I want to hear peoples' stories about selling their crafts. Good or bad experiences with different forms of sales. Lets keep this friendly and constructive.
What works for you? What doesn't?
How do you feel about consignment stores/galleries?
...Wholesale?
...Internet sales?
What works for you? What doesn't?
How do you feel about consignment stores/galleries?
...Wholesale?
...Internet sales?
posted by:
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Sacramento
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Re: Methods of selling crafts.
Wed, October 3, 2007 - 10:33 AMI do carvings and jewelry.
I have done well selling at the Whole Earth Festival at UCDavis. I have had a tiny space in a booth with a large number of other people. Shows and festivals are good because people can see your items first hand and after paying for the space, you can keep all the profits from the sales.
I tried selling online, but have not had much luck. Ebay is bad for artists because people shopping on there are looking for good deals and its hard to compete with the prices of imported goods. Etsy is friendlier to artists, but i've not had luck on there. I realized that I probably have to flood etsy with lots of production goods for people to see my stuff. If anyone has luck selling on etsy, i'm really interested in how you managed it?
Are there other internet places people have had luck with?
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Re: Methods of selling crafts.
Wed, October 3, 2007 - 6:44 PMI've done a lot of selling of the hats by word of mouth, custom orders. I've gone to historic events, sci fi conventions, anime conventions, and I usually do pretty well there.
I stopped consigning my hats, bbecause the one place I did let small grubby children handle them, and didn't offer recompense for ruin hats. I've done other stuff by consignment, and sold quite well, (different store) and found the owners courteous, they paid for broken items out of their own pocket if they found it broken without anyone claiming responsibility, they paid on time and kept good track of the inventory.
Ebay - bah. I've tried selling a variety of crafts there, including my hats, and as someone else said, people don't get the value of handmade items on there. There's a chick on EBay who makes hats and sells them for $15 each -I can't do that - silks and making costs alone cost me more than $15. Might as well give them away.
Etsy - been on there several months, sold one hat. Though I have met people who are making money hand over fist on Etsy.
Found, in my experience, that a set site/ store seems to make me the most money, with hitting events second best.
That's my two cents on it.
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Re: Methods of selling crafts.
Mon, November 19, 2007 - 12:57 PMSpeaking as a store owner...
There are pros and cons to both methods, and on both sides. For me, the biggest con of wholesale is that each purchase takes cash from my budget which might otherwise be spent on advertising, bigger and brighter window displays, more web store functionality, and more attractive packaging. All of those things make it more likely that I'll be able to sell what I have, and too many wholesale orders bring down my chances of making enough money to buy more wholesale in the future.
Consignment is good because I can focus my budget on bringing customers in who can then, in turn, buy the consignment items and make money for me as well as my artists. The downside is that I make less on consignment so I have to work twice as hard to make any sort of profit whatsoever... and if I try to mark it up a little to make ends meet, it costs too much and the customers don't buy.
I really do feel for my artists who aren't comfortable with consignment, and I did what I could to accommodate them by placing beginning wholesale orders... but sadly I just don't make enough or have a high enough credit limit to do all wholesale. I do send each potential vendor a contract to read before they decide anything, stating that I am fully liable for anything that happens to their work while it is in my hands... that's the best I can do for now until I win the lottery. :)
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