Message from the CEO

Hello everyone! We have undergone some changes around here in our first quarter. In mid-January, we said good bye to our part-time employee, Aaron. He was instrumental in dragging us into the social media age. We can now be found on facebook, twitter, and of course, this blog. During his time here, we also did some experimenting with tie-dying baby bibs and onesies, and found the results pleasing.

Our experiments with the screen printer did not turn out as positively, but we were able to learn what does not work, which is half the battle. We are still optimistic that someday you will see screen printed items for sale in one of our ETSY shops. Last, but not least, no accounting of Aaron's time with us can be complete without mentioning that we now all know what the fox says. Now, whenever one of the humans in the household set the timer on the clothes dryer, the dinging sounds take on new meaning. Thank you, Aaron. (Us cats are the kings and queens of sarcasm).

Aaron's lovely lady, a photographer, took some beautiful new photos for our listings. We especially love the outdoor pictures featuring the hand knit scarves, which can be found at ravenheartdesigns.etsy.com.

It took awhile, but the editing is finally finished and the new pictures are now included in both shops.

Several new earrings were listed at ravensmysticmoon.etsy.com, including our new 3-in-1 earrings. The 3-in-1 earrings are actually three different pairs of earrings using only one ear wire. We thought we would try this as a way to save our customers some money.

This quarter also saw us do our first give-away on facebook. Congratulations to Andrea, who was the winner of a $20 gift certificate. She correctly guessed our March 'Stone of the Month', which was Unakite.
The 'Stone of the Month' is a new feature we started in January. Each month we spotlight a different healing stone, offering discounts on any item in either shop containing it. Our Raven Heart Designs shop does not have the variety of stones Raven's Mystic Moon does, and sometimes chooses to provide a coupon code good for a discount on any item instead. In addition to the savings, Madame Z provides a monthly blog post on all the amazing things the spotlight stone is believed to do.

Looking ahead into the next quarter, we will be adding embroidered items to both shops. Raven's Mystic Moon, with the healing stones, pentagrams, yin/yang's, oms, and crosses, is our spiritual shop. With that in mind, we will be adding embroidered baby bibs that reflect the spiritual nature. Our hope for the future is to expand the inventory to include bath towels, also.
Raven Heart Designs is more of a menagerie. The human employee would like to get away from knitting, because it is too time consuming, and focus on other projects. Our plan for this shop is to focus more on the Christmas/ Yule season, but to also add embroidered items here, too. We are planning on adding embroidered baby bibs and onesies that just would not fit in with the spiritual nature of the other shop. We will be launching our line of 'inappropriate baby bibs' soon.

Our long range goal is to learn to digitize our own patterns for the embroidery machine. We want to be able to offer our customers designs exclusive to our shops.

It certainly has been a busy quarter!
See you next update,
Jezebel