I swear to you, I tried to keep this brief.
I was going to whine about modern craft fairs. And the people selling things made from the patterns of others, without credit or payment; how many times does Studio Faro get ripped off every day? Many many times.
And how many people make things for sale on fabric that has a printed notice on the selvage not to do so? Many many many more.
And the number of people who actually Made Something Original And/Or By Hand?
Two.
I did buy some stuff.
I did buy some stuff.
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| This is not the MacPhee cocoon coat, but it is very inspired by it's motto: you can make something out of it while you wait to figure out what you want to cut it into. It's that other thing, with a folded over thing to get the shape to math out. Hillery Sproatt has some sweet knit blankets. Go check her out. I liked her so much, i left the tag on the front lapel. |
Usually, I get a snack/latte/macaron/scone, I buy a tshirt and maybe a jar of mustard, call it a day. Come home, make my usual observation that
'the world is wide enough for the honest as well as the lazy'.
There will be no damming photos of copycats today.
'the world is wide enough for the honest as well as the lazy'.
There will be no damming photos of copycats today.
Because this caught my attention.
There will be no brevity today.
There will be no brevity today.
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| you spun for a soap or a notepad or a tote bag. The soap might have been handmade, the rest, no. I got a business card and some postcards, which is really all I wanted. |
https://services.amazon.com/handmade/handmade.html
(Gentle reader: If you aren't interested in this topic, even with me cracking jokes about it, just jump off here and I'll see you next week)
The photo on the left is the postcard for the crafters, the photo on the right is the postcard for the buyers.
Amazon Etsy?
If Etsy were an appendix to a really big online....Amazon.
I am sure you have all bought something on Amazon, and are familiar with the website.
I am sure you have all bought something on Amazon, and are familiar with the website.
Amazon Marketplace (where you and I can sell stuff on Amazon) is a different experience. There's a lot of store management online bureaucracy that can be very confusing. If you have an issue, your customer rep is an AI that does not respond in real time to your questions. If you want to get an answer, you are directed to:
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| This notice has been up for days. It must be pretty bad if they put the 'Susan' on it. And yes, this would affect you. It's actually a large part of my real day job. |
Amazon Services Sellers Forums is a message board, a group exercise in one customer advising another customer. I'm sure some are good, but that's bad policy to present customer hearsay as the official word. It's just there's no service to be had. It has serious Reddit moments of panic and anger, like any Internet comments page.
Amazon is still a poorly supervised collection of real and fake items presented side by side as if the same. And don't pretend it's never happened to you.
If there was a site that should have a large "BUYER BEWARE" sign on it, it's Amazon.
If there was a site that should have a large "BUYER BEWARE" sign on it, it's Amazon.
And Amazon is unavoidable. It's the big big gorilla, and people look for stuff there first.
What, Jiminy?
"Hey, it's probably no worse than Etsy!"
So what IS it?
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| must be made entirely by hand by you The Artisan. |
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| must be made entirely by hand by you The Artisan |
See? And this is the front page, the VERY FIRST images that come up on Amazon Handmade.
Well, the first tshirt was hand-arranged for the original photograph, and they did use a different filter.
The link for the curious:
https://www.amazon.com/b/ref=s9_acss_bw_cg_hnd02_1b1_w?node=17714749011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-3&pf_rd_r=PYH5C50JNQV1BBRFWJ5H&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=3b5a4639-3b44-428e-9e7e-ee7e75bd5aa5&pf_rd_i=17714704011
(spoilers for the website 'lewk': there'a a lot of distressed wood here)
In the end, there's probably no real difference between Etsy and Amazon.
Go look for yourself.
https://services.amazon.com/handmade/handmade.html
https://www.etsy.com/seller-news/2018-june-update?ref=SELL
Both want to handle your money and bank transactions for you. Both want to make money off your use of their website to sell things (there's money to be made in handling money). It's selling stuff, and there is nothing wrong with that. There is a whiff of homemade lavender oil in their presentation, but no homemade mustard.
I filled out the application.
Get your online merchant, online form geek ON: RIGHT NOW
(and a reminder: click on images to get them full size. If I full size these here, they run over and onto the sidebars and are unreadable. Reader, I'm trying....)
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| The same high quality photography you experience here once a week, spartan copy. Love that sewing room photo! |
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| Less than five minutes? What, it took you THAT long? |
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| Two thousand? Whoa. That' handmade for SURE |
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| Me. Just me. These are photos of things I sold on eBay, with the crummy photos I used (not this cropped, I swear) At least eBay lets me recrop my photos to fit their specs |
I really should have clicked 'another company' and seen what happens, but I am really bad at lying, even for research.
And reader, I actually sent it in.
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I'm not a artisanal workshop person, but I used to be. I made home decor items (picture frames and candlesticks) by hand in a shop with about ten other people for someone else years ago, and it's impossible work unless you get it up to scale and move enough units. And those units sold for a couple of hundred dollars apiece because the artist had already developed a national reputation, and had an amazing rep who worked hard. I think we were in the Bloomingdale's holiday catalog one year, with a product that couldn't be duplicated successfully at a profit.
The company had to fill the orders at a dead loss.
That didn't go well, other things did, and I learned a lot about production work on someone else's dime. I'm grateful. I met some wonderful people. I learned how to open and close a jump ring like a pro, because for a time, I was.
I have no intention of selling anything handmade on the internet ever again. It's just really hard to control returns and misunderstandings and bad reviews are impossible to deal with. Somebody you didn't sell to, drops a steamy pile of a review on a product, and you cannot do a thing about it.
TWELVE HOURS LATER.........
Well, let's go see what the terms are!
Wait a minute. I invited myself in by ticking a box on a webpage that was open to anyone with the name of the webpage....I didn't get an invite at Urban Craft.
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I am a very contented hobbyist.
If you are already a professional crafts person, this may be just the thing for you. Amazon will give you exposure to folks who will otherwise never hear from you. People shop on Amazon. If your volume can handle 39.95 a month plus a 15% per sale fee, then you should look into it. If you are already selling on Amazon and converting is just a technicality, the Handmade moniker will put you into a smaller search pool, and probably drive up your sales.
If you are already selling well on Etsy, it doesn't make sense to add Amazon unless that 39.99 plus 15% is chump change and you are interested in being on Amazon. In addition, Etsy is adding more dynamic functions and features (in beta at present), and the highest monthly is $10, rising to $20 (and soon to be 5% per sale). Premium Etsy launches in 2019, with no hint as to their monthly fee.
https://www.etsy.com/seller-news/2018-june-update/packages?ref=seller-news-packages-1
People go to Etsy already looking for handmade items, and you've already done the financial investment in building your Etsy store. You are only competing for eyeballs by how you tag your products and photograph them. Yes, people sell mass manufactured things on Etsy. Sorry, darling, they just do. The world is wide enough for the honest as well as the lazy; people can tell them apart and buy accordingly.
You could try it out, and then pull your goods before the monthly fee goes into effect, but you have to remember to trigger that 'freeze all motor functions' before mid December, so you don't have any dangling holiday sales pending past December 31st. And they will.
As ever, always read the fine print in the contract. How long does Amazon have your money before they release it to you and finalize the transaction? How long does Etsy? What are the return policies and how does feedback work on the site? Can I lose my account if I receive negative feedback?
And then you will be dealing with Amazon's inventory system and AI customer support
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| This message has been up for awhile now. Days. And there is no Susan. |
My ten cents:
Invest in yourself. Get a photographer. Make more good stuff.
Get a sales rep if you want to expand. Go to trade shows and meet people. Build a real business first. It will cost you money, but if it makes you money, that's an investment in YOU. And if you like that, and a lot of people do, you'll know the next step for you at that point. And maybe Amazon is that next step.
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Update July 3rd email from Amazon:
So that takes you out a year to try it out. Better. Now you can see what Etsy's response will be.
----------------------------But wait, there's more!
(july 9, 2018)
You Tube videos on presentation.
I particularly like the advice that your description and your photos should match. They should. This is actually all good advice. Does Etsy do this? No.
Not yet.
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**Standard Amazon Marketplace fees
So 15% might be a deal, relatively speaking, if you were selling clothing (2% less) or handbags at a higher price than $75 (you'd save 3%). Proclaim your goods handmade and save on fees. There might be a duty break for 'handmade' as well. Pennies add up.
This must be what those hundreds of people in all those buildings are up to!
(that and flying drone tests inside a specially built room- shhhh, that's secret!)
And yes, these are my opinions. Not my boss, or my family, or my former boss, or the other people I ever worked with. And to fend off the bots, I've turned off the comments for this one. We'll yap next week.
