The beginning of the year is always a struggle for Addicted Geeks, which is why this is the third year we put our shop on pause for a couple months. That gives us time to reconcile our inventory, assess the status of the business, and avoid the full cost of our Shopify store. We did consider switch to a free Square website, but, in all honesty, Shopify has so many features that we consider to be invaluable that it seemed worth the cost. That is, until we went to re-open and discovered Shopify had increased month fees by $10. It isn’t much, but for a small startup, that can be the difference between a profit and a loss for the year.
Sullivan’s Treasures has re-opened on its own Square site, so our handmade items can be found there. Though I own both and consider Sullivan’s Treasures to be Addicted Geeks’ handmade brand, the items do not quite fit the theme of Addicted Geeks, aside from maybe geek and gamer themed charm bracelets. But the two brands have separate followings and sell at separate events…when we actually attend events. There will always be a link to the other on their own website, at least for as long as I own both brands.
I will begin transitioning Addicted Geeks to Square, a long process that will have no impact on shopping on our site while I build the new website. Square’s interface is slow and often crashes, which is why we wanted to stay with Shopify, but it is time for a change and I would rather put in extra work than have to raise the prices of our products.