On Wednesday I wrote about how crafting has changed my shopping habits: I’m no longer interested in spending my money on soulless, environmentally damaging, mass-produced clothes and accessories. I’ll buy less from now on, but when I do buy, I’ll look for quality items that I will love and treasure for years, which might mean each piece will cost much more than I’m used to spending.
miablaz.etsy.com
With that in mind, I spent much of Wednesday afternoon searching for handmade clothing on Etsy, which proved to be really, really valuable research for my shop as well! I ended up not purchasing anything — after all, I don’t really need clothes at the moment — but spending several hours as a serious potential buyer gave me a lot of helpful insights on how I can improve my own shop. Some of these insights actually helped answer some of the questions I’ve been pondering in the past few weeks, so even though you could say I spent the whole afternoon shopping, I know it was time well spent. 😉
Let’s look at a couple of gorgeous garments…
I don’t consider $54 (the price of the dress at right) a high price for a dress, but add $7 shipping, the anxiety of not knowing what the material feels like or whether the design will suit my body, and the possibility of having to return a custom-made item, and suddenly it’s a big deal.
jibrionline.etsy.com
The dress at left is $230 — more than four times the cost of the other dress. You’d think this would matter a lot in my deliberations, but it didn’t make any difference. I’ve bought enough clothes to know that an ill-fitting $30 top is more of a waste than the $120 dresses that make me feel like a goddess every time I wear them… and I think a lot of savvy shoppers have observed the same.
For a beautiful garment, one I’ll wear regularly and which fits me perfectly, $230 and $54 both seem equally reasonable. It’s not the price that stops me from buying, but the question: will I be getting what I’m paying for? I’m willing to pay if it’s perfect, but will it be perfect? Browsing Etsy as a potential buyer made me discover that this is one of the biggest burdens of selling things online. Amazing photos aren’t enough; we need our audience to trust us, and to believe that we will deliver what we’ve promised in our photos and descriptions. If the trust isn’t quite there, then it doesn’t matter whether our items cost $50 or $200.
In the end, the dress I came closest to buying wasn’t either of these, but a striking Chinese-inspired frock made by an Asian family living in the UK. It’s an incredible dress, and at $140, it falls right between the other two in price. But that’s not why I almost bought it. I’ve heard some people don’t like to read lots of information when they shop online, but I’m just the opposite, and I’ve decided my target audience probably is too (come to think of it, I’ve only made one sale — both online and in person — where the buyer wasn’t a lingerer/deliberator/question-asker, so I think I’m right about this target audience thing).
yystudio.etsy.com
In considering this dress, I was delighted to note that yystudio provided tons of information about their store policies and how the clothes are made, from the way this design uses the print to a slideshow of how they sew and photograph their collection. They answered questions I didn’t even know I had, and this made me feel really good about potentially buying from them. They made me believe their dress would be just as wonderful as I hoped… but also that they’d be there to take care of it if it wasn’t.
I do think it’s impossible to inspire 100% confidence when you’re doing anything as tricky as selling clothing online, but the one thing that would have made me much more willing to buy from any of the above sellers (including yystudio) is photos of the dresses on real people (and I am not using “real” as a euphemism for “above a size 2”; I mean people who aren’t models and aren’t lit and shot as if they were). I especially appreciate being able to see clothes worn on different shapes, and yet in my afternoon of browsing (and my search phrase was actually “plus size”!), I only saw one seller sharing such pics — but they were brilliant. Myblackdress‘s buyer photos are worth even more than the proverbial thousand words.
Anyway, now that I’ve spent some time shopping for clothes on Etsy, I really want to improve my listings and my shop policies. I’m planning a “how a Satsumabug creation is made” blog post, complete with step-by-step photos, which I’ll link in my policies and some of my item descriptions. I also want to compose a blurb explaining my philosophy on making one-of-a-kind items, and include that in either my profile or my policies (speaking of which, I always have trouble figuring out what to put in the profile and what to put in the policies… they seem so interconnected).
Lots to do!
satsumabug.com | Lisa Hsia 
OMG, what beautiful dresses!! Wow, wow, wow.
While I was reading this post, I kept thinking about passages that I’d read in the Made to Stick book that I just finished. You might get a lot out of it, too, particularly the sections on building credibility and…well, actually, the whole book is helpful.
And you’re so right in that it’s such a challenge to provide shoppers with enough information to simulate a hands-on shopping experience, without overloading them with too much and risking the danger of important information getting lost in the flood.
After reading that book, my head is swimming with all of these ideas on ways to improve my shop, my newsletter, my craft show presence, etc. Ah! So much that I want to do, yet so little time, it seems…
Yes! The last time I looked for clothing on Etsy, there was significantly less selection, so I guess Etsy really is growing in Superman-sized leaps and bounds.
I will go looking for Made to Stick! It sounds intriguing on your Goodreads review too. 🙂
Sigh, my head has been swimming lately too… my brain is gasping for air! The other night I dreamed I went to the FabMo show and left half my inventory and all my display props at home, and was forced to share a table with a woman who wore all black and didn’t bring any of her wares because it was “too much trouble.” Worst crafting nightmare I’ve had yet!