GKS Widgets Armor - Swords - Clothing

Alas it has been ages since my last post, well 8 days or so anyway! I have been working hard on my store http://www.gkswidgets.com/ and it has been very rewarding but exhausting.

Another fine product line that we offer is our Medieval/Ren-Faire products. GKS Widgets carries a full line of products for the Re-enactment community. Let me preview some of our very high quality Armour.

GKS Widgets carries a very extensive line of high quality, much of it is SCA approved, Armour.

• Helmets


• Bracers
• Curaiss
• Arms
• Elbows


• Gauntlets


• Gorgets

• Greaves

• Knees

These items are manufactured from high quality 16 or 18 gauge steel in most cases and are very acurate in detail and historicity.

Please check out all of our unique products at GKS Widgets www.gkswidgets.com

Salutations for now,

Grant Skoog

Owner/GKS Widgets

Movie Film Cells are Great Collectibles!

Greetings from the great abyss!


I thought I would change gears a bit and do some store promotion! As I have stated in prior posts I have an online store http://www.gkswidgets.com/ and I sell a variety of unique and hard to find products as well as some not so hard to find.


One of my most favorites is our Movie Film Cells. These are cells from the 35mm original films and they are mounted and framed to a background with additional photos and a plaque that depicts the movie. These are licensed and are limited editions, usually 2500.



They come from a wide variety of famous movies not the least of which are cells from the popular Batman series movies. We have cells from other great film series as well. Harry Potter, Star Wars, Star Trek, The Godfather, Spiderman, The Lord of the Rings as well as from classic movies like Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz and Frankenstein. We also have cells from musical legends like Madonna, The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Jimmy Hendrix, The Grateful Dead and many many more. They come in different layouts and price ranges. These are great for gifts or for the movie buffs out there who want a piece of movie history.





I am very proud to carry these in my store and I would ask you to go check them out at http://www.gkswidgets.com/ if you get a chance. Thanks for looking.



Grant Skoog

Owner http://www.gkswidgets.com/

Product Sourcing, What is it!

Greetings once again!

As I have noted in my past posts, I have an online store GKS Widgets http://www.gkswidgets.com/ and I sell a variety of products like Medieval Armor & Clothing, Swords, Movie Film Cells, Ethnic Musical Instruments, Hand Carved Loon Lake Decoy Wildlife Replicas and SpecCast Die-Cast Models.

When I first set out on my journey I was wondering what I should sell and if there is anyway to know where and what to sell. I realized from past experience in the retail industry, my father and I ran an Authorized Commodore Amiga Dealership back in the 80's, that it would be important to find legitimate wholesalers of products if I was expecting to profit from the sales of such products. Here is where my first mistake came in. I thought that I could just Google wholesalers and off I would go. I was searching through eBay one night and I came across a product someone was offering for $9.99 that claimed that they had all the tools and information I would need to start an online business and the price looked good so I purchased it. Here was my first mistake and I share it with all of you. If it sounds too good to be true it probably is and indeed was. The product was pretty much garbage and did not lead me in the right direction at all.

Next I did the Google thing and did a search on wholesale distributors. A vast array of items appeared on my screen and I soon saw that I would have to put a whole lot of effort into my research if I was going to be able to glean any real gems from all this information. One thing I will warn you about is there are what are called middlemen out there who disguise themselves as wholesalers and in reality they are stepping in between the true wholesale companies and you so you end up not being able to sell their items at a competitive price. There is also the "Internet Store in the Box" products. Steer away from these. The biggest problem with them is they sell a million of these "Store in a Box" options so you end up with a whole bunch of stores that look identical and everyone ends up selling identicle products. What you really need are unique items that not everyone else is selling. More on this in later posts.

So what was I to do. I begin to slow down my approach because I did not want to fall prey to these scammers. Again I drew on my past experience in retail and decided that time and a bit of money were going to be needed if I was going to sort through all the mess that was out there. I spent the next several weeks researching this whole new world of e-commerce and in future posts I will try to share with you some of the things I learned along the way.

Well, gotta run for now but do me a favor and check out my store GKS Widgets http://www.gkswidgets.com/ and let me know what you think

Grant Skoog
Owner/Gks Widgets
http://www.gkswidgets.com/

A Little Bit About GKS Widgets, My Store

Greetings all!

In my first official post I related to you that I had an online store, www.gkswidgets.com . I thought this time around I might tell you a little more about my store. GKS Widgets is an interesting name and I suppose that many of you might be wondering - "where on earth did he come up with that name" - When I was younger and still in school I remember my economics classes and there was always a company like ABC Widgets or Acme Company and as I was pondering over different ideas for naming my store "Widgets" popped into my mind. I was putting together the legal paperwork for the company, and since I did not know then what I might be selling, I decided on a generic name and that is where GKS Widgets came from. It's the initials of my name with Widgets after it. Clever huh?

At www.gkswidgets.com we carry a wide range of product lines. Our most popular line is our Medieval Armor and Renaissance re-enactment products. We carry Armor, Swords and Weaponry, A full Clothing Line and we are adding to this on a daily basis. The armor is of high quality and most of it can be used in SCA events.

Our second most popular line at www.gkswidgets.com is our Movie Film Cells. These are high quality Licensed Movie Film Cells mounted and framed. The cells are from the original films and are accompanied by a high quality photo or print depicting the scene as well as a nice plaque to go with them. A wide range of films are available. Batman, Elvis Presley, Harry Potter, The Godfather, Spiderman, Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz just to name a few. These are great gift items as well as great collectibles. Go and check them out at www.gkswidgets.com right now. I guarantee you will be impressed.

Third we have Ethnic Musical Instruments. Wind, String and drums from around the world manufactured by Mid-East Manufacturing. We have Sitars, Harmoniums, Dulcimers, Cumbus, Bagpipes, Uillean Pipes, Balalaikas, Tablas, Ashikas, Bongos, Congas and many many more. Check them out!

We also carry SpecCast Die-Cast Models and Loon Lake Decoy Company Hand Carved Replicas of Wildlife. All of these are very unique and you should check them out as well at www.gkswidgets.com.

You might be wondering how do I find all of these different items to sell in my store and at wholesale prices to boot? Next time I will try and tell you some of the things I found out in my journey. It is called Product Sourcing and if you don't know what to look for you can fall into deep traps. So I look forward to sharing this with you in my next post.

Thanks for putting up with my rambling and until next time.

Grant K Skoog
GKS Widgets www.gkswidgets.com

Welcome to GKS Widgets/ Getting Started

Well this is my first post to my new blog. Let me introduce myself. My name is Grant Skoog and I am a 57 year old single male. I recently was laid off from my machinists position of 3 years. Since I am an eBay fanatic and since I was aware that I needed a way to supplement my unemployment, I decided to open an eBay store. So in early February I did just that. After some time I found that even though my eBay store was doing pretty well I also realized that I would need to wean myself off eBay if I was going to succeed at all. That is when I decided to buy a domain name http://www.gkswidgets.com/ and enter into the real realm of e-commerce. I soon found out that there was much more to that than meets the eye. Store inventory, SEO optimization, (what's that?), relevant content and so on and so on. It's quite a learning process.



This blog is my effort to relate my experiences to others so that they may learn from my mistakes as well as to promote my new online store http://www.gkswidgets.com/ . I first had to go out and do product source research. This is probably the most difficult but the most productive as well. I found a few products that I felt may be unique and opened my eBay store. I added my products and published it to the public and sat back to see what happened. It wasn't long and I had my first sale. I learned to use eBay's very good user interface which provides the new user with all the tools to help promote their site. I added new product lines and started utilizing tools like Turbo Lister and the like and soon I was seeing some fruit from my labors. It can be a very rewarding experience but it is also a lot of work. In future posts I will relate more of my experiences with you but since this is a new adventure for me I will conclude for now.



Please check out my store at http://www.gkswidgets.com/ and see what I have. I appreciate your spending the time to read this, my first attempt at blogging, and I hope you will come back often.



Grant Skoog

Owner GKS Widgets

http://www.gkswidgets.com/