Never let an opportunity get by ya!

That is a crow I got a pic of sitting on top of the street light closest to our house. Now it took me sitting on the porch for a time sipping coffee for this photo op to happen!
I'd like to share something with you that's been on my mind the past few days about not letting an opportunity go or worse,pushing it away. A few months ago I was browsing online sits and I spied a very nicely handcrafted ukulele gigbag. Well made,adorable fabric,I really wanted these in my store. A look at this sellers booth had mandolin gig bags as well-very eye catching.
I wrote this individual introducing myself,telling her about Mandolin Babe's and how much I wanted to have her gig bags in my store,and asked her what would she wholesale them to me for. Well the response I got was paradoxical to say the least. After telling me she is a single parent & needing money for both her and her child,she went into fear mode. First,she was terrified I'd remove her "made by" tags. Then she was afraid I'd buy one & copy the pattern. Then she was afraid that she'd be losing business to me. In short,I was getting a mental picture of her clutching the item to her chest and saying "you can't have it but I need $$ for me & mine!"
I wrote again,telling her what a shame it was that here she is establishing a biz of her own and turning away potential avenues of income-which she stated she needed. I assured her I would not take the tags off nor copy the pattern. After all,she was going to save me a lot of time & effort by making them for me and all I needed to do was take a photo & resell them.
She wrote back,apologetic, but now there was a sudden crisis with a relative-she would get back to me shortly but this now needed all her attention. Well you guessed it-I never heard from her again.
Just this week I was wandering around online shopping again when I found the patterns for the instrument bags she was making-funny thing was I wasn't looking for any patterns-I was just wandering about. So I purchased them and upon receipt,will be making them myself to sell in my store.
But I feel sad for the opportunity that woman shoved away from herself with all her strength. She could have well wound up supplying other music stores too,and the much needed money would be coming in from more than one direction. She could've done craft faires & folk music festivals. But because she was so scared of losing something she wound up losing quite a bit anyway. The reason I'm writing about this is because I know a lot of readers out there are creative & sell their wares online. But should an opportunity like this come your way,don't be afraid that you're going to lose anything. Just set a fair wholesale price & a min order,if need be and watch the prosperity flow your way!