Wow! Nearly three months since I last wrote a blog post! Where did that time go??! Today I thought I would write a short post about my Etsy shop – DBASnippets (Dress By Amy Snippets).
I set up the shop in early 2020 as a first step in the direction of starting my own small business. As I have said on this blog before, I have sewn in some shape or form for most of my life and I absolutely love fabric and have accumulated a large collection over the years! In the last 10 years, I have mainly been making clothes and dressmaking as a craft can be particularly wasteful. If you are a dressmaker, you will know that in order to make sure your pieces are cut accurately on the correct grainline, you have to position them on the fabric in a way which doesn’t always make the best use of what you have available. Therefore you are left with lots of scraps which will not be big enough for other clothes but which are often big enough to make you feel terrible about throwing them away (if you are anything like me!). That’s where DBASnippets came in.
I knew I wanted to spend the majority of my time dressmaking, hence the name of my blog - and wider small business – Dress By Amy - but also wanted to ensure that my dressmaking scraps wouldn’t go to waste. So I starting making fabric covered buttons as my very first product – saving the small pieces of pretty fabric and using them to cover stainless steel buttons. After two years of having my shop, these are probably what I have sold the most of.
I then progressed onto creating pre-cut fabric pieces from my left over scraps – sets of various size squares of mostly cotton fabrics for other crafters to use in patchwork, collage, etc. From there, I have also made and sold bias binding, scrap fabric bundles and handmade bags and purses, all from my dressmaking scrap fabrics. My aim is to waste as little fabric as possible and create items which can be put to good use by other crafters.
You can access my shop via this website - see the link at the top of the home page. Alternatively, you can access it directly via Etsy here: www.etsy.com/uk/shop/dbasnippets
Occasionally people ask me my thoughts on Etsy as a selling platform for makers. On the whole, I would say it’s a great option for anyone starting to sell their handmade crafts – it provides you with a very easy way to sell your items online. It offers a shop structure which you can quickly set up with no technical experience and customise with your own branding, rather than having to set up a website from scratch. It also puts your items in front of a huge captive audience who come to Etsy for unique, handmade items, as opposed to having to market and promote your own website from the ground up. One of the downsides is that there is a lot of competition and you have to have a unique product (and great photography skills) to stand out. I am also fairly sceptical of the algorithm which puts your product listings in front of customers. My shop can seemingly go for quite a while without any sales but if I’m listing new items in the meantime, I am accruing the listing fees which need to be paid to Etsy. When these become due, I often ‘magically’ get a new sale or two (which Etsy can then deduct their fees from) which gives the impression that they only promote your items when its beneficial for them. The fees for the platform have also very recently gone up from 5% to 6.5% which has been very controversial within the Etsy community, so I am eagerly awaiting the additional benefits which Etsy has promised as a result!
My advice would be to try Etsy out but don't rely on it as your only sales channel. My work is currently (May and June 2022!) also stocked at Just Makers shop in Ripley, North Yorkshire (www.justmakers.co.uk) I am really grateful to have this opportunity to get my work out there and would love to do more of it. If there are any other North Yorkshire based small craft business stockists out there, leave me a comment below, I would love to get in touch!
コメント