Month: August 2011

Start you own online business comes with A LOT of trial and error. What works, what doesn’t, what’s most convenient, what’s the most fun, what’s the least stressful, etc…

I’ve been doing a lot of personal shop evaluation and I’m finding my self saying “they told me so” over and over in my head. They told me to start small. They told me to start with Etsy because it has an online community that helps small businesses get started. They told me it was worth it.

Ok Ok. You guys were right. I started with an online shop run by Big Cartel and love the ability to present a fully branded shop. I thought I’d be able to spend the time driving awareness to my new digital space and money to spend on advertising. I was somewhat wrong. I work full time at an advertising agency, and I’ve found that promoting a new shop is another full time job.

So I’ve decided to migrate most of my inventory over to Etsy and build a community in that space for the time being. I love browsing Etsy, creating treasuries, and bookmarking favorites, so I’m sure a lot of other people do the same thing. Let’s see how it goes. I’m willing to try several approaches until I find something that works.

Another little announcement is that I’m expanding the category of items in my shop. I started with items that fit into the “container” category and now I’ll slowly be adding more industrial vintage pieces to the shop. I’m exciting about being able to shop for more things I love. Yippee!

Oh, what do you think of the new logo? 

With warehouses in both Los Angeles and San Francisco, Big Daddy’s Antiques has a massive amount of floor space to fill with one of a kind antiques. I’ve never been to California, but if I ever had the chance to stop by Big Daddy’s I’m sure I could waste several hours perusing all the goodies. If you are like me and live across the US, the Big Daddy Antiques website has a ton of images to flip through that will give you a good idea of what’s currently in stock and what’s currently sold.

I love randomly searching the internet for antique finds and stumbling upon a treasure like this. There is so much stuff out there just waiting to be found!

While in Portland the boy and I took a day to do some touristy things, like visit the Multhnomah Falls and hike to the highest point. Seems like a good idea when the starting signs said it was only 1 mile to the top. LIARS!!! We got about half way up the constant incline climb to find a sign that said, “You are half way there. You have traveled 1 mile”. Let’s just say that was mildly discouraging to put it lightly, especially when the both of us are extremely out of shape and the boy was toughing it out mid flu/food poisoning. Oh yeah. That happened. We about died and that’s being generous with word choice. We felt like we were suffocating and our shins and batootie muscles were about to snap in half. Slightly dramatic, but not really. It was pretty, but OMG was it painful.

*note to self…1 mile by foot feels NOTHING like 1 mile by car.

*click image to visit my treasury for my office makeover!

[vimeo 23216545 w=515&h=290]
I couldn’t resist. I’m going to have to make one of these!

I’ve been doing a lot of Etsy shop hopping, hoping to find items that I’d want to include in my home office makeover. Because I’m a treasure hunter myself, I have a hard time settling for what’s on Etsy with the thought that I can find the stuff myself with just a little bit of hunting. I’m finding that if I go out searching for a specific item in mind, I don’t find it. I’ve discovered the art of thrifting, hunting, pickin’ is that you never know what you’ll find, so throw all expectations out the door.

Let’s talk Etsy for a moment shall we. I’d like to start a discussion in the comments section of this post today and I’m going to try and actively participate. So here’s the thing. I really enjoy the community that comes along with Etsy. The search tools are very easy to navigate and it seems that if you are searching for anything hand made or vintage, Etsy is the first place to check. My pet peeve with Etsy is there are a lot of shops that just exist because they can. They lack a direction, lack branding, and lack any kind of professionalism. I really appreciate the Etsy sellers out there who know that building a cohesive brand through product selection and branding is extremely important.

I currently use Big Cartel to sell my vintage goods because I’m passionate about having a shop that is branded and over time can stand as it’s own identity. I am noticing that even though I’ve made efforts to advertise my new shop to bring awareness, the lack of online community means that I am constantly working REALLY hard to get people to stop by. I’m reassessing my strategy at the moment and thinking about having both and Etsy and a Big Cartel shop (different items in each with a few overlap). This sounds like it might be more work than it’s work, but I’d love to hear your thoughts.

I’d love to hear everyone’s thoughts about Etsy vs Big Cartel and if you have any advice for driving traffic to online shops.

Like anything else, I understand that a shops success just takes time and patience. As long as I am doing everything I can to get to my end goal, I’m a happy camper.

Thoughts?