PinMail Gear

Hi everyone, Kyle here (that’s me ^). I know I recently told you all that I would be launching a new site on the 26th of March, but our plans have changed. Please read ahead for the full details, or skip to the paragraph that begins with "PinMail Gear isn't..." to get the TL:DR.

PinMail Gear grew out of a desire to get out of the rat race, but it became something more. I started PinMail Gear because I was tired of punching a clock and I wanted to put something good out into the world. A product that people would love. Something that made them feel unique and happy. Something that would catch others attention and draw them into a conversation. Something that when you see makes you stop. I've been told it's hard to see one of our PinMail Strap for the first time and not want to touch it. "Are those safety pins?" The words almost leave your mouth before you can stop them. It creates an instant attraction. People want to hold the strap. More than a few people have told me they've handed their bags to complete strangers. When someone sees your strap and their eyes light up, it's hard not to. I understand. Our customers aren't only excited about their strap, but their PinMail bag as well. People get attached to their bags. People get especially attached to one-of-a-kind bags. When you have something that no one else has it creates a connection. "That's my bag." When you own one of our bags you can say that with absolute certainty. That is YOUR bag. No one else will ever have another exactly like it. If they do, then I messed up and the both of you should contact us for a refund (don't worry, I won't take your bags away!) These are some of the things I love about PinMail Gear. Some of the things I know are important.

I jumped into PinMail Gear full force in January of 2015 and haven't looked back in a little over 2 years. There have been some great times. There have also been some terrible times. Running PinMail Gear is a full-time+ job and this is my first business venture. Before I jumped in I didn't take the time to learn many important aspects of running an online business. I never learned about marketing, branding, coding, photography, copywriting, or much else. All I had when I started was a passion for unique and one-of-a-kind products. As I've seen passion can only take you so far and the only thing that has guided me beyond that is trial and error. Of all the ways to run a business, I do not recommend trial and error. I've invested a lot of time and money on things that didn't go as planned. A lot of what goes on behind the scenes at PinMail Gear seems to fall into that category.

PinMail Gear isn't a big company with lots of money to spend hiring experts to handle the things I can't do well. For the most part, this business relies entirely on me. Without the proper training, I haven't been able to serve PinMail Gear as well as I would like. So, I've decided to start investing some time and money into myself. As the person running the day to day, the business needs me to be my best if it's going to flourish. Now, I don't know how long it will take for me to learn everything I need to know to make this business the best it can be. And as I handle all the day to day operations I can't serve two masters. If I'm going to devote the time necessary to improving myself I need to shutter the business for the time being. I'll still be honoring our Lifetime Warranty while the business is on hiatus, but our store will be closed. You will still be able to find PinMail Gear on social media, and while I am still on the fence about selling on Etsy, if you request a custom order, I will have to consider it, because I hate letting people down. I will be opening again as soon as possible, I promise.

I have enjoyed being behind the helm at PinMail Gear and I hope to get back to it soon. If you aren't already part of the Mailing List you can join through the link at the bottom of this post. When I am ready to launch the business again the first thing I will do is send everyone an email. As promised, when the site launches everyone on the list will be receiving a 30% off discount.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns please email at [email protected]. It would make my day to hear from you.

We recently announced that we will be launching a new site on the 26th of March. We're very excited about the new site (and we hope you are too), but we do have some other news that may not make you quite as happy. When we move to our new site we will be changing the prices on all our products (some will go up as much as $25). Now, we don't want you to think we are doing this because we're being greedy. To continue to deliver the same quality you expect, and the quality you deserve, our costs will be going up. There are a whole bunch of reasons we are moving to a new website and there are many benefits as well (both for you, our lovely fan, and for us, your faithful crafter). You can expect an article about that in the next couple weeks.

You might be asking yourself why we're raising our prices, and there are several reasons. The first one is to give the buyer a better indication of the quality of our products. Admit it, when you see a low price on a handmade item you immediately think, "What's wrong with it?" In the handmade market, low prices aren't seen as a bargain, they make products seem cheap, flimsy, and/or low quality. We want our prices to match our quality. We stand behind the quality of straps, and our bags come with a lifetime guarantee on all the stitching. They're made with durable upholstery fabric, so they should be able to hold up to anything you can throw at them! When a purportedly handmade product is priced low a buyer will generally think at least one of the following: 1) The product isn't actually handmade, you are using the term to appeal to the desire to support crafters and/or buy local or 2) The producer is underpaying workers or outsourcing to other countries. Our straps and bags are stitched in America and made with as much American-made material as we can reasonably get our hands on. All of the products we currently sell are lovingly handmade by our founder, Kyle, and his mom, Kris--we really are a family business!

With our price increase, we will be able to do some things we've been looking forward to since our business began, in 2015 (can you believe it's been almost 2 years!?). We will finally be able to launch a referral program! For those of you who aren't familiar with the term, here's a run-down of what that will mean: Now, there are various ways to implement a referral program, and they all have their merits, but this is how we plan to run ours. To start, when you buy something from us (or if you already have) we will send you a referral code, say PNMLGR1. When someone places an order and refers to that code they get a discount at checkout. Once their order is completed you get credit towards your next order! Now, the details aren't all hammered out but we'll be doing some research on the program and we plan on releasing it to a few people to see how it works as soon as we can.

Now, you may be worried because we almost never run sales, and there's a good reason for that. As you may know, there are a lot of costs that go into selling a product online. There is website upkeep, advertising, photography, copy writing, and a few others. Right now are prices are very close to what it costs us to physically make our products, with little else built in. Because of this, we have been unable to run sales without selling a product for less than it costs us to make it (which is a terrible idea). The good news is, moving forward, we will be able to run more sales, including one that will start when we launch the new site. This sale will be 30% off for our mailing list subscribers (you can become one at the bottom of this post). If you don't want to join, that's okay too (though we're not sure why). With the launch, you will able to find a code on our site, and across our social media accounts for 10% off everything on our site. The subscriber's launch discount will bring our prices close to where they are right now and both of the discounts will run for 1 week following our launch (not valid on custom orders).

Finally, one of the other things we've been unable to do with our current pricing is make use of any kind of advertising. As we said previously, right now there's almost no cost extra built into our prices. At the moment, if every strap cost us $3 to advertise and sell we would very quickly go into the red. If we want to become a brand that people recognize when they see we need to be able to get ourselves out there more. Now, where is the benefit for you, the (potential) buyer in us advertising?  Advertising should allow us to expand our business by hiring more people as we sell more. We will be able to provide you with quicker responses to your questions. Right now we only have one person able to answer emails and social media messages, and he's got a lot of other things on his plate (he's our founder). Another benefit is that we will be able to develop new high-quality products more quickly, which, if you're interested in what we're doing, should be a major plus. Advertising will also allow us to make more posts like this one, on a myriad of different topics. One more benefit is faster order processing and mailing, as well as custom order fulfillment. Having more employees has a lot of benefits, but as we mentioned, being able to advertise isn't all about making enough to be able to hire more people. Advertising will also enable us to improve our existing products by being able to meet minimum order quantities, allowing us to get higher quality materials at the same, or lower cost.

Now, in just under a week (3/12) our current site will be going down, and our landing page will be going up to collect email addresses while we work on the site in the background. If you've had your eye on any of our bags or straps, now is the time to order before the prices go up. If you don't order your favorite bag right now it may not be available when our sale offically starts on March 26th.

Now, here's the important news I promised earlier. We finally have a definitive launch date for the new site! It will go live on Sunday, March 26th! You can click that link to add it to your calendar, but you will also hear it many times before the new site launches. 

In a couple weeks from today, I will be taking the site down and putting up a sign-up page so you can join our email list. Now, I know I've promoted our email list many times (why wouldn't I, it is pretty great) but today I'm going to give you a stellar reason why you should join now if you haven't already. When the new site launches, those that have sign up for our email list will receive a code that's good for 30% off everything in our store, and that's no typo! If you decide you don't want to join our email list, that's cool too, by liking our Facebook page you will be able to see a code that's good for 10% off everything. 

Now, I don't want to get you too excited when you look at our current prices and start dreaming about how inexpensively you'll be able to get your hands on our beautiful handmade bags and straps. We will be raising our prices to better reflect the quality of our products and the care that goes into making them, but I'll be going more into our new pricing in a later post. For now, if there's a one of a kind bag you've been eyeing, now is the time to grab it before our new site launches and our prices go up. 

Expect to see a lot more posts (both on here and on our Facebook page) about the inner workings of PinMail Gear and what to expect from the new site! For now, please enjoy our new and enhanced logo (we got some lovely new cards to go with them as well, which we will also be highlighting in a future post (we know, so many posts, so little time)). Click on it to go to a page where you can sign up for our mailing list and you can be sure you'll be getting that 30% off discount code when we launch the new site, as well as all the regular bonuses that go along with being on our mailing list!