5 Ways to Slow Down Orders in Your Craft Business

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Whether you are thinking towards summer or you stumble across this article later during the Christmas rush; there’s times in your craft business when it may be too busy to keep up. And that’s ok. As a one person shop owner, it is likely that you’ve got a lot on your plate.

No matter whether you just need a break or you’ve had something come up, let’s take a look at five ways to slow down orders in your craft business.

5 Ways to Slow Down Orders in Your Craft Business

1. Raise your prices. This is pretty much a nod to Economics 101 – it’s simple supply and demand. When the demand is high, you raise the prices. When the demand is low, you lower the prices. Put simply, if you are too busy with orders, raise your prices. This will cause some customers to wait until the price is lower before they order. And, you’ll be making more for doing the same amount of work. If you raise your prices and the orders don’t slow down, raise them again. (Psst! The pricing in your craft business should be changing regularly anyway. Read more at this link.)
2. Lengthen your turnaround time. If you are having a hard time keeping up with the orders flowing in, lengthen the amount of time before the orders will ship. This not only gives you more time to work on the orders, but it will deter some customers from placing an order (especially those last minute types).
3. Stop doing custom work. While this won’t work in all situations, if you sell a mix of ready to ship and custom designed products, stop accepting new custom work. It’s no secret that custom work takes longer to complete than ready to ship products. If you are behind, stop taking on custom requests. Custom work might not even be the best for your shop. Read more in this post.
4. Remove your products from some marketplaces. If you sell products in multiple places (some on Facebook, some on Etsy, others through your website, and so on), sell out products in the smaller venues and only take orders from your most profitable marketplace. This ultimately gives your products less visibility and will slow down the amount of orders you have.
5. Place your shop on vacation mode/sell out your products. Debates fly on the internet about the adverse effects of placing your shop on vacation mode – whether it is on Etsy, Amazon, or somewhere else. Putting your shop on vacation mode is quick and easy to do and will definitely stop orders. Let me offer you a quick alternative: If you are able to keep up with the messages in your shop and you don’t have thousands of products, consider selling out your products instead of placing your shop on vacation mode. This will also stop orders from coming in.

These are all temporary solutions to slow down your orders. Don’t forget that once you’re able to handle the flow of orders again, reverse whatever steps you took to slow down orders.

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