Happy New Year and I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! The Sew Lovely/Rinik family had a great holiday and now we are just awaiting the exciting arrival of our newest addition, due on March 1st... another little boy!

2017 was a really great year for Sew Lovely and we're so thankful for the continuous support and business. We hope 2018 is just as good or better! In 2017, we had over 100,000 Etsy shop views and 287 sales (multiple shades per sale) on Etsy alone, compared to last year's 44,000 shop views, trending up 107% from last year. We've almost doubled our revenue from last year. We made over 800 roman shades in 2017 and also many curtains and pillows. We also had a lot of orders and traffic on sewlovelybykelly.com, which we didn't have in 2016, thanks to a higher ranking on google search, appearing on the first page for the search "roman shades." We're pretty excited about that! As it turns out, we didn't have to pay for SEO help to improve our ranking. In addition, we exceeded 100 5 star reviews and currently have 143 reviews. We thank our customers for taking the time out to write a nice review when they love their roman shades!

Sew Lovely's Instagram followers have also increased in 2017 and we were featured and tagged in a few really nice Interior Designer blogs. It's so nice to see photos of the roman shades hanging in our customer's home and not just on the floor of our living room lol

This past year, we also made some nice improvements to the roman shades in order to reduce our production time and improve our product. In April, we started using child proof safety knobs in order to comply with the window safety standards for shades. The knob breaks away if a child puts their head into the loop of the cords, so no loop is formed when force is applied. We also started putting the pockets on the backside/lining of the roman shade. This cut down on production time by a great deal, even though the cost was a big higher for the supplies. We were still able keep our cost down for the customer and only increased the cost per shade by $10 each. The rib tape is great also because it makes the shade flatter and not as buckled, and also eliminates the need for rings sewn onto the shade and less stitching on the front of the shade. The pinholes from the rings are also eliminated. The dowels are also able to be removed and replaced, if needed, whereas, when they were inside the shade, they were almost impossible to remove.

A huge thanks to all of our customers, friends and family! Wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2018!!!

One thing I really enjoy about running Sew Lovely is helping my customers get a good deal and making them happy! For example, I recently had a customer email me who was interested in a bunch of roman shades for her home. I gave her a quote and she was very happy with the price, but did not place the order because she was having a really hard time finding a fabric that she wanted to settle on and the ones that she liked were over $100 per yard. I then asked her if she wanted to send me a photo or link to some designs that she liked so I could help her search for something, letting her know that you can find a much less expensive fabric that is really nice in quality. She sent me an email saying she finally found one that she loved at a furniture store and showed me a photo of it. Since I have seen a ton of fabric from customers in the past few years of making over 600 shades, I recognized the pattern and style of the fabric right away. I hate to let the cat out of the bag, but most places change the name of the fabric so that the customer cannot easily find the fabric online by searching the name of it, and mark the price up a great deal. This particular fabric (the exact fabric) was only $15/yard online, compared to $45/yard at the furniture shop she saw it at. Her store was calling it, "Plazza Slate" and it's really called, "Covington Slate," made by Covington Fabrics.

It's always a good idea to search around for a fabric to see if you can get a better price. This fabric was a medallion/damask design, beige and blue. So if you Google, "beige and blue paisley medallion damask decor fabric," you might have some luck finding it at a few shops, so you can compare prices. If a customer ever wants some help in finding a fabric that better suits their budget, I am always here to help :) This customer was really pleased when I told her not to buy it from the expensive furniture shop and sent her the link to the $15/yard one online. She needs 15 yards of fabric for the shades I'm making her, so I saved her $450 in fabric. This is one reason why I really enjoy my job!

2017... A Great Year For Sew Lovely Roman Shades!

Don't Pay Too Much For A Fabric. I'm Here To Help My Customers Get a Deal!