Just Curious

[Ivy Norsk]

I think a lot of this is about advertising and traffic.
I think that many of these smaller kitty markets that come and go - they get some buzz when they first open, but it doesn't always last. I also think that not a few market creators have over-extended themselves and possibly shouldn't have tried to be so ambitious in the first place. There have always been more kitties for sale than people to buy them. I myself have rented stalls at various markets but if I'm not selling enough kitties to break even there (and I include auctions towards that) then I leave. I currently have no stalls at any markets.

A word about live pillows: lives sell better than boxes. I was using the sales of live cats to subsidize the rent on my stores, but once the live pillows came out as a thing one paid for separately, it made no sense to have stall that did not pay for itself. Also, since I mainly breed boutique and retro cats, my lives are not generally the hot new traits and uber-recessive cats that sell so well as lives... so it also didn't pay to rent pillows and I got sick of getting the message that my pillow rent had expired and I was being kicked from the group.

I've also mothballed my home store at least for the time being. The 3rd party stand-alone store only got traffic when I did heavy advertising on the forum here. I'd have sales and I'd have to post every day, otherwise the listing just fades to the second page really quickly. I have some hopes that the Kitty Web Market will help bring in traffic to Independent stores. But really you just need to do tons of advertising to keep the store moving cats.