With the new year getting off to a roaring start, it's time again to take you behind the scenes and show you what's new at the Buckaroo Bling studio. If you follow this blog and Buckaroo Bling online shop with any regularity, you'll know that the original Dream Catchers collection is getting retired in 2020. So what's next? Read on to find out.
I love the original Dream Catchers jewelry collection, and the decision to retire it was a really tough one to make. Actually, my old deer leather supplier made it for me when she notified me that she'd no longer produce leather lace in colors and sizes I needed. When my search for a new supplier of the exact same colors and sizes of deer leather lace didn't produce a single thing, and my search for tanners who'd dye hides in my choice of colors failed as well, there was only one thing left to do: retire the collection. So now, with new leather supplier and new colors in place, it's time to design Dream Catchers 2.
How does one go about redesigning a collection? First, armed with all my sales stats from 2019, I looked at which designs from the original collection were best sellers. That narrowed the field down to three necklace and two earring designs. Those were the ones I decided to carry into the new collection and redesign them to fit the specs of my new supplies - slightly thicker leather, and differently shaped turquoise beads.
Next, I had to decide which elements from the original collection I wanted to incorporate into the new one. My signature hand coiled wire and leather fringe were a no-brainer. The challenge came with deciding how to translate them into designs that were similar enough to the original Dream Catchers Collection but still different enough to compose a collection of their own. Once I figured that out, the rest of the design process was relatively painless.
The way I work on designing my collections is sort of a 4-step process: sketching first, pricing second, paring down third, and making samples fourth. In the sketching phase, I usually start from 2-3 statement designs, or the real humdingers, showpieces of the collection if you will. Then, I take their elements and scale them down for some mid-priced pieces, and last, I design several simpler coordinating items that would enhance the mid-priced pieces if worn together but can also be worn on their own. The second, pricing stage requires a lot of math: calculating how much of each material would go into each of the designs, how labor intensive each design would be to produce, and how all of that would reflect on both wholesale and retail pricing. Many times, if this process produces figures that are too high, I'd have to go back to the drawing board and rethink, sketch again, and price again. Also, after the pricing step, sometimes I'd have to drop a certain design altogether because there seems to be no way to price it any lower. Now, mind you, I never have a problem of my designs being priced too low. I have so many fancy ideas that I usually have to hold myself back and think about what my customers can afford instead.
So, with all of this said, what's coming down the pike at Buckaroo Bling? As the things stand now, the new Dream Catchers 2 Collection should be coming out in early March. There should be 14 different designs in the collection, most of them available in both sterling silver and copper. Each of the metals will have two different variations of leather fringe color. The red on copper remains very similar to the reds in the original Dream Catchers Collection, but turquoise leather on sterling silver will be a bit lighter than the original turquoise leather. Also, two new leather colors are making their entrance with the new collection: buckskin and saddle tan.
What will all of that look like? Well, you'll have to wait till March to see. In the meantime, shop the remaining designs of the original Dream Catchers Collection in our online shop at a huge discount while supplies last.
