Irish Dance Vendors

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Comment by Kathi@Triskelt on October 28, 2009 at 11:21pm

I keep seeing posts on some of the ID message boards from U.S. people wanting to buy the Rimmel tanning products (Rimmel Shimmer) which are not for sale here. This could be something the online ID vendors in the UK might consider adding to their range for their U.S. buyers, if you can get it wholesale? As the famous slogan goes, "Find a need and fill it."

Comment by Paul @ Diddlyi on October 22, 2009 at 6:23pm

Moved this discussion into our forum here.

Comment by Kathi@Triskelt on October 22, 2009 at 6:48am

I vote for a simple model where Diddlyi provides a showroom or gallery for us vendors, but sales are handled through our own businesses, which are already set up for payment, shipping, etc. Inventory management with a more complicated arrangement could be tricky, as would be the accounting aspect. I like the "street team" idea and also posting opportunities to donate.

Comment by Paul @ Diddlyi on October 21, 2009 at 5:12am

Hi all...

The catalogue seems to be the best thing we can work on at the moment. The drop shipping idea might work - but the biggest challenge I can see in regard to this is listing products with several variations. You all have websites set up to handle the products that you have. Recreating this might take time. But if the products were straight forward gifts, it certainly could be done.

Comment by The Irish-Dancer on October 21, 2009 at 3:10am

More sources for Rosemarie: Tillies Tiaras http://www.tilliestiaras.com/ has many different styles. If you decide to be "crafty" and want to try making your own, dance.net (in the Irish dance section) has an entire thread devoted to headbands - with lots of helpful tips, too.

Comment by DeDanann on October 21, 2009 at 2:17am

Rosemarie - If you are trying to commission a headband the two vendors I know of are either Celtic Curls http://www.celticcurls.com or Rince Bands http://www.rincebands.com The owner of Celtic Curls is really great and extremely helpful. I don't know that much about Rince Bands but there are a few people online who have recommended them in the past to me for headbands.

Comment by IHeartThatDance on October 21, 2009 at 1:29am

DeDanann, what you are describing in your second comment is what we call a "street team" on Etsy, and in general the arrangement works pretty well! So I would definitely be keen.

As for the drop-shipping/e-commerce thing, maybe we could stick with the simpler catalog idea for this year, and have more discussions between ourselves and Paul & co. about where to go with these ideas for next year? I personally would just like this to get up and running to take advantage of holiday shoppers, and unless Ning has an e-commerce app already, setting up such a thing is a major programming challenge.

Comment by Rosemarie on October 21, 2009 at 12:40am

anyone guide me how to get a custom headband made?

Comment by DeDanann on October 21, 2009 at 12:39am

One other thought... (Okay it's late and I am tired and so this next comment kind of meanders a bit, apologies in advance) I am also a part of a few other online communities and what some businesses have chosen to do is incorporate other businesses within their newsletters and even provide "samples" or flyers to their customers. This allows similar but different businesses to mutually advertise and grow their respective customer base with the idea that eah of our businesses has similar but different products. Would this be something that we might be interested in? I don't know but it is worth the mention. Also.... I am not sure if this would work or not... but for example many of us are a part of Irish dancing schools through our families and these schools have fundraisers and such which request "donations" from businesses. By communicating these opportunities we have the opportunity to both help and advertise a bit. ... With that said, I know of an opportunity with a local fundraising dinner for Irish dance here in Florida that is currently requesting donated gift baskets and other items for a silent auction (the deadline is *very* soon on this). Therefore, if anyone is keen on this sort of thing let me know and I will pass along your details accordingly.

Comment by DeDanann on October 21, 2009 at 12:30am

Hmmm... Just an idea. If we were to set up something like a dropshipping-like scheme (ie one company takes the orders and then forwards the order along with payment to another company for processing and fulfillment) with free shipping configured for each of the items... Then users would only need to make a single purchase. Diddlyi could then forward orders and payments to us minus a "processing fee" such as 10% (enough to cover both payment processing and to allow Diddlyi to make a small profit from each transaction). However, care would have to be taken so that this would not become MSB (money services business) related activity. If this scenario would work, we would probably need to limit the number of products between participants and make sure that the items were unique. Alternatively, another solution might be to offer a platform akin to EBay (think beyond EBay and just on the mechanism itself) where users can electronically purchase a product but then individually finalize payment and processing through a third party vendor. My concerns are that if Paul sets this up for us I want to make sure that he receives some sort of referral fee as I know that I pay other businesses for their referred sales and therefore I feel this is integral to how we as vendors can help support this site; also, if we each were to select a limited number of items that are unique to each of our businesses then we should be able to each sell our products without having to directly compete against each other - we each sell alot of the same products but we also sell alot of different products too..... and also with that in mind many of us are located within different areas of the world and therefore by nature customers will often gravitate to vendors in their region.

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