We will eventually need to sell several thousand items! If each item needs three or four pictures to show all side and all features the need for a mature system for tracking them is obvious.
In our case we plan to publish many of them on more than one website. For example, we may have a Serigraph published by Tewa Enterprises. We will talk about it and others in our collection like it on TewaEnterprises.com. When and if we decide to sell it we will list it on NativeAmericanArtsAndCrafts.com. There may be some months between these two event so we need a minimal effort system that lets us track this.
“Real” stores all seem to use SKU’s (Shop Keeping Units) so we tried doing that. It became apparent very quickly this is labor intensive and prone to errors. In effect you are building a large database system. I have had enough experience with those to never want to go near one again.
We eventually realized the camera assigns a unique number to each picture we take. We understand that this number may repeat when the camera counter rolls over at 100,000 images, but don’t expect that to be a problem.
We use the Picasa program, downloaded for free from Google, to track our pictures. We also assign keywords to pictures as we use them. Since Picasa includes Google’s search power that works well.
For example, using the situation mentioned above, we might take pictures of a Harrison Begay Silk Screen published by Tewa Enterprises. We would have one picture that showed the entire Serigraph, another that shows the signature, one that shows the written description, etc.
In Picasa we would add TewaEnterprises.com as a keyword to each of these pictures. When we uploaded the pictures to the website(s) we would make sure the file name is included. Sometimes this is automatic. Some of the software we use for site building doesn’t change the file name. Some other programs do change the file name so we have to make sure the original name is included somewhere associated with the picture.
For example, we will include it in the product description which is part of a PayPal button. This way when the notification of a payment made arrives from PayPal it includes the file name. We can do a quick search in Picasa for the file name and immediately see exactly which item we are talking about.
The other side of this issue is that the actual items need to be marked with the file name too. How this should be done depends on the kind of item we are dealing with. Some things, like our Erzgebirge Smokers are best marked with a hang tag. Hang tags don’t risk pulling paint loose when they come off.
We bought a label maker which includes a variety of sized adhesive ribbon. This works well for glass items where we don’t worry about adhesives drying and causing damage over time. Many items can just have the label dropped inside them.
We are still working on how to organize these things around the house. We don’t have a shop and like to display as many of these collectibles as we can. That means we need a system where others, such as our kids, would be able locate things as they sell. We are still testing ideas for how we might accomplish this.