Defining my niche
Confusing brand: Two tarot boxes and two earring listings. What do they have in common?
Most succesful Etsy shops have a specific niche that they cultivate. It can be a product category such as jewelry or clothing. Some specialize in a material or manufacturing process, e.g. laser-cut wooden products or things made out of resin. Still others sell a wide range of products but they cultivate a specific audience such as art deco lovers or gamers.
My store currently sells three product categories and caters to two audiences.
Cards for mainstream audiences - top seller so far
Cards for Pagans
Earrings for mainstream audiences
Boxes for Pagans
To build a brand, I need to bring some sort of order to this mishmash. There are a couple of different options I could pursue.
Papercrafts for mainstream audiences
I could build a brand around cards, stationery and paper jewelry aimed at mainstream audiences. This is appealing because so far my cards for mainstream audiences have sold the best. This is still a very broad category, with lots of room for growth.
The drawback is that individual paper items are relatively inexpensive, so the profit margin isn’t fantastic. While I love papercrafting, a mainstream audience may be harder to connect with on an emotional level.
Crafts for Pagan and adjacent audiences
Rather than restrict myself to a specific type of craft, I could build a brand for a specific audience. This would give me freedom to pursue lots of different crafts, including those that have higher profit margins. On the other hand, I’ve not had much commercial success in this effort so far. That could be because of my confusing brand, though.
There are also esoteric brick-and-mortar stores that I could contract with to sell my wares, either wholesale or on commission. Being Pagan myself, my heart is leaning in this direction
One brand or two?
I could choose one of the two options, or I could open a second Etsy store and try to build two brands. I would need another domain and web site as well.
Running two Etsy stores is more work than just running one. E.g. you can’t be logged in to two Etsy accounts at the same time in one browser. So I would need to run one store in Chrome and another in Safari or Firefox. Etsy, the company, doesn’t mind that people have more than one store. They just haven’t made it easy.
I don’t have an answer right now. It’s a dilemma and I need to make a decision one way or another soon. Right now my brand is confusing. 🤔 I welcome any feedback you may have.
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