Soon Coming to Etsy

If you follow me on Facebook, you may have seen that I have been contemplating on-line sales for my work.  I have been trying to decide between setting up a store right on our website versus setting up on Etsy.  I have been going round and round on the decision, studying a variety of on-line help resources and soliciting advise from friends.  I have learned a number of things that I thought I might share.

Part of the difficulty in deciding was making our minds up about what is next for our partnership, Friends Fabric Art.  Could we keep it together somehow with Sonja in Massachusetts and me in Virginia or was it time to let it go and each do our own thing? 

When I started looking into on-line sales options, I thought we were going to disband Friends Fabric Art and I'd set myself up on Etsy under a totally different name.  Then some comments from Facebook Friends got me thinking about trying to set up an on-line shop right in our website using the tools provided by Weebly.  That option opened up the possibility of keeping the partnership together and offering work from both of us.  Weebly's basic website editing tools are manageable for me so I thought I'd be able to set up a store without too much agony.  Unfortunately that did not prove to be the case.  Some things were pretty easy, but some critical things--like setting up shipping and sales taxes--were very confusing.  To help me figure those out I returned to the set-up help on Etsy.  In doing so, I realized just how much better the Etsy service was in giving you clear thorough guidance.  It was night and day.

So I am happy to say that as of today, we have come full circle--back to keeping our Friends Fabric Art partnership and to setting ourselves up on Etsy.  I had pretty much decided on that last night, but the clincher came this morning in an email from our friend and fellow fiber artist, Linda Dunn.  She sent me a link to an article that was just the help I needed.  claranartey.com/sell-textile-art-etsy/ It confirmed the conclusions I'd drawn and gave me new motivation to keep going.  I highly recommend reading it.  Thanks again Linda.

So I've started the work of setting up the new shop.  It'll be called FriendsFabricArt--all strung together.  I've got a lot of work to do to get it ready, but I'll keep you posted on progress and what I learn along the way.   Needless to say, I'll wave the flag when it's ready for public consumption.