I'm Rearranging my Stuff!

My second anniversary with Etsy is coming up. On December 8th I will have been selling online for 2 years. I guess that still makes me a relative newcomer, but I seem to be starting some traditions already.

Last year on my anniversary, I went nuts! I opened 2 additional Etsy Shops and joined up at ArtFire. Overnight I went from running one store to four. Why? The main reason was that my store was just so crowded. I was up to more than 20 pages of listings and it was getting ridiculous every time I needed to manage my products, I had to scroll through page after page. If I didn't enjoy it, how could I expect my customers to search through all of my work.

I dye so many different kinds of fiber, I knew I had enough there to support a pure fiber shop. That's what I did and I took my yarn and made a specialty shop just for art yarn. I placed all of my handmade goods into a boutique. I loved how organized I was able to become, but I didn't like having to handle so many accounts to make it happen.

Not long after I had my three Etsy locations sorted, I signed up with ArtFire. Many of my creative friends were singing the praises of this new venue and there is just something fun about being part of a ground breaking. It's exciting. I also really love the philosophy there. These are my own words, but they really seem to believe that what is good for the handmade movement, will be good for ArtFire. It's not just about building ArtFire as a business, but there is a real focus on supporting the artists that I respect and admire. Best of all, I can have as many categories in my shop as I want to! This may seem like a small detail, but when you are a bigger shop, it makes all the difference in the world.

So now here I am a year later and I'm changing things up again. With ArtFire as the happy home to my handmade and an ever growing supply of roving, I went ahead and closed my boutique and I'm getting ready to close my Art Yarn Shop. I struggled with where to put my handspun yarn, but in the end, I chose Etsy. I'm sentimental towards my Etsy store. It's my home and where I got started.

I think that there is enough in common between yarn and roving for them to live in harmony. Plus, when I feature a new yarn, I can also feature the fiber I used to create it. I like that you can share the story of a skein from ecru to dyed to finished handspun yarn. That's why I decided to name my new yarn section Hand Crafted Yarn. It's so much more than just spinning. It's washing and dyeing and carding and in some cases, beading or felting. There is so much that goes into the finished product.

So now I'm getting down to a more manageable two stores. Everything has a home and it still feels organized. I'd like to think that I'll keep it this way from now on, but you never know what the future will bring. I think it's good to stay flexible, maybe not too flexible. LOL! :D