The Queen Square Press Online Shop

I woke up this morning determined to, well, not particularly determined to do anything of great import. But, as the day progressed, I decided that today was the day to open an online store for my letterpress goods.

It’s been a whirlwind effort, but I’ve done it, and it’s open now for your shopping convenience at:

https://shop.QueenSquarePress.ca/

To get to this point, here’s what I did today:

1. Came up with a new name for my press. I’d been using “Reinvented Press,” named after my digital business, by default over the years, but I was never happy about it: the press needed a name of its own. Given that I live and work on Queen Square, Queen Square Press seemed like the right name (a few years ago, after talking to historians and doing some of my own research, I came to the conclusion that Queen, singular, is the proper name of the square).
2. Registered “Queen Square Press” as a trade name for Reinvented Inc. This required, first, a name reservation ($50) and, once I was cleared to use the name, a $90 registration fee. I was very impressed with the turnaround time on both, and I was able to self-service the entire thing on the provincial government’s website.
3. Registered the domain name QueenSquarePress.ca with Webnames.ca, for $13.99 a year.
4. Signed up for a Big Cartel account.
5. Set up DNS for shop.queensquarepress.ca to point to my new Big Cartel site.
6. Took photos, created products, wrote descriptions, set prices, set up shipping.
7. Upgrade from the free 5-product Big Cartel plan to the $9.99/month plan so that I could do inventory tracking and sell more than 5 products.
8. Launched the shop.

I like Big Cartel: it’s everything you need, and not a single bit more. It’s simpler than Shopify and considerably less chaotic (and with a different business model) than Etsy. It suits me.

The photos aren’t perfect. Not all the things I plan to sell are in place. I might lose money on the shipping. But launching an imperfect shop, in a day, was a better plan than never launching a perfect shop, over a lifetime. Thank you to the excellent Expedition Press, from whom I just purchased a whack of beautiful things, for the inspiration.

Enjoy.