Amber:

Welcome to Episode 8 of the Gem Finders Podcast. I'm Amber.

Shaun:

I am Shaun.

Amber:

And we kind of have a big announcement today with what we're talking about. We are quitting our Instagram live sales.

Shaun:

Oh, I thought the big announcement was that we have a new podcast set up.

Amber:

Haha. We also are attempting a new podcast set up, but I don't know if this is gonna stay or not. We're just kind of testing it out. 

Shaun:

It's way more comfortable for me. My back feels so much better.

Amber:

But I want it to look good. That's important. 

Shaun:

I think we look good. We're showing off our home that you are

Amber:

turning—a house I hate—into a home I love. We're showing that off now. That series is on Instagram and TikTok and YouTube Shorts.

Anyways, so today we are going to discuss why we are quitting Instagram live sales, which is actually crazy to even say out loud. And it's definitely scary, because Instagram live sales have done so much for this business. They have taken this business places that I never imagined in the beginning. They have been our most profitable strategy. And it really is scary to take a step back and to stop doing them. But we're kind of at a point that we have to.

Shaun:

I think that a lot of people, when they think of Gem Finds Vintage, they think of live sales.

Amber:

Yeah, I do too. And I mean, that's where we have, you know, gotten to know so many of our customers, which has been an amazing part of the live sales. And it's definitely helped us build our community.

Shaun:

It is very scary to think about. I wonder if we'll be able to make it through this period.

Amber:

To be determined.

Shaun:

But we also—we're struggling right now with heavily relying on live sales.

Amber:

Yes, which we will get into. And maybe about half of this is kind of factors outside of our control.

Shaun:

Yeah, for sure. The world is crazy right now. Instagram is constantly changing their algorithm. Just what they show to people. Even if your followers are subscribed and they have notifications turned on, I feel like they don't get notifications half the time.

There's just, like you said, there's a lot that's out of our control, and we need to take back control in any way that we possibly can.

Amber:

Yes. It doesn't feel good, the way that the business is currently kind of running. It feels stressful and it kind of heightens my anxiety. And a lot of our decisions that we're going to explain really come from a place of trying to make this a smoother experience for both ourselves and our customers.

Shaun:

It feels overwhelming in a lot of ways. And I know that, you know, running a business—owning a business—isn't always fun, but it feels like so much of the fun has been stripped away within the last few months or so.

Amber:

Yeah. And I think a lot of that comes from the fact that we made the mistake of relying too heavily on Instagram live sales. But for a very long time—for at least a solid year and a half...

Shaun:

Close to two years—

Amber:

They were bringing in almost all of our business income. Or Instagram in general was bringing in almost all of our business income. Even when we have sales on the website, it's very rare that somebody is purchasing from another platform. It is almost always somebody who follows us and engages with us on Instagram.

So we kind of put all of our eggs in the Instagram basket, and we always talked about how that was not a smart strategy. But we never ended up having any time to implement or create anything else, because the live sales and the orders coming in were keeping us so busy.

And so we kind of got to a point where we kind of saw that this wasn't a smart strategy, but also didn't feel like we had any time or energy to fix it, and we just kind of kept rolling with it. And now it's kind of a little bit too little, too late in a way.

Shaun:

Yes. I mean, it is. It's just the two of us. We do everything. So there's not a lot of time for the creative aspect and the more fun aspect of the business. You know, when we get orders, we have to pack up the orders. And it takes so much time to pack up the orders that that's pretty much the only thing that we really have time for.

So even though it is scary right now, I do think that this is a fun new chapter that we're kind of rolling into. And also, when you mentioned about Instagram being the heart of our business basically, that also wasn't necessarily planned. That just kind of happened. And it was never really planned for me to be this much involved with the business either. Like all of this just happened so quickly that we never had time to even have a plan and like map out strategies. It was just—the orders started coming, they caught us off guard, it was overwhelming, and that just kept on for like almost two years like we said.

So it feels like this was necessary in a way. We needed something to kind of kick us in the butts and remind us that you need to have a strategy to keep the business growing and moving forward.

Amber:

And that's what I keep reminding myself— like all of that stuff, all of those orders coming in, the ability to bring you on full time, the ability for this to, you know, grow the way that it did— it all unfolded naturally.

And I feel like by continuing to push Instagram live sales, we're kind of going against what feels natural right now. And so I'm just really leaning into that, where like we are being led in a different direction, and I'm trying to like make peace with that and kind of accept that. And just see what's next for us. We will always be reselling. We will still be bringing items to the shop. That is not gonna go anywhere anytime soon. But we just—we need to do some things differently.

So before we talk about what's next, let's talk about kind of the history of how we got started with live sales. Because like you said, this—it was not planned. When I started this business—more specifically when I started the business on Instagram—there were a lot fewer resellers on Instagram. So even though it's still like uncharted territory, it was even more so back then. And there were people doing live sales, and I just kind of always thought that that wasn't for me.

But I did try them because a lot of people were having success, and I was like oh, maybe that's what I should do. And I tried a couple and they were total flops. I don't know, maybe six people watched and we had very few claims. And I tried it maybe—I don't know—maybe five or six times and I was like no, this is not for me. This is not what I want to do. This does not feel good. This is not within my personality. And so I just stopped. For a really, really long time I didn't do any Instagram lives.

And then about two years ago I had the opportunity to do a candle vessel live with somebody who is now one of my best friends—Jess at Salvage Bohemia—but at the time that's how I got to know her. And she is who started the candle vessel live craze. And so she invited a bunch of shops to do a live with her in—I think it was—15-minute increments at that time. And each shop had 15 minutes to share vessels, and then the concept was sending the vessels to her, she turns them into a candle, and then she sends them back to the customer.

And that was the first live that I had done in a very, very long time—in years—and I loved it. I loved the energy, I loved the vibe, I loved the excitement that it brought to the business. And I was like okay, like maybe—maybe there is a part of me that is meant to do live sales. Maybe I can do this.

Shaun:

You loved that people actually bought some things.

Amber:

Yeah. I loved that there was kind of like sales just kind of rolling in. And I was like okay, like this has some potential. So I think it was only like a week or two later I decided to have my own like solo live sale. And I think I was downstairs and you were upstairs, and I remember coming upstairs and being like oh my gosh, like I just made $1,000 in a few hours. And at that point in time, that was crazy. We had never had anything like that happen in the business before.

Shaun:

Maybe a couple hundred at the most before that.

Amber:

And so I really leaned into live sales from that point, and shortly after that we started doing them every week.

Shaun:

Sometimes two times—a week.

Amber:

Sometimes two times a week.

For—in the beginning of our live sales—we did 8 PM on Wednesdays and 8 PM on Sundays. Sundays, for a really long time, we did two a week. In the beginning it was really about showing what I had just found. Like I would come home and I would—we would inventory them super quick—and I would like show the items that I just found and I would let people buy them. And I also tried some themes. I would do like all vases or all like vanity accessories. And I like really played around with it and it was a lot of fun. And there were definitely lives that were slower than others. There were definitely lives where like the attendance was a little heartbreaking. But like, you know, I don't want to say that it was all an uphill success, because that was not true. There were definitely good lives and then there were, you know, lives that really hit at my confidence.

But overall, the lives were really serving our business in a wonderful way—both for me mentally, because I felt like it gave me that like human connection, that kind of like opportunity to interact with people in real time. And I felt like our customers were really enjoying them. And financially, it was fantastic for the business as well. So once that kind of got rolling, I never would have imagined that we would be here saying that we're not gonna do that anymore.

Shaun:

Yes and no. Because we have had many discussions where we're like, this is gonna be the week where things start to slow down. We have said that so many times over the last couple years, and now it's real. It's reality.

Amber:

Yeah. And for a while, our lives were so consistent.

Shaun:

Oh yeah, so consistent.

Amber:

We would have like right around 30 claims every live. We would make like $1,500 to $3,000. We would have attendance of like 40 to 60 people—like at a time. People come in and out. So it—it just like—it felt really good. And it felt like it was working. And it felt like it was stable. We could count on that income.

I never felt like lives were in the comfort zone of my personality. I have a lot of anxiety. I don't like being on the spot. I like having a plan. I like knowing what I'm gonna say ahead of time. So even the podcast episodes are tricky for me. And the energy I got back from the lives and the enjoyment our customers shared with us made me want to keep going. And that felt really special. It felt like there was a really wonderful, like, energy around our lives for a really long time.

Shaun:

The energy around the lives was a big thing that kept us coming back to them and—and sticking with them so consistently. Because like you said, we were able to grow the community and we were able to connect with customers on a more personal level. And this—this deeper connection that you can't get just from, you know, a sale on a website or something like that. And it was just fun. We would do trivia, we would do different things, and everybody would always be so excited for everybody else. We had the claim music—you know, every time someone claims something, they get a song. Some people would request specific songs. There was a lot of fun and excitement and a lot of energy around the lives for a long time.

And that has just, like, over the last few months—it has slowed down so much. And I don't know that we can point to one thing for that, but it's—it's sad in a way.

Amber:

Yeah, and it is. It is sad. And it's really hard to not take that personally. I think there are a lot of factors at play, but it started to get really stressful. And it also really started to interfere with kind of my—my mental health. And I know that we have talked about this before, but we are currently going through infertility, and that has—I mean, that is kicking our butts. It is so hard and it is very, very draining, and it's very hard not to let that feeling ooze into other areas. Like it's hard to just be, you know, happy and bubbly and personable when, like, my heart is just breaking and when we're dealing with this in the background.

So part of me feels like the reason why the lives slowed down is me. Because I feel like I have a harder time showing up from that place of excitement and, like, positivity. And, like, energetically I feel like that's a challenge for me right now. And our lives typically would go for three hours, for the most part. Recently we started cutting them a little bit shorter. But three hours is a very long time to be in front of a camera, like maintaining that level of energy. And it used to feel like I could do it, and I kind of feel like I—I can't. At least not right now.

Shaun:

Yeah. We made a few changes within the last year or so that maybe impacted the performance of the lives.

Amber:

I don't even know if I would say the last year. I think it's more the past, like, six months.

Shaun:

But yeah, I mean, we—we have had to make some changes just because of our personal lives. And like you said, we can't—can't always put on that happy face. We can put it on for a little while, but it's really hard to maintain it for three hours—or more, sometimes. I mean, our longest live was what, like seven hours or something like that?

Amber:

I can't even believe we did that. Looking back now, that seems like a lifetime ago. But we really did try to keep the lives around. I used to show like 40 new items every live. And then when the lives first started to slow down, we were like—we can't keep bringing 40 new items every live. Because—we’ll talk about this in a little bit—but another problem we've kind of created for ourselves in the business is that people love the new items, but selling old items is a little bit trickier. And so we were like—we can't keep doing it at this rate, because we're bringing in all these new items and not selling items fast enough. But when we were selling 30 items in a live and bringing in 40, and then having other sales throughout the week, it kind of all balanced out. But at some point, that balance started to get disrupted.

And then we started doing collections, where the collections were mixed. There would be like 20 new items and about 20 to 25 existing items, and we would kind of blend them together. And then we also tried not doing a collection, because putting a collection together is a lot of work up front. Especially because I photograph everything in this room, and then our office is a number of rooms away, and that's where most of our inventory is. There's some new inventory in here now, but I was walking back and forth. Like, it's hard to kind of not have all the inventory in one place. So making those videos and pulling those collections was a challenge and it took a lot of time. And so that was another change we made—to stop doing the collections and kind of just promote the live and do more of like a clear-out live every week to see if we could move some older inventory.

So we really did try a number of different strategies to see if we could keep the lives around.

Amber:

I have been a business owner for a very long time, and I have learned that it is very dangerous to pivot as soon as things start to not work. And I've done that a lot in the past. I'd be like, okay, I can see where this is headed—I'm out, like, let me just try something new. Like, it wasn't like I was giving up, but it was like, oh, there's another option on the table, like let me try that out. So I'm definitely a chronic pivoter. And I think that one of the reasons that this business has been so successful and has grown to the point that it has is because I have stuck with it. I have not really let myself pivot—pivot on ideas, sure—but not that kind of like big pivoting. And I think that that can be really dangerous. And I always think it's good to try to tweak your current strategy before you just jump ship and make, like, a huge change. So we really did attempt to make a number of different tweaks to try to maintain the lives.

Shaun:

And I also don't know if some of those tweaks might have made things worse too. People don't like change. And we did take away their new items.

Amber: 

Haha. We kind of—we put them on the website. We weren't taking them away for—well...

Shaun:

But we took them away from the lives. We started taking some away, and then we took them all away. But we kind of had to, because like you said, we weren't getting the sales. And we have a problem where we source way too much inventory.

That is self-inflicted entirely. We are entirely to blame for that. And it has finally just now really started to catch up with us. It wasn't really a problem for a while, because we were getting enough sales that, you know, even though we still had a lot of inventory on hand, it wasn't to the point where we didn't have anywhere to store it. And now we are at that point where we literally have nowhere left to put inventory.

Amber:

And it really felt like it was necessary for a long time because of how many orders we had going out. Like, the people loved the new items, so we had to source that much in order to keep up with demand. But demand started slowing down, and we just kind of—I think we didn’t want to accept that we needed to make a change. And we just kind of kept sourcing at that level without taking a minute to be like, okay, sales are slowing down, we need to slow down.

Because we have had slow weeks in the past, or a slow couple weeks, but they always turn around. I would always find myself being like, I don’t know why I was so worried last week because sales are fine this week. And we’re just kind of getting to the point now where we’re like, okay, this is different. This is a different issue that we’re dealing with.

Shaun:

It's been months.

Amber:

It's been months. And I mean, we've been able to keep the business going. We have, you know, continued to push sales on Instagram, and we have had sales through the website. But when your main strategy—the thing that is making you the most money—begins to be very stressful and not bring in as much money, you do need to take a step back and reflect and adjust.

Shaun:

Yeah, and it also just feels like, for lack of a better term, a waste of time sometimes. When we do the live sales for two, two-plus hours, and, you know, we sell six items. Make $300 maybe.

Amber:

And we still do have so many wonderful customers who are in our lives and who are showing up, and like, we don't want to discredit any of that because we appreciate you so, so much. And we still have fantastic moments on the lives, and there are still moments of connection and moments of laughter, and it is still, in some ways, such a wonderful experience. But at the same time, it's also not what it was—energetically or sales-wise.

Shaun:

No. I mean, there’s a lot of elements that I’m gonna miss about it. I really did look forward to it most of the time. Even—I mean—even up until very recently, I still looked forward to them. You know that. We knew it was coming. We knew it was happening Wednesday night. You know, we knew we were gonna do the live sales, and we kind of knew what to expect. When we started them, in a way, it really kind of distracted us from the rest of life for a long time. Because it was hard not to get sucked up into the energy and the atmosphere that was kind of created in those lives.

And maybe that’s part of it too now—is that like, because that energy is gone in a lot of ways, we don’t have that escape quite as much. It kind of still feels like the rest of life is still on our shoulders and weighing us down even while the lives are going on.

Amber:

I’d agree with that. You know, we don’t know how much of this is because of us. We don’t know how much of it is just that everyone is stressed, everyone is on a budget. I know that everybody is watching their wallets right now. I think people are staying out of the lives in general because they don’t want to be tempted to buy things.

I always give people a lot of credit who would show up to our lives and not purchase anything. Like, the people who would just come and hang out with us, and just—they would share their ideas, and they would just be there for the energy. And like, they had no intention of buying anything, and they would just come to hang out. Like, one—I felt so honored that people would be in there and do that. And two—like, to be able to sit through that and to know that you like these items, and to sit on your hands, like, you know, I think that that really says a lot. And I know that that's really difficult.

Shaun:

Half of the fun of the lives was not the selling. It was all of the other stuff that happened in them. It wasn't even about—you know—yes, we'd get excited when someone would claim something. But there were so many other things constantly happening that would make us laugh or make us excited and happy. And I feel like that was what I looked forward to. I mean, obviously I loved getting the sales and knowing that you could write me a paycheck every week. But just the atmosphere and all of the customers—all of the personalities of everybody kind of would shine through.

Amber:

It was special.

Shaun:

It was—yeah, that's the word. It was special. And there were a lot of inside jokes that came up. And there were just a lot of like silly moments. You know, I do miss that.

And I don't know how much of that has faded because of me, or because of life, or because of all of the issues that we've experienced with Instagram, which is another huge factor. I know we—Shaun mentioned it a little bit before—but people would turn on notifications and not get notified. People are trying to comment and the comments aren’t coming through. People are trying to claim and the claims aren’t coming through. People are, you know, looking at our profile at 8 PM when the lives start, and it's not showing up. Instagram used to show the lives at the beginning of the stories, so you would open your Instagram account, and all those stories—the little story circles—would be at the top, and the lives would be right before that. So you could instantly see who was live right now. And they don’t do that anymore. And that’s not the case. So it’s a huge factor and a huge obstacle in being able to hold a successful live sale right now.

Shaun:

Yeah, it’s definitely not on our side lately.

Amber:

No. I mean, we’ve always had issues—there’s always been like lagging and freezing and little things like that—but the problems have just expanded.

Shaun:

More than half the time anymore, when I try to send a comment through, it doesn’t come through. I mean, we’re in the same room.

Amber:

On the same internet.

Shaun:

Right, on the same internet, right next to each other, you know? We’ve tried so many different things. You know, add an emoji—sometimes that pushes a comment through. You know, don’t use the dollar sign—things like that. And sometimes people will follow all of that advice and still their comment doesn’t come through. So it’s just like we said earlier—there’s only so much we can do, only so much that is in our control.

Amber:

And I think that there’s only so much of those technical and Instagram difficulties that customers can experience before they’re like, I’m done. Like, you know, I would love to be in there, but I don’t want to deal with this.

And that’s not the experience that we want for our customers. We take so much pride and so much care and so much effort in our packing, in our shipping, in our customer service, in so many different aspects of this business to try to offer the best experience. And right now, Instagram is not offering the best experience to our customers. And I think that that’s a really big realization too—like we can’t keep fighting this when it’s not working for our people.

Shaun:

We just need to focus on what we can control. And to go back to the lives a little bit, we still—even in our current lives—we still do have those moments. You know, we still have some fun moments, and we still have a lot of the regulars that have been in there from the beginning. And I don’t want this to sound like we are unappreciative or, you know, like placing any blame on the customers. Because the world is crazy right now. People are not spending as much. You know, they’re worried about what the future’s gonna look like. You know, the economy is crazy. And I think a lot of people are just budgeting really hard right now and not trying to spend money on things that they don’t need.

And even though we love what we do, we aren’t selling things that people need.

Amber:

No, we’re not. And that is very scary, especially at a time like this. And we have a number of changes that we’re going to be making to, you know, maintain what we have created, but also to hopefully move us forward in a better direction for the business and our customers. At some point, I feel like you just have to accept when something is not working. And that’s kind of what we’ve gotten to now.

But I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing, because I think it really does open up a lot of possibilities for the vision that we have had for this business for a long time.

Shaun:

Yeah, and you said earlier that we have started a little bit in some ways, and it might have been too little too late to save us from how quickly the live sales fell off. But we do have some wheels in motion, and I think that, you know, we need to look at the positives and focus on that, because we do have some things started that we are really excited about—that do feel fun and do feel refreshing. You know, it feels a lot different than the monotony of what we’ve been doing for the last two years in a lot of ways.

Amber:

Yeah, because we never wanted to rely solely on selling vintage items. We always saw that as a puzzle piece to our business and wanted to have some other things too. And we haven’t been able to make any of that happen because—and we are so grateful for the sales—we are so grateful that our community kept us so busy, so like to the point where we could pay ourselves full time.

And on one hand, it’s great that we didn’t have time to do anything else, because it shows how much love and support, you know, how much we got, right? How much we connected to our customers—where they did really look forward to our lives and they wanted our items every week. And like, we are so, so, so grateful that we got to experience that.

I think that when you’re a small shop, you look at bigger shops and you’re like, oh my gosh, they’re getting so many sales. And like, when you get to that point, it just—it feels really special to have the sales coming in. It almost—even though it’s stressful to not be able to keep up with things—it’s also kind of exciting because you’re like, it’s going so well that we can’t keep up. And that’s a cool problem to have, at least for a moment in a business.

Shaun:

Yeah. And I mean, I was never really crazy about the idea of selling secondhand things, because to me, I always felt like there was a ceiling to that. You know, if you’re not selling original products, you can only go so far. There are only so many secondhand items. When we have so many regular customers, they only have so much room to fill up their houses. And then, you know, maybe they might sell some stuff off and add some more. But if you are not constantly bringing in new customers that are in the early stages of their collecting phase, I feel like it’s really hard to keep that turnover, because you run out of unique items. And the customers run out of room.

Yeah. So, you know, we—we needed at some point—we've talked about it for so long—we needed to either introduce merch or, you know, some kind of original merchandise that we could put out there. And I think like now we'll finally have the chance to really dive into that and explore it.

Amber:

I've talked about this before, but I want to create something. Like, I want to create something from scratch. I don't want to make it—I want to design it. I want to create products. And we're not quite there yet, but I would love to be there at some point. And this feels like kind of a necessary step to be able to get there.

To piggyback off of what Shaun said, it is hard because we get these people into our community, and they kind of love what they do, and they kind of like get introduced to the vintage and antique world. Because we have a lot of people who have like never even been in a live sale before, and they come and tell us like, “What is this? Like, we love your items but I don't know how to shop this way.” And so it was really exciting to kind of make that connection for people and to be a shop that they found.

Because we have done a lot on TikTok for a long time, and a lot of our customers found us that way. So it was really cool to be somebody who was introducing new customers into this world. But like Shaun said, you always have to be doing that. You kind of constantly have to be seeking out new customers, because the current customers—their houses get filled up, or they realize they have a collecting problem. Or they also get so excited that they start to collect things on their own and they do more antiquing because they learn what to look for—which I love. Like, I have no problem with that at all.

I love when people send a picture and they're like, “Oh look at the Fenton I found today. I’m so excited!” Like that is so exciting for me. So one of our strategies moving forward is going to be to reach customers in new places. And that is one of the best things about having a reselling business—is that there are so many different ways that you can resell, which we talked about on our second episode. The places that you can resell are endless.

And this business started by me posting vintage items on Poshmark, Mercari, and eBay. So we are going to start listing on those platforms again. And I'm excited for a few reasons. One, I think that opens you up to so many more customers. And I'm going to make sure that I include our order cards in every order that say that, like, you can find us on our website. So it’s not just about selling to those customers but also kind of introducing them to what we do.

Part of the next step of our journey is going to be creating resources for collectors and resellers, which is something I’ve wanted to do for a really long time. We've been talking about it forever—it’s one of the reasons that we started the podcast. And I think that tapping back into those platforms is going to give me more insight and give us more knowledge to be able to help the people that we want to reach with those resources.

Because they’re not just for people who want to sell on Instagram—they are for anybody who wants to start a vintage reselling business or a reselling business. I think that a lot of the information applies to any reselling category. And I haven’t listed things on eBay in a really long time. I haven’t put any effort into any other platform other than Instagram and our website for a significant amount of time.

I think that’s something that I should have been doing. I don’t think I should have ever listed just on Instagram. I think that that’s a lesson I’ve learned. But I’m also excited to dive back into those platforms and maybe to explore some new ones, because I don’t know if what I used to do on eBay is going to work four years later. I mean, I have listed a couple things here and there, but it hasn’t been the consistent posting that I used to do that kind of introduced me to the world of reselling as a business.

Shaun:

We have never spent a dime on customer acquisition or customer retention.

Amber:

No.

Shaun:

So we can’t really complain too much, because most businesses spend a lot of money—that is where a lot of their startup money goes into. And we were lucky enough to build a fantastic customer base just off of—I mean, really you. I mean, your personality and how genuine you are. I think that—you know, I think I said it in a past episode—but I think that that really resonates with people and it draws people in. And especially in the live sale format, people are really able to see that in real time and connect with that. Because they see all of your flaws and imperfections along with all of the good things in the live sales. They really get to see who you are. It’s not any pre-recorded content that you can take out what you want—it’s live. And whatever happens, happens.

And I think that a lot of the genuine moments—sometimes when you would say something wrong—it would just bring everybody together, cause everybody would laugh. And you know, you would laugh at it too.

Amber:

Florida Lee.

Shaun:

That’s where a lot of the inside jokes came from—

Amber:

Are from my mistakes. 

Shaun:

Things like that. It really has been great. I know that it’s a rough period right now, but we have nothing to complain about. You know, to have so many regular customers and so many—at least somewhat frequent customers—over the last few years, like that’s amazing. To build that off of zero cents.

Amber:

Even though the business feels a little bit extra stressful right now, I want to make sure that we don’t discredit everything that we created and all of the progress we made. And I really am so proud of us. I’m so grateful for our customers and our community, and I feel very honored that we have had the experiences that we have had with this business. 

It’s not going anywhere. I feel like we’re saying farewell—but we’re not. We’re not. We’re literally not even going anywhere. We’re just—

Shaun:

it’s like a Gem Finds funeral.

Amber:

We’re just taking a step back from Instagram lives. That’s the only thing that we’re—

Shaun:

But it is a big deal at the same time.

Amber:

It’s a big deal. Yeah. I think it is kind of like—

Shaun:

it’s like the end of a chapter.

Amber:

Yeah, it is kind of—kind of grieving what was. 

Amber:

Grieving. And there’s also optimism around it too.

Shaun:

It's not just grief. Like, there's a lot of hope and optimism behind it. But I feel like we have to get over this hump first.

Amber:

Yeah, we just have to figure out a new kind of strategy for the business to maintain the sales that we were making so that we can continue to put some effort into these new projects. So we have the podcast, which we are super excited about, but even the podcast—I have years of marketing and social media and PR experience, and I am doing the bare minimum when it comes to marketing the podcast right now. I’m literally just throwing up reels and TikToks without any strategy or rhyme or reason behind it, like just trying to get the smallest bit of exposure.

But I think that we're creating something really cool here. I think that there's really not anything quite like this in this space, and I want to be able to give it the attention and the strategy that it deserves. We also recently launched our Patreon community.

Shaun:

Very excited about the launch of Patreon—that was the main focus of the last episode of the podcast, where we were talking about our inventory management, and we launched the Patreon. And we're really excited about it because, yes, we do have paid tiers—we have a $5 a month tier for collectors, and then we have a $20 a month tier for resellers, where, you know, we will be very hands-on with helping you on your reselling journey. But most of the content is available in the free tier.

So we just want to expand the community that we've already built on mostly Instagram. Like you said, TikTok—we’ve got quite a few people from TikTok as well. But we really just want to expand that community and kind of almost migrate them all over to Patreon, because that feels a lot more in our control. If you are a Gem Finders Patreon subscriber, then you're gonna see the content that we put out there—if you're in the tier that it's available in. But you know, we have a lot more control over who’s going to see our content, and we're able to have the chats where we can talk to the customers—they can share their finds. You know, if you're in the reselling tier, there's a chat to help with your reselling journey. In the collectors tier, there is a chat to help identify glass pieces.

It’s in the very early stages, and we know that it’s going to take some time to grow, but we are very excited about the potential that it has.

Amber:

Yes, because I think it is a way that everyone can connect. We can maintain that sense of community and hopefully even enhance it more than ever before.

Shaun:

Yeah.

Amber:

More than we were able to do on the other platforms. So we are really excited about that and excited to be able to have some more time and some more space to create those experiences and the resources.

I love creating content. I have been on social media since social media was a thing. I had an Xanga. I had a MySpace. I’m aging myself here.

Shaun:

You forced me to get on social media more when we first met.

Amber:

I did! I really—cause he’s a musician and he’s very talented—and I was like, nobody is finding out about you because you’re not on any social media platform. In the beginning, I had to wait like two weeks for him to pop back up on Instagram just so I could comment to try to get your attention.

Shaun:

It’s true. That’s another story for another day.

Amber:

I really love social media most of the time. And I’m very interested in how people interact on it and the social aspect of it. I was a psychology major in college. I’ve always kind of been fascinated by people connecting and like how the brain works, and especially how that applies to business. And this business hasn’t given me a ton of time to create content. I mean, I’ve consistently created content, but it has just been like trying to get it up right now. And I haven’t had a lot of time to do a lot of series or be really creative with the content or even be creative with styling our pieces, and that’s something that I really, really miss.

I had been on every social media platform since it started pretty much. And then before we started this business—before COVID—I did a lot with brands. And I was kind of like influencing and content creating a little bit and making some money off of it. And there were some things I liked and some things I didn’t about that. But there were aspects that I really loved that I really miss, and I want to get back into that. And so that’s another thing that we are excited to explore. I’ve always seen the potential, and I’ve never been able to fully lean into that. And I’m excited to see what we can create there.

We recently started, like we mentioned before, a series on turning this house that I hate into a home that I love. And we have gotten such amazing feedback on that. And I think that that’s gonna be something really, really cool, because we have no time. We don’t really have a lot of money to dedicate to that right now with where the business is at. Everything kind of has to go either to paying our bills or back into the business. So I’m excited to see what we can create there, and I’m excited to expand our content in the home realm.

Because we've really wanted to work on the house for a while.

Shaun:

And I’ve also been pushing, you know, that we should be leaning more into affiliate marketing and sponsorships and brand partnerships. You know, but like you said, we haven’t had the time to really explore that.

Amber:

No.

Shaun:

I—it’s—I’m sure it’s been on both of our minds, and you know we have brought it up multiple times throughout the years. But you know, it just—it takes time. You know, reaching out to brands and creating the content so that they will even consider you for that kind of stuff, you know? It takes a lot of time. So like I said, we just have to stay optimistic and, you know, look at the positives of this situation and what we can work on moving forward

Amber:

I kind of feel like there are a lot of reasons why things slowed down. Like, it almost feels like it was on purpose—even though I know we didn’t try to make it happen. I feel like it was kind of necessary, because I am so excited to explore all of these things and tap back into my creativity. And I think that especially with what we’re going through, that’s really important—to get my creative spark back.

Shaun:

And even if that’s not the case, we need to believe that anyway, because that’s the best way to move forward right now.

Amber:

There have been so many periods of this business where things just kind of felt effortless. And not effortless in the sense that we didn’t have to do any work, but effortless in that the work we were doing felt like it was paying off. It felt like we were connecting. It felt like things were just kind of flowing and happening for us. And that hasn’t happened in a while. So part of all of these changes is getting back to that—getting back to the roots of the business.

Something I emphasize all the time is that you have to create a business that works for you. And you have to create a business that works for your mental health—otherwise you can’t keep it up consistently. And I feel like I need to take my own advice and get back to that. Because that is why I created this business—something that felt good mentally, that felt doable to me. And I feel like I lost that a little bit along the way.

We’re always asking our audience for feedback—and in a way it’s very helpful, but in other ways I feel like it has steered us in some directions that took us away from the core of the business. And feedback is a gift—please do not stop giving us feedback—but I think that I just need to be a little more in tune with the changes we’re making and make sure they work not only for the customers but also for us.

Because I think it’s so easy to put the customers first and give them what they’re asking for.

Shaun:

But also, at the same time, you know, sometimes we’ll get a higher percentage of a vote for something to go one way, and it actually makes things worse for sales or the business overall.

It’s really easy to feel like you want something to be different if it’s not exactly the way you want it to be. So I feel like sometimes people will vote to change something just for the sake of changing it, and then when it changes, it’s even worse than what it was before. And I feel like some of the changes we’ve implemented have kind of felt that way to us and to the customers. 

Amber:

Yeah. I think we need to remember that we have years and years of business knowledge. And like you said, sometimes it’s just so easy to be like, “Oh well, they’re asking for this—we could do that,” without thinking about, “Well, overall, is this the best strategy for the business?”

So I think we need to merge those two kinds of sources of input—both from our past experiences and from the customers—a little bit more. Like, one example is a core part of this business from the very beginning has been your vintage hauls. When I would bring stuff home from sourcing and show them and put them in a reel and show everybody what I just found.

I mean honestly, those videos brought in so many of our customers. That’s how so many people found me. And for a while, at the time that I posted those videos, nothing was on the website yet. I would allow people to purchase them by messaging me and asking for the price, but they would not be on the website because I had literally just found them and needed time to get them in inventory and posted and photographed and all the steps.

So people had been asking for a really long time for the items to go up on the website at the same time that the hauls were posted because they didn't like seeing the haul and not being able to purchase it right away, even though they could—they just had to take that extra step of messaging me, which I don't think a lot of people love. But I think some people do.

Shaun:

Well also, sometimes when you posted the hauls, some of the items were already gone.

Amber:

Yes, sometimes people would claim things when I would post stories or other previews, and so they were also sad that sometimes I would post these videos and certain things would already have been claimed. So they really were asking for the items to all go up on the website at the time that video was posted so that everybody had a fair chance at getting the items that they wanted. That all made perfect sense to me, and so eventually, we made it happen so that we could do that.

But something I learned is that the magic of the hauls kind of faded away. We didn't end up getting as many sales with that strategy as I was expecting, and the hauls also haven't performed as well since I started doing them in that format.

Shaun:

In terms of views.

Amber:

In terms of views. In terms of views, in terms of comments and engagement. I think people, like, you know—they know when they're being sold to. So if I'm in a reel saying, “These items are available on the website now,” it takes something away from it, because all of a sudden you're like, well now it's a promotion and not a real-time video of what I just found.

And I thought I could maintain that authenticity of recent items that we found and post them on the website at the same time, but I don't think that that is possible.

Shaun:

That's what I was gonna say. I feel like the new format has taken away the authenticity that was in the original format because some of the items that you put in the hauls—we've had them for months. So you aren't as excited about them when you're filming the new type of haul videos.

Amber:

And I didn't just find them. It wasn't, you know, what I found this weekend—and that's how the hauls started. And I think that people really loved seeing some little snippets of our day in our stories, and then a couple days later, the haul would be posted, and then they could message me if they wanted to. And in some ways, that system flowed better than what we're doing now. And to me that felt a little bit more authentic—it felt a little bit more like a story was unfolding.

And that is kind of the way that I approached the business and the content originally—was storytelling my journey as a reseller and what I found when I was going antiquing and what the stores had. And in some ways, our content still does that, but not in the same way that it did.

Shaun:

That seemingly small change in the format of the haul videos created a ripple effect throughout a lot of other things too. Because now, once you film something for a haul, people aren't allowed to claim those, you know? Sometimes you will film items for a haul, and then we'll get on a live sale, and they'll be like, “Oh, can I see that?” you know, “I wanna buy this,” and you're like, “Oh, I can't show it to you now because I filmed it in a haul,” and you wanted all of the items to be available when the haul drops.

So, you know, it seemed like a really minor change for the most part, but it really has had a ripple effect in so many other ways.

Amber:

And it really changed our workflow.

Shaun:

Yeah.

Amber:

In some ways for the best. In some ways it is a little bit easier. But in some ways it's also a little bit harder. There are just, you know, changes like that. And we—we need to get back to what works for us. Because I feel like when we focus the business on what works for us, we can show up with the most amount of energy and the least amount of stress. And I think that that is what then attracts the customers. I feel like that will keep us energized and relaxed so that we can show up as ourselves and create that flow again in the business.

Shaun:

Yeah, it's been a while since I said it, but I used to say it a lot—that I really feel like the customers aren't buying our items. They're buying us, you know? They were sold on us and our personalities.

And like I said, your authenticity and your genuineness. And if we're not feeling what we're doing, it comes across. And I think that our customers can feel that, and it makes them less excited to buy from us too.

Amber:

Yeah.

Shaun:

Because I don't have proof of this, but I fully believe that there have been many pity buys from our customers, just because either they felt bad for us or because they liked us.

Amber:

We don't want pity buying.

Shaun:

I'll take any kind of buying.

Amber:

I will not. Do not buy from us out of pity. Do you understand, people? Only if it is right for your home and your budget are you allowed to purchase. Do not purchase from us because you feel bad. I will not allow it.

Shaun:

I think maybe there have been a few 'cause they felt bad. But more so because I think they just liked us and they wanted to support us.

Amber:

Yeah. 

Shaun:

You know, I think that there have absolutely been people who bought things that they didn't need or really cared about, and they might have bought them and donated them or sold them right away, but they just wanted to support us. And I think that a lot of that energy that we used to bring and that feeling that we kind of helped create has gone away a lot too.

Amber:

Yeah. We need to make sure that the effort that we're putting in is aligning with the energy that we want to create around the business. So that is really what our strategies moving forward are going to revolve around.

I think I'm most excited to be getting back to focusing on storytelling and sharing our journey rather than selling, because I really hate selling. And I think that part of the reason that the business worked so well for so long is because I wasn't pushing sales. I really wasn’t.

Shaun:

We have very different approaches to selling. And I like more traditional selling, but I know that that's not what you want from this business. I do sometimes push sales a little more than you would like, but I also don't feel comfortable doing it, so it doesn't feel fun to me.

I do feel like we need to get away from that format. Because even though I do have a background in that and like at my core I enjoy it, I don't enjoy it in this business. Because I know that it's not what you want, and I know that that's not what it was built on and how it grew. It was grown from you, and the connection that the people have to you, and once I came on, like, to us. We need to get back to that.

Amber:

Yeah. We've done a lot of promotions, a lot of discounts lately. Like we've leaned into a lot of more traditional sales strategies lately, like doing sales and discounts and being a little bit more pushy. And I don't really think it's—

Shaun:

It definitely hasn’t worked.

Amber:

I mean, it's worked a little bit, but, you know, not a lot. Because we kind of created this problem where we just have too much coming in and not enough going out.

Shaun:

We dug ourselves a hole. Yeah, we created this environment where our customers knew that we were gonna discount items a week or two after we introduced them.

Amber:

And we were getting them so excited for the new items that we weren't doing much to promote or advertise or showcase the existing items. So we ended up with, like, so much inventory and too much of our money currently invested into inventory.

So we are recognizing our mistakes and we are sharing them. Because I think that every single business goes through moments like these, and I don't think people talk about it enough. And I think that we are still qualified to give advice on reselling. We have created a lot of success. We have a ton of experience between the two of us, and we aren't afraid to ride the waves of the ups and the downs and to keep going.

Shaun:

This is also going to give us a chance to explore more ways of reselling and to dive back into ways that we kind of haven't explored in a long time.

Amber:

Yeah. We aren't saying goodbye to live sales forever. We will still be doing them sporadically. If something special comes up, like the candle vessel lives, I'm still going to participate in that. Maybe we'll do some lives here and there on Instagram, but not for the foreseeable future. We're definitely taking an Instagram Live break. But we are thinking about Whatnot. We are trying to see if there's a way for us to do live sales on Patreon. So I think that live sales are here to stay. I think we touched on this earlier, but I think there is a connection and an entertainment factor that people really like.

And we don't want to say goodbye to that. We want to find ways to keep that alive, so I'm excited to see what we learn. We are going to take you along for the whole journey with our new weekly vlog series. Haha, and I really am excited. Even though I'm a little stressed and a little scared, I am excited to see where this goes.

Shaun:

It's scary and exciting—you know, it's a healthy mix of both, I'd say. Yeah. I don't know, right now it feels a little more scary just because this coming live sale is going to be the last one.

Amber:

It’ll be over by the time they hear this, so don’t get excited—haha.

Shaun:

Yeah, so I think that once that is done with, then I can really be able to focus on moving forward with these new steps and these new strategies. But yeah, I think it’s probably gonna be a little emotional at the live sale—the final regular live sale.

Like we said, we’re not gonna stop forever.

Amber:

But yeah, we just need to take a minute and regroup. So part of our strategy right now is listing on some other platforms, kind of getting reacquainted with that, seeing what we can learn, seeing what strategies we can still apply, seeing how fast we have success there.

I think that that will be really interesting to see—like, if we list these items on eBay, how quickly will we be able to create consistent sales? So I think that that is going to create some really interesting things for us to share with you.

We're also changing how we do preclaims, because like Shaun said, we had been offering pretty much the opportunity for anybody to claim anything early. And I think that we're missing out on an opportunity to create anticipation and excitement around our items.

So we will have some occasional preclaim opportunities, but those will be for our members on Patreon. And then other than that, we will be having website drops, and we are going to try to encourage sales and shopping on the website as much as possible, because we can control that. We can't control Instagram. We can't, you know—even the other reselling platforms like eBay—like, there are a lot of things that are outside of our control. But we can control our website, and we can control what goes up on our website. And a lot of our strategy will be designed around trying to get new eyeballs on our website.

Shaun:

Yeah, and we're gonna be scaling back the discounts big time that we've been doing, because you know, we’ve realized that along with—like you said—building the anticipation, I think that’s a big thing that we need to work into our strategy. Because like we said earlier, none of this was planned. It was just, you know—we got so excited when people started buying things, and anytime they wanted to buy them we were like, yes, absolutely! We’ll sell it to you, yeah.

So we need to coordinate more with building anticipation and not devaluing our items. Because you—more so than I—you know what we have, and you know what it’s worth, or what we should be getting for it, based on the time that we put into photographing and listing and packing and shipping the items. You have a really good feel for that. And for quite a few months now, because we’ve had so much inventory, we have been discounting things way too quickly and just overall devaluing our items and our business as a whole.

So it will already be out by the time you see this video, but you know—after the live sale on Wednesday, and maybe the next day, we'll see what happens—but that’s gonna be it for the big discounts for a long time.

Amber:

Yeah, definitely. I think that that's really important—to not rely on discounts in the business. And we kind of started to rely on them as soon as—not as soon as—but like, once we started to see the trend that the live sales were going slow, we really kind of pushed discounts. And I don’t think it has been a great place for our business to end up.

Shaun:

They don’t feel as special when you do them so frequently. You know, if you do a flash sale once every six months, people are like, “Oh my goodness! Items are on sale.”

Amber:

But part of that is—it’s so easy to discount the items because, one, we love the sourcing, and two, we don’t have a lot of space.

So we only have those shelves in our office, and then we keep some inventory out here, and it’s already like pushing the boundaries of where we can keep it. So when we have too much inventory, we're like, okay—we have to get rid of some of it.

And so part of the plan moving forward will be to be more intentional with our inventory. It already is like fairly curated, but to work it more into a style, and to be more careful with what we're buying, and to have less inventory on hand overall.

And part of that is because we want to make changes to the house. We want to work on the office. We want to make some changes to the living room. And we can’t renovate right now. Or do any of those DIY projects when our house is exploding with inventory.

Shaun:

Yeah, and that's not to say that we're not—I don't think we're gonna do less sourcing, because we still want to go and explore places, because we wanna add them to the Gem Finding Directory.

Amber:

Yeah.

Shaun:

We wanna have as many places as possible. The Gem Finding Directory is available on Patreon for Emerald subscribers. And we're going to buy less, but we're not gonna go less.

Amber:

No, if anything, I want to go more. I would like to get to the point where we can explore more areas and more antique stores for the, you know, purpose of our community and the business. We have explored a lot of the East Coast because that's what we can drive to. But we haven't really explored a lot of like the West or a lot of like the central areas of the country, and I really want to do that.

Amber:

I think that the directory we're creating is going to be a fantastic resource, and I want to lean into that and be able to travel more, which has always been a goal of mine. So we're definitely not going to be sourcing less. We will be hopefully traveling and sourcing more, but just being a little bit more careful with the items that we get. Really getting things that are special rather than—you know, if we see something that's $8 that we think we can sell for $50—really asking ourselves, like, is this something that we think our customer base is really going to get excited about?

Because sometimes we do grab stuff right now because it is a good deal and not necessarily because it is the direction of the style that we would—I shouldn't say we, haha—that I would like to be curating. Now that I am putting more of our house and more of my style out there a little bit more, I am seeing more people resonate with that. And I would really like to be curating items that could be styled in our home that way. I can photograph them and kind of showcase them in our house, in our content, and then put them on the website. So it's going to be more strategic. It's going to be more intentional. It's going to be...

Shaun:

Creative.

Amber:

We talked a lot about expanding the types of items that we offer, but staying within the same style—so still staying true to me and what I love—but maybe bringing some more wood items to the shop. We've already been experimenting with some more ceramics, but just trying to offer things that are different, trying to offer more variety, but not necessarily variety in terms of the style.

Shaun:

I mean, that's all you. I have very little to zero say in that.

Amber:

Because that's my favorite part of the business—is curating things that I love and then seeing other people get excited about them too. That does a lot for my creativity, is being able to source these items. And I love it when, like, a collection would come together. When we were doing the collections before, I loved it when I would put these items together and they would all kind of like look cohesive and coordinate, and that always felt really special.

So do not worry—we are still here, we will still be selling, we will still be offering vintage items. We are just very excited and a little bit nervous to branch out, to kind of see some of our other dreams start to enter the horizon.

Shaun:

If you're not uncomfortable, then you're not doing something right.

Amber:

Yeah, yeah. We got too comfy.

Shaun:

Yeah, haha. Yeah, we needed to step out of our comfort zone. Like we needed this to kind of wake us up a little bit, because like we said, the business model that we had—it wasn't sustainable. We needed something to really force us to change, and I think this is—it.

Amber:

Yeah. So stay tuned. You can follow us on literally any platform for updates.

Shaun:

But please come join the Patreon community.

Amber:

I think that YouTube will be the best place for you to see kind of our progress each week, because we will be talking about what we're doing for the business and also kind of including more conversations like this, where we're strategizing with each other, talking about what's working and what's not, and really sharing our journey to creating a life that feels good.

Hopefully you enjoyed listening to some part of this lengthy episode.

Shaun:

Do you like the new setup? More importantly—please say yes. Because it feels so much more comfortable for me.

Amber:

And also let us know if you like this style of us kind of having more of a casual conversation, because this is—I feel like—a little bit of a different style of episode.

Shaun:

And this is how I've always imagined the podcast to be personally. So this feels more natural to me. It feels more comfortable to me. So yeah. But we want your feedback. Let us know if you like this format and this approach better or if you liked the other setup and the more educational format of the other ones.

Amber:

Yeah—or a mix of both.

Shaun:

Yeah, whatever!

Amber:

Let us know. We want your feedback. We don't want to deter you from your feedback—we just need to do a little bit of a better job of listening to our intuitions too.

Alright, let's go find some vintage and we'll see you back here for Episode 9.