Digital organization for pottery business

[EmsGoodPots 1]

Hi all, I’m new here and starting down the road to selling my work. I’m wondering if anyone has a good inventory management system they could share. What I mean is, so far I’ve made a whole lot of pieces that are all different, some of them have sold, I’ve photographed most of them but I don’t have any way of organizing this information.

I’m not a production potter so I don’t have standard pieces, maybe I’ll get there in the future but for now, I’m looking for ways to organize my work and especially the hundreds of photos. Right now I just have folders full of auto-generated “image1234” file names and there’s got to be a better way.

Do people number their pieces to help with this? Or use descriptions? Or organize by date or category (mugs, bowls etc)?

Thank you!

Emily 

[LeeU 1,059]

I am not a production person nor a professional, but I value an organized inventory system. I use two things--for "on the fly" records I use the free mobile app Pottery Log. My permanent inventory is an Excel Workbook with separate sheets for each "category" of pieces: catchalls, bowls, desk top (i.e. business card holders and the like) etc. etc. and ones for wood fire/raku. The pic is from my sheet Bowls; the item code is the same as I use on my webpage as a product number. I use a simple alphanumeric code for each category, i.e. catchalls is CA, DT is desk top etc. The code goes on a piece of masking tape affixed to the bottom of the piece then I can store it and find it. Storage boxes or drawers are labeled BW, CA etc.  It's a lot of detail and some would say not necessary, but it works for me. 

[liambesaw 1,552]

I like it!

 

Since I am doing my photo editing in adobe Lightroom anyway, I store info on each piece in Lightroom.  I take a picture and then another one with a numbered sticky note that stays on the piece.  A really bad example here:

 

[EmsGoodPots 1]

Those are both excellent examples, thank you so much!

[Selchie 13]

I use both an excel spreadsheet and a photograph. Each piece has a number. The photograph has both the piece and the number (as noted by Liam as well as other information, such as clay, glaze, and finished size. That way, when I look at the picture, I don't have to go back and link it to the spreadsheet, although I can link it with the numbers, but I have enough information on the picture to be able to identify the piece.

[Callie Beller Diesel 1,695]

I’m maybe a little less fancy. I have folders of images sorted chronologically, clustered every 6 months to a year depending on how productive I’ve been with new work. 

I’ll make folders of images that have been edited and that are suitable for applications, but beyond that it becomes too much upkeep. 

I do have to say that even if it’s just a phone picture, take a moment to document things before they sell. You will always regret it if you don’t. Take the image in the largest format you can. If you must use your phone, use your phone’s native camera app, not something like VISCO or even directly into Instagram. Don’t crop the image while you’re capturing it: do that afterwards when you’re editing: give yourself the maximum amount of information to work with.