I'm sorry, folks, but big brands have taken over Etsy, and you won't be able to do anything about it.
Should you quit? Should you fight?
Should you curl up in the fetal position, rocking yourself to sleep in hopes that someday, the publicly traded corporate juggernaut will see the error of its ways and return to selling granny squares and Victorian, goth, pop-surrealism art?
After I got the pushback from the company that shall not be named about last week’s deep-dive, I told the story to my friend Lizzi, who has been doing well on both Etsy and Amazon Handmade for years.
I think I’m pretty good at research, but if I’m Encyclopedia Brown, Lizzi is Sherlock Holmes, and when she picks up the scent of some possible nefarious shit, she’s all over it.
I told her I could only fathom a few reasons why a company like that would not want the publicity.
They're very private and don't want the added attention—happy to make sales and fulfill orders.
They're into some nefarious shit.
After reading my article, Lizzi immediately went into bloodhound mode, and within an hour, she came back with a theory that I had never considered but made perfect sense.
There are more prominent brands with bigger budgets creating shops on Etsy to appear more handmade but with a corporate machine operating behind the scenes.
Pretending to be Something They’re Not
You know when you go to Target or Old Navy, they often display a slew of trendy t-shirts and other clothing? There are many licensed goods and many unbranded shirts with cheeky phrases and pop-culture references.
Target and Old Navy don't make those designs themselves—they farm it out to smaller companies with in-house design teams and a warehouse full of machines and sewists. No big surprise there, but what if those companies decided to start making one-off products based on some of the designs that Old Navy and Target didn't choose?
They already have the designs. Why not sell them somewhere else?
Because of nasty things like conflict of interest, the print shop can't sell their designs inside the big box stores, and they wouldn't be able to go to Walmart because they most certainly have a non-compete clause in their contract.
They could open their online shop and sell legitimately, but then they’d have to drum up traffic and sales the hard way.
Etsy and Amazon are the perfect answer because they have embedded traffic. All it would take would be to come up with a fictitious business name, maybe even go so far as creating a separate LLC, start an Etsy account, and BOOM, they’re in business with a full-scale design, marketing, and manufacturing machine.
Now, you might be thinking, "That's not fair!"
Maybe you’re right, but who is going to stop them?
First, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to prove.
Second, Etsy won't care as long as the shop brings in hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue each year and does not expose Etsy to risk.
And now, you may be asking, "How do I even compete with that?"
The short answer... You don't.
You can't.
You do not have the resources to play their game... at scale, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use their game plan.
The Silver Lining
The most important piece of information you have is that you know massive success is achievable on Etsy. Every shop shows its sales count, so you know who's killing it. Now, you need to reverse engineer their success.
Lucky for you, I've scoured countless Etsy shops, and these are the things you can do to use big-game strategy at your level.
1. High-Quality Work
Your products, designs, and art must be the best you can create, which needs to transcend into how they are displayed in the shop.
If you’re taking photos of your work, use good, consistent lighting, and images are not under or overexposed, with no harsh shadows. If you’re using natural light, make sure it’s indirect lighting and take photos around the same time of day.
When using mockups, find ones that complement your style and designs. That may seem obvious, but from what I’ve seen on Etsy, sometimes I think they picked their mockups out of the discount bin.
2. Branding
Establish your branding early on and make it something you can live with for several years. If you’re not sure where to start, keep things simple.
Establish a simple color palette of 3-5 colors that complement your work. If you don’t even know where to start, Coolors.co is a fantastic resource for picking color palettes, and you can upload your images to make your custom palettes. I used the Reddit image above to make this in seconds.
Font choices are also crucial for branding, so many Etsyans get it wrong. They choose big, swoopy, decorative typefaces that are difficult to read and hard to manage, combining them with bland, regularly used fonts for contrast.
The result looks like wearing a taupe Anne Taylor suit with a feathery hat and clown shoes.
Finally, your banners and promotional images should represent your brand so that if anyone saw them independently of your shop, they would know what to expect from you.
3. Social Media
First, carry that brand identity over to all your social media channels. If one platform allows for a banner, do not just use the same banner as on Etsy. Make sure to size each banner according to the standard of the platform.
If you visit the social media channels of any big brand that you respect, you’ll see how well-manicured their accounts are.
You may say, “I don’t want to be that tightly bound to my branding—I want to be free to be artistic and creative.”
That’s fine, but a true artist can work within constraints. Can you find ways to use your artistic ability to fit within an established brand for the rest of the world to see?
4. Newsletters
Getting straight to the point, you should have a newsletter for no other reason than to maintain a way to keep in touch with customers and followers outside of Etsy because Etsy does not want you to maintain contact with what they consider their customers.
Why do you think the communication tool on Etsy is so bad? They don’t want anyone to use it unless absolutely necessary—it’s by design.
Don’t know where to start with newsletters, join Substack. It’s free, easy, and you can have one created in less time than it takes to read this article.
5. Advertising
Established brands became established because of advertising.
No, I’m not talking about Etsy ads. I don’t know much about Etsy’s ad platform, but I’ve never heard anything good about them.
You’re better off using Google (a prominent partner with Etsy) or Facebook for your advertising. No, it will not be easy. Yes, it will take you time to learn, and you will need an open mind to the process.
It’s OK, though, because you’ve done many hard things and learned how to do them well. You can do this too.
You’re Scared, I Know
That list may be daunting, but nobody would expect you to handle it all at once. It’s about tackling one task at a time, breaking them into smaller projects, and working on them diligently.
It may look like a hot mess, but every beautiful sand castle started as a pile of wet sludge. You must have faith in the process.
There may also be parts where you need help knowing how or what to do next. That's where just-in-time learning comes in. Spend a few hours or more learning about whatever area of focus, and then take action on what you learned.
I was on Skillshare the other day doing some research for my next deep dive, and I can confidently tell you that there are classes for every one of the five things on that list.
Full Disclosure: I have a few courses on Skillshare myself, but not on these topics (yet). I am also an affiliate, which means if you use that link, you can binge as many courses as you want, FREE for 30 days.
If that’s not your jam, stick around because I will be discussing these topics in the future. If there’s one or more topics you’d like to know more about, drop a comment, and let’s discuss it.
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