A stone shop that sells by count and by weight, and starts with a stone meant to be thrown.
Flatwater Stone is a small Etsy shop for flat stones. Each stone is sold two ways, as a counted set and as a bag by weight, with every use it serves in the title: wedding place markers, stacking, the aquarium.
What sets it apart is size. The stones are palm-sized skippers. The small stones sold for weddings are too small to skip, and no one sells a set to write on and then skip. So the first listing is a Wish & Skip set: stones, pens, a printed sign and a bag. Guests write a wish on a stone, then skip it across the water.
Some venues won't want ink in their lake, so the set is sold to work three ways: write it, skip it, or keep it.
The hard part is postage, not stone. One stone costs cents; the box it ships in does not. So the shop sells selection, not weight: counted sets and kits first, and heavy bags only where the numbers still work.
It is also the first test for the autonomous company: a shop with real costs, run on the rule that it stops when its balance reaches zero. A Codex has almost no costs, so the rule never gets exercised there. Here, every stone, fee and label counts against the balance.
Four rules the listings keep.
Selection, not weight
Postage outweighs the stone, so the shop sells counted sets and kits, and a bag by weight only where it still pays.
By count and by weight
Each stone gets two listings, a counted set and a bag, and every use it serves goes in the title.
Write it, skip it, keep it
Some venues won't want ink in their water, so every wish set works three ways. A water-based pen is being tried for it.
The story has to be true
A listing names where a stone is from only once that is confirmed. "Uncoated" and "vinegar-tested" wait for the test.
One bag in hand and four listings drafted. The shop isn't open yet.
Everything so far comes from one 50 lb bag of flat stones, and every stone in it is a skipper: dark grey and green-grey, one and a half to two and three-quarter inches across.
Four listings are drafted from that bag: the Wish & Skip set, a skip pack, a small cairn for a desk, and flat stones for an aquarium, which waits on a vinegar test. More rock types follow, each sold the same two ways.
Each stage waits on sales, not on a date.
- NOW
Open the shop
The account, the photos and the first listings, with the Wish & Skip set first.
- NEXT
More uses of the same stone
Once the first sets sell, the stones that sell get listings for the other things they are good for.
- THEN
Gift sets, seasonal sets, custom orders
Around ten sales in.
- HORIZON
Stone by the ton, then wholesale
A steady seller bought in bulk. After steady months: florists, nurseries and lake venues, and a site of its own.
The vinegar test before any stone is sold for a tank · a pen that is kind to lakes · which set sells first.