Andersen Studio's Response to These Uncertain Times

New Pictures of Andersen Studio'sclassic Turned Gull sculpture, which is available in three decending sizes
are shown through out this post.

I have started an informal diary of our foreign visitors in Facebook Discussions section of our Facebook Page


In these unprecedented times there are very good reasons to consider exporting. In the past, Andersen Studio has been marketed in a major department store in Denmark and Itoya in Japan, but these were accounts that came to us through the gift shows. I read today that the most effective marketing for small businesses is called "Inbound Marketing", i.e., marketing through social networks, where the customer finds you, as opposed to "Outbound Marketing", where the seller finds the customer, which includes trade shows. Tradeshows are still important but this season the winter storms put a damper on both the Atlanta and Rosen Shows. During the Rosen Show the airports were shut down.

So, I have been learning and exploring Search Engine Optimization and other forms of Inbound Marketing, which involves paying more attention to our website stats and Google analytics. I was astounded when I saw our benchmarks results, which showed over 5000% better than "other sites of the same size". I thought it must not be a very meaningful measure, but when I think about it, it is unusual for a business of our small size to be designing, producing, wholesaling and retailing our own product and to have done so for over half a century and during which time we developed an established base of collectors.

As our government continues to spend unprecedented amounts of money, endangering our national security, and threatening run away inflation, while taxing businesses to make this country one of the most expensive places in the world to manufacture anything, a business such as ours must consider all options. When I hear our president saying that his energy plan will "necessarily skyrocket everyone's cost of electricity", my first instinct is to explore fair trade venues for exporting production. As I listen within, however, I feel less alarmed, and consider the possibility that our product- or at least a part of our line, can continue to be made in America, and that our line can be sold abroad as a higher priced item, which considering the future cost of manufacturing in the United States, would have to be the case for most, if not all American exports.

I am by no means knowledgeable in these matters but I beginning by paying attention to our own website statistics. I have noticed a consistent trend on our server stats in which The Russian Federation, China, and the Czech Republic show up more prominently in the visitor’s pie than other countries. On Google statistics I found that the most recent highest average of pages per visit viewed by country start with Argentina, followed by China, Malaysia, Israel, Denmark, Australia, and then the United States.