Internets and crafts

Gillian Mathias sews cowls to sell online.

Monika Warzecha

monika.warzecha@dal.ca

Gillian Mathias’ sewing machine – and the Internet – helped get her a motorcycle.

“My mom taught me to use an old vintage Singer sewing machine when I was a kid,” she says. “Everything else (I learned) has been through experimenting and reading online tutorials.”

Last winter, Mathias began sewing cowls, circular pieces of fabric worn around the neck.

Her specialty in making these alternatives to scarves became the basis of a side-project: an online shop called Pip Robins.

Mathias started up the shop in January, her sales peaking during the Christmas rush. Between November and December, Mathias sold roughly 200 cowls. With the money, Mathias bought a motorcycle.

Artists, designers and those who dabble in do-it-yourself are going online in the hope of turning their crafts into cash.

Mathias used Etsy, a website that features items for sale by artists, designers, crafters. The merchandise ranges from refinished furniture to handmade jewelry, ceramic cookie jars to hand-stitched notebooks.

Rob Kalin, Chris Maguire and Haim Schoppik started the site in June 2005 after noticing there weren’t any e-commerce websites devoted to selling arts and crafts.

The site’s popularity seems to have taken off. In 2009, Etsy sold about $88 million US in gross merchandise sales in 2008. In 2009, that number jumped up to $181 million.

The Brooklyn-based online market connects buyers with its 250,000 registered sellers worldwide.

Pip Robins has outfitted customers in Singapore, Holland and Finland as well as here in Halifax. Mathias believes being featured on the popular blog Dooce.com helped boost her profile and bring in sales. Dooce.com and its creator, Heather Armstrong, have been featured on Oprah and Good Morning America.

Gillian Mathias made enough money with her online business to buy a motorcyle.

Mathias also sells cowls in shops such as Love, Me boutique, which sells handmade products on Birmingham Street. A storeowner in Honsedale, PA. found Mathias through Etsy and now carries the cowls in her store, Bento.

Mathias says she thinks it’s wonderful to support local business and have her products sold in Love, Me, but likes the control that comes with showing her wares online.

“It helps with cowls to have some sort of model to showcase it, otherwise it’s just a piece of fabric on a table. The pictures I post are definitely helpful,” she says.

Mathias points out the significant difference in profit when she sells her items in stores.

“You lose about 50 per cent of your income when you sell to stores. And that’s a pretty big deal. When I sell to stores, I make about $10 a cowl. When I sell on Etsy, I make about 20.”

Etsy does come with fees. Though starting an account is free, selling is 20 cents US per item that is listed. And every time a shop makes a sale, Etsy collects 3.5 per cent off of the sales price.

Mathias says that she loses about a dollar a sale on Etsy fees, plus a dollar a sale for the fees associated with using Paypal for the online payment transactions. Paypal costs about 30 cents a transaction and takes a fee depending on how much the item sells: the higher the price of the item, the lower the percentage, and vice versa. Altogether, the fees take off 10 per cent on each sale Mathias makes.

Though online marketplaces can be more cost effective than their physical counterparts, starting a shop on Etsy doesn’t mean crafters can quit their day job. Mathias works full-time as an assistant manager at Nurtured, a parenting store on Robie Street.

“It’s definitely a supplementary kind of income for me,” says Stacey MacWilliam, who works for the Izaak Walton Killam Health Centre in early intervention for pre-schoolers with autism, and also has a shop on Etsy.

MacWilliam knits baby and toddler-sized mittens, scarves and hats for her store on Etsy, TippyToesKnits. She was able to devote more time to her store last year when she went on maternity leave.

“It makes for quite a busy life, but it’s nice to be able to do something with your hands,” she says.

MacWilliam made about 50 sales on Etsy from October to December. Both she and Mathias found the Christmas rush to be the most lucrative and difficult to manage as a one-person operation.

Mathias says during the season, she went to the post office nearly every day and rarely went to bed before midnight. And MacWilliam says the work was a lot to handle.

“You knit and you think your fingers are going to fall off.”

Mathias and MacWilliam both say that Etsy can be overwhelming at first and sellers need to differentiate themselves from the other shops online.

“You really need to market yourself and put a lot of effort into your shop,” says MacWilliam. She teams up with other sellers for special deals, has a blog and Facebook fan page, gives out business cards and posts them on bulletin boards around the city.

MacWilliam thinks Etsy’s popularity will lead to other online marketplaces springing up.

Geordan Moore, a freelance illustrator based in Halifax, had a shop on Etsy, but decided to switch to a new online sales site called Storenvy since it offers selling space for free.

Moore sold between 20 to 30 prints last year online. He says most of his orders come from the United States, though he has shipped artwork as far as Germany.

MacWilliam thinks online marketplaces demonstrate a change in the way people shop.

“I think with the trend of online shopping, people want to shop from the convenience of their homes – that’s a big push,” she says.

“But I think there’s also a big shift to buying handmade. People want to know that they’re buying things that are unique.”