Petal to the Metal: Sisters Start Blooming Jewelry Store

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Hey there, what's up, it's Chris Guillebeau here, your host of "Side Hustle School." Hope you are doing well in whatever part of the world you are in. Hope you're working hard, I hope you're looking out for somebody. I hope you're also taking care of yourself. That is critical, not just in this day and age, but in every day and age. Today, I wanna talk to you about making it on Etsy.

Now, we've had a number of Etsy stories over the years, but how do you make it there? Because the pathway to Etsy success is paved with so many failed sellers. I just made that metaphor up on the fly, so I'm not sure it totally fits. But the point is lots of people try to sell on Etsy. Most of them sell very few items and make very little money.

So how do you succeed? Well, you succeed by not doing the same thing everybody else does. And then by continuing to adapt when people inevitably copy you. Because if you're successful there in lots of other places, but particularly in a marketplace like Etsy where everything is handmade, people will come along and copycat your designs. Hey, I didn't say it was easy.

None of this stuff is easy, but it's all worth it. In this story, two sisters originally from Miami make and sell jewelry with real dried flowers. When these creative sisters create floral resin jewelry, they start a budding side hustle that really puts the pedal to the metal. That is correct, I did say pedal to the metal. We're talking about flowers and jewelry in this story.

I'll tell you all about how they got the idea, how they made it happen, and how they continue to adapt in this episode. Stay tuned. [Music]

Lindsey Ann Gottschul and Courtney Joy Bleer are sisters from Miami. They grew up in an artistic household and both went on to creative careers. Courtney combined her love of design and teaching to become an art teacher, while Lindsey moved to New York City to pursue her dream of acting.

While pursuing that dream, Lindsey also began making beaded jewelry on the side. It quickly became a passion as she experimented with different materials and techniques. Over time, she learned to make resin, a hard epoxy substance that's mixed into a range of different colors and patterns. When it's done, you can use resin as an ornament in any piece of jewelry you're hoping to design. It became one of Lindsey's favorite methods and one she shared with her sister.

By now, Courtney had also moved to New York and the sisters spent time together making jewelry. They got to talking, brainstorming and throwing ideas around. They wanted to come up with some unique designs, something that used their own lives and environment as inspiration for a new type of product. What they got from all that brainstorming was anything but garden variety. Their concept was to make flower resin jewelry.

They'd take dried flowers and intricately place them inside a mold, petal by petal, before adding the resin. This gave the flowers a frozen look as if they were trapped in time. The sisters loved what they'd come up with so much that they decided then and there to launch an Etsy store selling the pieces. They would sell them under their own label called Anne and Joy, a name brought about by combining both their middle names. But without much inventory to sell, they weren't likely to make much money.

So they began crafting more pieces, replicating their first designs as well as making new ones by plucking all the different flowers they could find. They even dyed some to get just the right colors in effect. Once they had a solid catalog, it was time to list the items. Lindsey assumed the role of photographer and Courtney the model. They meticulously went through and took high quality photos of all their pieces, a move they now identify as a great decision.

Then in January, 2018, the Anne and Joy Etsy store was officially open. Their creativity in offering something that stood out from all the other jewelry sellers worked in their favor. The team at Etsy noticed the uniqueness of their designs and chose to promote their store on the homepage and in the newsletter. In the first three months, Anne and Joy received over 100 orders and more than $3,000 in revenue. All of that came from spending only $200 on materials.

Although to be fair, they did already have the equipment. By the end of their first year, they had sold over 2,300 orders resulting in more than $65,000 in revenue. The two sisters in Etsy had a budding romance. Now the next part wasn't as exciting. As the popularity of their store increased, copycat sellers noticed and they began flooding the Etsy market with similar products.

But that just meant Lindsay and Courtney had to adapt both with their product and their marketing. For the product, they began making each line as a limited edition to build up exclusivity. If customers don't buy now, it won't be seen again. Secondly, they began to sell custom pieces. A customer could send them flowers from a wedding or birthday, for example, and the sisters would create a piece of jewelry from it.

They also got innovative with their marketing, offering previous customers a discount for repeat business and using social media extensively. They also made sure their listings would come up high in Etsy's search engine, even if people didn't know to search for something like hand pressed resin flower jewelry. These adaptations helped them get through their second full year and to the point of Lindsay being able to go full time on the business. At the time I was working on this story, the COVID-19 pandemic had taken a toll on Ann and Joy. And like so many businesses, sales were down in spring 2020.

Fortunately, sales have begun to pick up. So hopefully that upward trend will continue, allowing Courtney to join her sister in going all in as they continue to innovate. [Music]

So if you're going to sell a handcrafted item on Etsy, it really helps to do something a bit different. In some other episodes, we've seen that it can just be a difference of branding in some cases. In other words, you're not the only one selling something, but you've found a different twist on it or a different way to market it.

In this case, it was a product that was pretty original, at least in the beginning until people came along to copy it. But fortunately, as you heard, they've been able to adapt to that and they're continuing to build customer loyalty, survive the impact of the coronavirus, and hopefully go on to keep having more of an impact of their own. Now here are some words of wisdom from Lindsay and Courtney, or perhaps I could say Ann and Joy. Their words of wisdom are, "Make sure you have enough stock in your inventory "for when you open up, "because if you're going to offer pieces made to order "as well, that can become stressful otherwise." So make sure you have enough stock in your inventory for the pre-made products. That way you can focus on the made to order when those begin to come in.

And they also say, "Be sure to have creative and beautiful photos "of your products, "because pictures are so important "to really promote the item." I try to mention that whenever I talk about Etsy, but it is a good reminder. Photos go a long way for something handcrafted, for something that is artistic or creative. All right, congrats to them. Of course you can check out their Etsy store on the show notes page. That page is at sidehustleschool.com/1254, 1254.

Listeners, thank you so much for joining me today. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Much more is coming up. Be sure you're subscribed. My name is Chris Guillebeau.

This is "Sidussle School." [Music]

From the Onward Project.