Well, I’ve done something I’ve never done before. I’ve pulled a puppet from the shop and decided to keep it for myself.
As I mentioned on a recent blog, I don’t worry too much about sales-per-month because so far, even if a puppet has sat on one of the shops for a long time, eventually someone comes along who it’s right for. It can be hard to predict how long that is, but there’s one model that it has become predictable: the Noot.
The Noot was a model I prototyped two years ago, designed to be my first regularly available full body puppet. I really like it, but it just does not sell. I’m not sure if it’s the puppet itself or if since it’s full body it’s priced a bit higher than the others, but Noots always take a long time to sell. The first one sat on the Esty shop for over a year. A trend emerges.
The current Noot was built and listed last June, and even then, I was thinking I might keep it for myself. I was semi-subconsciously building it to be Nigel, the newt character introduced in Season 1 of The Oracle when the characters were puppets I had before I started building. When I started replacing the characters with my own builds, I had always intended to do Nigel as well, and the Noot was meant to be the test for this model.
Last week I decided to move the yellow Noot to the Etsy shop, which always gets more traffic, and if it didn’t sell by today’s date, I would pull it and keep it. As of this morning it was still unsold, so it’s decided: Nigel is coming home.
Of course, I have mixed feeling about this. I’m still confident that it would have sold eventually, and I do love the design, but it’s a case where the “market” just didn’t respond. As a builder you try to not take things like that too personally, but of course this is a personal business. But I’ve decided to roll with it.
Clearly, I’m the person this puppet was meant for, and always was. I love the character and the build, so Nigel 2.0 will be coming to The Oracle soon. Already writing the script in my head and look forward to practising his horribly unconvincing Cockney accent.
Welcome home Nigel. Have some coffee.