I woke up this morning determined to, well, not particularly determined to do anything of great import. But, as the day progressed, I decided that today was the day to open an online store for my letterpress goods.
It’s been a whirlwind effort, but I’ve done it, and it’s open now for your shopping convenience at:
https://shop.QueenSquarePress.ca/
To get to this point, here’s what I did today:
- Came up with a new name for my press. I’d been using “Reinvented Press,” named after my digital business, by default over the years, but I was never happy about it: the press needed a name of its own. Given that I live and work on Queen Square, Queen Square Press seemed like the right name (a few years ago, after talking to historians and doing some of my own research, I came to the conclusion that Queen, singular, is the proper name of the square).
- Registered “Queen Square Press” as a trade name for Reinvented Inc. This required, first, a name reservation ($50) and, once I was cleared to use the name, a $90 registration fee. I was very impressed with the turnaround time on both, and I was able to self-service the entire thing on the provincial government’s website.
- Registered the domain name QueenSquarePress.ca with Webnames.ca, for $13.99 a year.
- Signed up for a Big Cartel account.
- Set up DNS for shop.queensquarepress.ca to point to my new Big Cartel site.
- Took photos, created products, wrote descriptions, set prices, set up shipping.
- Upgrade from the free 5-product Big Cartel plan to the $9.99/month plan so that I could do inventory tracking and sell more than 5 products.
- Launched the shop.
I like Big Cartel: it’s everything you need, and not a single bit more. It’s simpler than Shopify and considerably less chaotic (and with a different business model) than Etsy. It suits me.
The photos aren’t perfect. Not all the things I plan to sell are in place. I might lose money on the shipping. But launching an imperfect shop, in a day, was a better plan than never launching a perfect shop, over a lifetime. Thank you to the excellent Expedition Press, from whom I just purchased a whack of beautiful things, for the inspiration.
Enjoy.
