This morning I was up early,on my way to a shift at the cafe. As I was early and more than on time I took some time to check my e-mail, as I had been out a large part of the weekend.
In my inbox there was an e-mail which said it was from my ‘fans’.
After thinking about this all day, I choose to address this e mail here,as is pretty much demanded that I make a public response in the mail that follows.
As ever I wish to be transparent, so I bring you (with some editing to remove names, and finger pointing to an excess) the really exciting e-mail I found in my inbox this morning.

Dear Ruth,
As you may well know, you have many fans of your work out there in the dolly community; fans whose admiration goes hand-in-hand with the desire to have the opportunity to own one of your creations. The moderate difficulty in obtaining one of your dresses or kitty helmets via your online shop is to be expected due to the high demand for the supply. It is to be expected that it may take upwards of 2,3, or 4 attempts in order to actually “score” one of your creations–attempts in which vigilance is key and frequently refreshing the main page of your shop as well as your flickr is certainly adviseable. What is not expected is that one person would have the ability to purchase over 6 items from one shop update, every time they participate in one of your updates. If securing just one item into the shopping cart is difficult, then you can imagine how ridiculous it seems to your numerous fans that just one person would have the luck and/or “magic” to take more than half of the items in ONE single update, and then repeat this virtual hounding of all items in almost each and every update. I do not think you are unaware of who I am referring to, but in order to avoid any confusion (though there certainly should be none as this phenomenon is quite “unique”), here is the link to this person’s flickr page:XXXXXXXXXXXXXX(censored)

That the unilateral purchasing of your items by this person is unfair is obvious; whether or not there are other things at play here is what is suspected. The ultimate reason for this letter is to make you aware of the fact that fans and collectors have noticed what is going on and are expectedly unhappy and disappointed. The amount of items that this person is able to easily secure on a constant basis is no longer viewed as a coincidence, especially due to the sheer magnitude of items that make it into their shopping cart–of which photos of their incredible “loot” are later boastedly displayed on their flickr photostream for all to see. Needless to say, this has lead to many questions–questions about the ethics of your sales, questions about whether items are pre-purchased or set aside for this particular person in advance, and questions about the supposed “opportunity” each and every collector has to purchase items from your shop. You have asserted that you do not take custom commissions for your work and therefore collectors must try to purchase via your updates; when ONE person each and every time is able to purchase over 5 items at a time while others can barely get one item in their cart, there is something certainly amiss.

I speak for my fellow collectors and their disappointment that you have a responsibility to address this situation and issue some kind of explanation besides saying that this other collector is simply “lucky”; you have the responsibility to implement a more fair system in which opporunity is EQUAL and not biased towards one certain person or persons. We hope that a difference is made quickly so that in future updates this one person’s shopping cart is not “magically” filled with every item listed in the shop. We also hope and that you have (or have already had) the insight to realize how unfair this occurence is and how ludicrous its repetition.

Sincerely,
Your Eurotrash Fans

My only response to this at first was…wow. WOW. Not only are my ethics being questioned, but I am being required to be accountable to how certain people are able to buy from me. I could get upset over many things. First off, the bullying and singling out one of my customers to assume something shady or untoward is going on is completely unfair, to both of us. The comments in flickr border on uncomfortable and accusatory, and this is not acceptable. Are we children in a playground??

I am in no way trying to be a martyr here, or even say ‘poor me’. But I have to say, that my integrity as a business person, my ethics and morals are being questioned here without even giving me the benefit of the doubt. To me this is absurd. If I was doing pre-planned business with one of my customers I can guarantee you I would do it in a transparent manner, and just put under the photo, ‘For: XXXXXX’. Listing items in a shop requires my time, and time is money and my time is at a premium. I hold down part time jobs and do my best to simply get by. Afterall, I make the items I sell and therefore I guess in all rational thinking I can sell them the way I see fit. This is pretty cold and harsh way to put it, but I don’t understand why there would be the need for subterfuge if I chose to sell my items to simply a single person or ‘chosen few’. From a business woman’s point of view, the more variety in my customer base, the better. I cannot even express how happy I am when I see a new name in my inbox/customer report. New customers are only a GOOD thing. I am so thankful for every single person who supports EuroTrash (the old and the NEW!), and trust me, I DO know how sought after things are, and I do my best to offer them in as many varying ways possible. I’ve gone to surprise listings, listing only few items at a time vs. 10′s at a time. Changing up the times of day, etc.  Most people don’t understand how bad I feel when I see the genuine disappointment in ‘missing out’. I do take it personally even though I shouldn’t. I care more than I should, and it all comes down to how invested I am in EuroTrash, and how much of myself I do invest in this ‘child’ of my hands…..I struggle sincerely to tell anyone ‘No’ and in fact my tremendous waiting list is testament to that. I only opened my list after years of declining commissions. But I wanted people to have the chance, no matter how fast their modems were.So to have my ethics, my honesty and my integrity as a business person in this case questioned is extremely offensive.

I could go on and on about…the evolution of keeping the shop, moving to surprise listings, the stress of telling people I will NOT sell ‘off shop’ in spite of many requests. The most information I have divulged to customers since I have gone to doing the surprise listings is some people might mail me if I am listing  to my shop to ask how many items, and I really have no problems to say ‘yes, i’m listing 3 items today.’ I don’t twitter about the updates, I do not facebook the updates as I know some people are not on Twitter, and some are not on Facebook. I do remain on my gmail in order to trouble shoot should there be an issue with the website.

In the last year I have engaged in multiple trades with various individuals. I have traded goods for dolls, goods for goods, and always with an agreed value and its an agreement between the person and myself, and I feel that as someone who creates something that someone else wants this is my own choice, and we engage in a trade of goods, there is nothing to be ashamed of. I never put these items in my shop, but you may see photos that say ‘For: xxxxxxxx’. Sometimes you might see someone get a large amount of items. Quite often some of these people ask me to hold the items, ship them altogether with tracking. Which is always reasonable. Some large shipments are also the result of someone getting an item or two from multiple updates throughout a week or so.

As for my shop. Here is how an update goes. I list the items one at a time (to help discourage cart filling all at the same time, as its very possible when I do multiple item ‘drops) with a little bit of time in between each listing. While an item is in my shop..I honestly have no super powers to put them in and out of carts. They are lost to me in cyberspace until I get a purchase report from my shop and confirmation of payment from paypal. The transaction is over before I have any idea of who or where it has gone. Now and then when there have been checkout issues with my shop, I have been emailed by a customer and have disabled an item, but I can honestly say that I always get the purchase report, inevitably from my shop software, and its always coincided with the person who has contacted me. I have no control over who buys what, who gets what, and nor do I let people know in advance, no matter how good a friend and or customer you might be to me. To me this is as fair as it gets. To begin to censor my shop, who can and cannot buy? This is more dishonest than anything else I could imagine.

How does someone get this lucky? I really don’t know. You have to be alot more tech savvy than I am, is all I can say. I know you can use an RSS reader to be informed of activity on the website..I have no idea how RSS readers work and I’ve never looked into how you set them up. Maybe some buyers use an RSS feed/alert system? I don’t know. I honestly do not know. Most people would back me up when I say that  I have commented in Twitter in the past as to not knowing how people can be so fast, when I cannot even get into my own shop and test a product to my cart before its snatched up. I make no announcements and still an item is gone in seconds.  I don’t know? chances are if I were trying to buy my OWN product I would not be fast enough.

Do I empathize? absolutely. Do I feel bad? always. I would clothe the blythe world if I could.I still hope to do it. One dress at a time.

I will always be honest, I will always be transparent. But I will not tolerate bullying (or the bullying of my customers). I will not tolerate being told I’m dishonest. As always I encourage any of my customers, or would be customers to ask me anything. One of my favourite sayings is, ‘You’re never safe from surprise until you’re dead.’ (people who spend time with me can vouch for this.) Within the limits of personal privacy I am always happy to answer questions. If you really want to know why I don’t take on commissions, feel free to mail me and ask! If you want to know why I’ve been particularly slow with my helmet list this year, by all means…ask me. But don’t accuse me of being dishonest & unethical without giving me the benefit of the doubt. The same goes for my customers.

This open letter to me demanded an explanation and demanded answers. So here are my answers to the best of my ability. I’ll leave the comments on for this post, ’cause I may have overlooked something here.

Since I don’t know the scope of ‘my EuroTrash Fans’ The best I can do is publish this right here and hope it eases everyone’s minds about my ‘shady’ dealings and questionable ethics.

Lets play nice out there.

Cheers.

-R