los Angeles. If you didn't already know our store uses PayPal, so check out is secure.

  

Snail Mail

So we've been talking in the +Dead With Tequila Tomb about doing an email subscription newsletter thingy (If you follow me on twitter you already know this), but I was wondering what sort of things people might want to see in it. 

• Firstly if we did a newsletter would you sign up?
• We were thinking doing one either once a month or once every two months. What sounds better to you?
• We thought of announcing new items that are being launch in the store via a newsletter. At the moment if you want to receive an email when we add new items to the store you have to have either bought items from us previously or create an account on Storenvy and Watch our store and then Storenvy will send you an email. We understand that most people (ourselves included) don't want to create an account just to see new products that they may or may not intend to buy (It's like asking someone to create an Amazon account when they don't shop on Amazon) We thought that this would be a good way for people to stay in the loop without having to create any accounts that they don't want.
• As an when we do Giveaways, they would be announced here first.
• Sales would be announced here first (And maybe do sales that only subscribers will know about, just because they're awesome and deserve some special treatment :-P )

These are the ideas that we have so far. Suggestions are welcomed as are opinions on the ideas above; they can be left in the comments below you and message me on Twitter or message Dead With Tequila on Twitter (links at the top of the column on the right) failing that email you thoughts to deadwithtequila@gmail.com

Your thoughts and ideas really would be greatly appreciated. 

Also keep your eyes peeled for the Dead With Tequila Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale...details coming soon.

 

  

Tomb Trivia

HELLO!!! It feels like it's been ages since I posted any weird ramblings. I'm not going to include the book reviews that have been posted as they come via a link to Goodreads. If you're a bookworm, feel free to add me on Goodreads, I have discovered that the "Livvii's Quotes" bit on the right is a link to my profile there (who knew!?). Until recently, I was busy in the +Dead With Tequila  tomb trying to get everything done in time for us to reopen with all the awesome new stuff. But that's all done, and I've spent the last month doing all the marketing side of stuff, which always takes more time than you think. Thank you to all the awesome people that have been viewing the store and keeping us well over a thousand views a week. 

If you haven't taken a look in the store since we re-opened, then you're missing out, but you can easily fix that! (just click "Shop Dead With Tequila" in the bar at the top). If you have had a peruse at the store, what's your favourite thing? (I am genuinely interested). I'll also have you know that we are still not done with new items for the store. Yes, this does mean what you think it means; it means that there are even more new items that will eventually be coming your way. If you don't want to miss out on any new items that we add to the store, you can Watch the store and receive an email when anything new is added. You can do this by clicking "shop Dead With Tequila" and in the top right corner in the store front click "join Storenvy" then you can watch the store and never miss a thing!

Some boring  interesting facts from the Tomb:

• In making the new jewelry items so far for the re-opening we used upwards of 600 Jump Rings.
• Somewhere in the region of 2000 beads have been used on the new items so far.
• New items so far have used around 300 head pins
• The new necklaces and bracelets that have been made so far have used about 130 crimps.
• On new items alone, we used probably 150m of wax thread and 120m of organza ribbon on bracelets and necklaces.
• The new earrings made for the re-opening used up about 40m of chain.

Yes I did spend about three hours working this out. I was gonna do this really cool thing, and make some kind of infographic. R then pointed out (after I spent the 3 hours working it all out), that probably no one is going to care. I said "Well I spent three hours on this so I'm going to blog it whether anyone cares or not", R replied with "You are a silly bean."  For the record I am not a bean, but a flying donkey.

Now that the mad rush of photographing and uploading new items to Dead With Tequila is over, I really want to get back to working on my cartoon based collection that I started a while ago. Because we were trying to get everything else done before R went off to university, it got put one the back burner for a little while. The good news is, it now has a working title!!! Tomb Buddies. This may change between now and it being finished (god only know when that will be). There is  still so much to be done it's unreal, but it's going to be really cute, but keep the vibe of Dead With Tequila. It's a very monochromatic collection; very black and white. R has suggested having small hints of colour in there, but I'm not so sure. It's still early days yet, so I may change my mind on that one. Thinking about it now, they'd look great on t-shirts and bags. Of course there will be posters too. I also have a vague plan in mind about some book mark style thing with the characters, but that needs a bit of fine tuning yet. Perhaps when I've done a bit more to it all I'll share some "in progress" pics.   

I think that's everything for today. As usual, questions, comments, either below, or come find me on twitter. Failing that, carrier pigeons, magic carpets, unicorns and flying monkeys are also acceptable messenger services to be used.     

And The Count Down Begins

R and my self have been working really hard in the +Dead With Tequila Tomb lately, whether we are ready or not the, end is near. In a little over a week and a half R goes off to university, and therefore we have to have everything finished before then. In an ideal world we could do with another couple of months to finish everything off; for no other reason than at the moment we are very stressed out, regularly repeating our new mantra of  "There's not enough time, oh God there's not enough time!"  and have pretty much been working in the tomb morning, noon and night and having dreams that we are still in the Tomb working away.  Have you ever been so stressed and panicked by what you're doing that you no longer no how to do what you're meant to be doing? that's how R and my self have been for the past 3 or 4 weeks and it is horrible.

I'll stop rambling now and start telling you about some really cool stuff from the Tomb.

So we have TEN, yes 10 new collections for you: Edgar Allen Poe, Down The Rabbit Hole, Light Years Away, Dreams Of Darkness, American Dreams, Pocketful Of Posies, The Kraken, Ancient Ruins, Dia De Los Muertos and Pandaemonium.

We are getting RID of postage charges!! (Whooo!!)

We have got some amazing new necklaces. Where we now have themed collections we ave got some amazing statement charms and things that are gorgeous and we can't wait for you all to see them.

Now for the really exciting stuff!!! We have decided to branch out and offer apparel items in the Dead With Tequila store. If you follow me on Twitter or just occasionally stalk your way through my feed (I don't mind a bit of stalking :-P ) you would have seen this pic that I shared yesterday

  
This is one of our Own Brand items that will soon be available to you from the Dia De Los Muertos Collection. This is the collection that will be the home to all of the Own brand items. 

So basically we have paired with a third party company that make, print, and ship the apparel items as well as the new posters directly from Los Angeles. We have tank tops, hoodies and posters so far.

This does mean that there will be shipping costs attached to the apparel and the new posters because they are the ones that deal with the order and they are the ones that set the shipping costs not us. There will be more info on the shipping costs of these items and size guide and things put on the Dead With Tequila blog site in the FAQ section, that will explain everything so no need to worry.   

Anyways...back to work. I can't wait for you all to see what we have been working on. If you end up reading a product description or something on the Dead With Tequila blog and there are mistakes or missing info, please let me know. the problem with working on something so much is you get so used to it you stop seeing the mistakes, so I'm counting on you guys.

You know the drill questions or comments can be left below, or tweet me, or send a magic carpet, carrier pigeon, flying monkey or unicorn.  

Hi, Just passing through

This is just a flying visit because I'm busy busy busy in the +Dead With Tequila Tomb.

Yes there is a lot of exciting stuff happening in the Tomb right now. We're have spent the last few weeks, especially the past two days working really hard on some awesome new stuff. 

I can confirm that within the last hour and a half we have finished the jewelry part of the Edgar Allan Poe collection!!! (does happy dance). There's some wire bracelets, elasticated bracelets, a couple of bag charms, earrings and...(drum roll please..) NECKLACES!!!!! They are totally gorgeous.. I've already finished a couple of poster designs and a tank top. Yes you read that right, a tank top...as in an item of clothing (Oooo!!) I'm working on even more designs for both t-shirts and posters and maybe even tote bags... I'm just gonna leave you to ponder that for a moment.

The Pandaemonium Collection is coming along nicely as well. Lots and lots of really bold colours paired with black. This is the next one that we are going to aim to finish. Hopefully.... we're waiting for some supplies, but they have to come from a supplier in China so are taking awhile to arrive, which is stressing R and myself out a little bit. If we don't get our stuff with in the next week or so we want to move onto the Down The Rabbit Hole collection. 

Down the Rabbit hole has some nice pieces in already. This is going to have clocks, and playing cards, and dice, some florals. It's going to be a very grown up version of the old story. The teacups are being swapped with martini and shot glasses...Make of that what you will.

The past couple of days have been really busy to say the least. We've started to make multiples of the same item (never more than 10 though) 

There's going to be some updates on how we list stuff in the store as well, but I'll tell you more about that another time..


Anyways...Loves you all, but now I have to dive back into the Tomb or maybe bed. Maybe I'll just sleep in the Tomb...Yeah, that sounds like a plan. 

Laters my lovelies.         

True Colours.

So +Dead With Tequila are considering branching out into tshirts and maybe some other stuff. So I was just curious as to what sorts of colours appeal to people.  The image below shows the colour options for the items we are considering. I'd love t know what you think.

Personally I'm leaning towards going with the Vintage Black and the Venetian Grey (potentially adding Purple Rush and Vintage Red into the mix) for the Women's tank top. Ultra Blue and Black for the hoodie. For the men's tank Black and Heather Grey.

Let me know what you think via the comments, on twitter, or by carrier pigeon.

Thanks xx     

It's Dead With Tequila's Birthday

Get 10% off in the store this Friday (July 31) with the discount code shown below!

Change is Coming.....

So over the last couple of weeks we've been having some serious talks in the +Dead With Tequila Tomb.

The end of July will mark 1 year of Dead With Tequila, and we have decided that some big decisions need to be made about how we do things, both on Storenvy and in the Tomb.

Change is coming.

We have got so many new ideas, and feel that the way we currently operate just isn't gonna cut it for all the craziness that's in the pipeline. These new ideas and plans show more of who we are, both as individuals and as a brand; not that the items currently available don't do that, but the awesomeness that we have in store for you does so even more! We really want to develop our style and personality in this next year, and hopefully in doing so can grow our brand that is Dead With Tequila. We want to flaunt our dark and twisted, weird and wonderful, creative and quirky sides. So far we don't feel as though we've been able to do that. We want to make a statement. We want to be able to be like " 'Boom!' This is us. Yes, we're young and arguably inexperienced, but we've worked our asses off and created something pretty amazing with absolutely nothing at all, and we're proud of what's been achieved!"

That's really the truth of ALL of this...If you told me two years ago that I'd be here, running and creating a small business, I would have thought you were crazy. Believe it or not, this isn't a life long dream of mine. I haven't spent years of my life imagining what it would be like to run my own business with my best friend, and considering all the potential names for it. Dead With Tequila is really the result of me throwing away three years worth of work because I got sick, and to continue on studying was no longer going to be a viable option for me. Dead With Tequila only exists because, I happened to have the most incredible best friend, who was willing to take a chance with me, with this crazy idea, stand by me and help add to the craziness of it all. This was one of those times where neither of us had any idea about what we were doing, but being to stubborn to back down from the challenge, went ahead and did it anyway; and if we got stuck, well hey, that's why the world invented Google.

This first year of Dead With Tequila has really been about us finding our feet. Learning. We didn't have any aims or targets for the last year; the way we saw it, just opening the store was an achievement! Then the fact that we had more than 1 page view was a shock....Then actually making a sale....We refreshed the page about three time to make sure it wasn't a mistake! We couldn't believe it. Now that we feel we know what we're doing, understand how the relevant platforms work, we can now start putting all our plans into place. 

Some of these ideas that we have aren't new; they've been with us right from the start, unfortunately we had to learn to walk before we could run. This was probably the only time my mum got involved with the business side of things, (she runs about 3 for various people) other than educating me and Carrie on how tax works (still don't think I understand it!). Her advice was to pace ourselves, and in the process let our ideas develop. So, we've held back. We are now ready to start unleashing the crazy on you! 

The way that we group our items is going to be big change. Our products will no longer be grouped by type e.g. Wire Bracelet or Elasticated Bracelets etc. We have decided to create themed collections, any new products will be produced as part of a theme, meaning that we can really spread our creative wings. Some of the names that have been tossed around for these collections are just wicked! But you're just gonna have to wait to see what they are. We haven't quite worked out the finer details of how we are going to go about implementing this overhaul yet. At the moment it seems like the best choice is to close the store for a day or so. It's been discussed that we may release one of these new collections at a time, say one a month or something. The problem with this would be that some items may have to temporarily disappear. 

Some of the current collections will stay. Most likely the Accessories, Posters and Original Art mainly because the items currently in these collections won't fit with the new themes. Hopefully more of these collections will be raising money for other charities.     

So lots to be doing, sea things, evil bunnies, weird and wacky stuff!! I hope you're just as excited as I am about all this! 

As usual leave your thoughts, comments, suggestions, magical unicorns, flying monkeys etc. below or come and bug me on twitter ;D  

Shhhhhh...It's a secret...

For anyone wondering about what's been going on in the +Dead With Tequila Tomb of late, the answer is lots of awesome stuff. Quick summary....

• Givaway: We've finally finished putting together what's going to make up the bundle. Details should be up and ready to let you all loose on really soon  NOW!!.   Exciting stuff!! Click Here
• There's about 6 items in the bundle, I think. Give or take.

• The release date for The Wild Life Collection (raising money for WWF) has been narrowed down to June, so keep your eyes peeled for that. You can already preview most the stuff in the store if you want, there's only a few pieces that we haven't up loaded because they're unfinished.

• We've been playing around with some new ideas as well, but I can't say to much on that right now.

• There will be a 10% off flash sale across the store on World Goth Day, that's May 22nd for those that don't know. Coupon code will be revealed nearer the time.
• I did want to do a whole other collection** for this spectacular celebration of Goth awesomeness, but The Wild Life Collection to a lot longer than expected to finish, so there just hasn't been the time. Fingers crossed we might aim to do one for next year and have it as another charity collection (we've discussed the Sophie Lancaster Foundation as a charity)

• There may or may not be another longer sale in the summer. We haven't decided on this yet, so don't get your hopes up (there's still World Goth Day!) 

**I've been wanting to do some more Goth / Alternative style collections for a while now; I've been thinking and Edgar Allen Poe collection (You may say cliche, but I love his work. Random Fact: I have the same birthday as Poe). I recently got a bunch of new arty stuff to play wit that would work really well with this idea. There has also been talk of a Nordic/Viking theme collection, make of that what you will.... Any thoughts on this, or suggestions even...Let me know via comments, Twitter, carrier pigeon, magic unicorn (seriously, I expect a unicorn)

Take a peek....Dare you.

First things first - I've revamped... Again.....Slightly. The +Dead With Tequila store button that was on the right hand side was bothering my Inner Squirrel (the button was dark blue and really didn't work with the colour scheme) and the Brain Hamster had enough of listening the to whining....So I had to change it. I'm happy with the pages bar though....For now anyway ;)

Now the really important stuff...

Dead With Tequila have added awesome new stuff the the store. There's some cute bag/key charms, quirky earrings and gorgeous new bracelets that I think you'll all gonna love. Check it all out by clicking the "Shop Dead With Tequila" button at the top of the page.

 

Dead With Tequila Valentine's SALE!!!

Don't miss the +Storenvy  Valentine's Sale. You can get 20% off your order.

Runs Friday 13th through to Monday 16th of February.

You can find +Dead With Tequila in the Marketplace Here!