I was hoping that somebody with your experience might, which is why I posted this in the first place.
I noticed , especially if you can order in volumes that get you discounts.
you're lucky, it's more like 4x here ... (and that's not comparing to Ebay but comparing to e.g. eaglebeads/ beadwholesaler, Rainbows of Light or South Pacific. - And I have a wholesale account at B.Toucan already anyway. -
OK, I'm not planning to sell on Ebay or Etsy, but mostly locally, though without a store front as such. I have a full time job that I'm planning on keeping because it is 1. a lot of fun (Maren's kind of fun - I mostly trouble shoot for a living. Instrument control software and sometimes hardware) and 2. pays not too shabby (and provides me with all the free web space I want - well, pretty much. My image hosting will stay at work at least for a while).
Flea markets and regular farmers markets are a different kind of animal. Flea markets mostly have people who want things at garage sale prices whereas regular farmers markets that always have the same sellers also have mostly the same recurring customers, and some word of mouth propaganda. I only have experience with the latter, but unfortunately in an area where most people don't have money.
The same is true for people who don't know where their next meal is coming from, especially towards the end of the month.
I'm not quite at that point. As I said, I'm not planning on quitting my job, but there is a possibility that our whole telescope gets 'downsized'.
There's one thing that's really good about beads and findings: they won't go bad even without air conditioned storage or refrigeration. And you can pack a lot of value into a small space. I'm tired of paying current LBS prices, and I want to pass that on to other people locally. People here aren't necessarily as computer literate as us in rec.crafts.beads.
(Vicky wrote what follows)
That's what I'm currently buying, I have some Tierracast links on the way, planning on ordering a lot of Swarovski bicones in my favorite 'colors' (crystal and jet, and some chalk white and such), and I want malachite round that I can't get locally to finally be able to have earrings matching my new fleece jacket (it's cold in that office ).
For now I have registered hilobeads.com for a year, with free hosting, the main page is sortof up in spite of the only inventory so far is my jewelry, with the jewelry pages linked to where they have been since I wrote them - so far, I haven't bothered transferring them yet.
And, Eva, who said to me New Years Day "this town needs a bead store" asked me whether I wanted to teach a class off and on, free class with paid supplies, of paid class with free supplies, whichever way I want to do it, and asked me whether I'd like to participate in the Art Glass Fair in April. Free table for some free advice, with some local glass bead makers and me to provide the findings, connectors and smaller beads. As my round nose pliers just broke I may just order more than one pair of new ones and sell those too while I'm at it. She just relocated her store to a much larger one (to a place where you can actually park) and provides classes, some by her, some by other people for getting people in (we have a free event calendar in the local paper). If I hadn't walked into that new store location New Years Day asked about beads (because I know she is a lampworker), this all wouldn't have happened (and be happening). For now I feel I was just in the right place at the right time and asked the right question to the right person. I'm also planning on taking a glass bead making class (encouraged by what Kalera said when I visited her 2 years ago. The bead I made there then now hangs from my cell phone. There is some use for small odd shaped beads, especially if you have a personal attachment to them and good memories associated with it) ...
Thanks to all (not just those I'm replying to right now), and, I finally made something last night that had been in my head for a while: