I’m your very cautious shopper I am. I am so fond of a bargain that cautious shopping is more like a religion than just your basic acquisition of, like, stuff. I do like acquiring stuff, I really do. Having acquired it and enjoyed it, I like to repeat the experience, frequently. Nothing one can do in public makes me happier than coming away from a dolls’ house fair with lots of little bags containing stuff, unless it’s visiting a huge craft shop and coming away with lots of big bags containing stuff.
But I don’t like to pay more than I have to, in fact I’m allergic to having to pay more than necessary because it conflicts with my primary mantra ‘let’s have lots of stuff’ because I haven’t got much money.
And I think you think the same, which entirely dictates my pricing policy.
There is another school of thought, which says that if I raised all the prices, rich people would find me. This could be true, I know a lot of artists who bank on rich people finding them. The problem is that rich people are thin on the ground, so you might have a long and boring time to wait while their limousines stop by your stand and decant them, wallets at the ready. Poor people, or average, spending-a-bit-of-pocket-money people, however, are plentiful. If you exhibit at a well-attended show you don’t have long to wait for them at all, in fact, on a good day, they might have to wait to see you. I like being busy at a show because the time whizzes past and you get to talk to a lot of people and the day is filled with happy happenings, lots of chat, little brown paper bags, bits of money changing hands, restocking from the front and all sorts of good stuff that makes you feel as if you’ve done something. Time has not been wasted, things have been achieved. All good.
I also enjoy shopping for bargains on web sites. I like doing it late at night, with a cup of tea and the limited budget I have to get creative with. It’s great when I feel I’ve spotted a bargain no one else has noticed.
Just now I’ve done it with myself!
I haven’t been shopping on my own website (this one) since I set it up, so I thought I’d have a go and see how easy it is. It’s so simple, even I can do it. You just click ‘add to basket’, Then you click ‘Pay with PayPal’. You don’t have to have a PayPal account yourself, you just use your normal plastic bank card. Up comes the screen where you fill in your name and address. Do that. Then the bank card details boxes appear, together with the padlock symbol in the top line of the computer address box, so you know it’s secure. Fill in the card number, expiry date and the last three numbers of the security code and wait and that’s all. The little rectangular symbol goes round and round and when it stops, you’ve finished. It then asks you if you’d like to open a PayPal account but if you don’t want to, just go back to the blog, or off somewhere else and that’s it.
What happens next is you will get an email telling you you’ve made a purchase, and, simultaneously, I’ll get an email, telling me what you’ve purchased, the details of your address that you filled in on the first set of boxes and that’s all. Everything that you filled in when the padlock was showing goes to PayPal, not to me. So you could bank with the Bank of Mars in Outer Space, for all I know. And, as I can’t see you through my screen, you could shop in your pyjamas, and I’ll never know that, either. I have frequently done so, with a second cup of tea.
This time I bought an original piece of art, a wax picture in a proper wood frame and the whole thing plus postage cost £6.
£6 for original, only one like it on the planet art! Crikey, what a bargain, I should shop here more often. I’m going to put it in my antiques shop, which has not had a present for ages. The only thing I won’t do is post it to myself and neither will I write myself the little note that I write to shoppers, because you have to have the chat. That’s part of it.
A bit of shopping and a bit of chat. Cheers you up no end, I find, even for the very cautious shopper.
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JaneLaverick.com – retail therapist to very few stars and a lot of normal people.