Etsy Seller Interview with Lucy of COCOLEMONDESIGNS

How COCOLEMONDESIGNS got started

Introduce your Etsy shop and tell us your story. How did you begin and decide on what to sell on Etsy, and how do you create your products?

Hi, I am Lucy, and I run Coco Lemon Designs. We are a one-stop wedding stationery and personalized wedding gift store and have been open for 7 years now, 3 of which we have been selling on Etsy. Working as a clothing designer for high street stores gave me a design skill and eye for color palettes, as well as a creative outlet, for 5 years prior to starting my business. However, after a few years, I began to realize that working full-time wasn't necessarily where my heart was. (I had no idea that running a business required full-time work plus many extra hours.) 

In the lead-up to my own wedding, I realized how quickly costs can begin to mount. So I turned my hand to creating my own wedding stationery and on-the-day items. which started the passion for all things wedding! leading me to where I am today. However, when 2020 hit and all weddings got canceled, I started to channel my creativity into another passion of mine: travel. I was hunting for map artwork for my house and couldn't quite find exactly what I wanted. So once again, I thought. I would create this myself.

And I drew out an illustrative map of some travel destinations I have been to. This was the launch of my Etsy store! My illustrative map collection began to grow, and I still sell these today. But when weddings started to come back in 2021, I moved all my wedding stationery lines onto Etsy. And the shop took off to heights I couldn't imagine!

Favorite items

What are your favorite items? What makes these so special? Why do you think these items might be selling well?

My Dusky Rose Wedding Invites are a personal favorite design of mine and are very on trend for wedding color palettes next season! I enjoy using my fashion design background to work on color trends and future wedding theme forecasts to create new designs. I also enjoy the satisfaction of a complete set of invitations and knowing that they make a wedding day real! Once my customers have sent out their invites, the wedding is officially happening! To be a small part of that journey really brings me joy.

My robe bundles are an Etsy bestseller, and through bulk blank stock sourcing, I am able to keep this amazing bundle price and keep to my core ethics of creating bespoke items at reasonable prices!  I offer these in a variety of colors and bespoke designs, which makes for a product that can be suitable for lots of customers with different tastes and color preferences.

Getting sales on Etsy

How long did it take for you to earn your first sale and how do you currently attract customers to your Etsy shop?

My first Etsy sale took about a week to come in, and during lockdown when everyone was doing online work outs, I remember hearing that KACHING sound over the TV telling me to do 10 more star jumps! From then on, I began my campaign of shouting about my product over my social media pages and spent hours reading articles and watching advice videos on how to get your product to the top of the search pages. Since then, I still use social media platforms to advertise products, but I have learned more about key word indicators. Etsy ads and sights such as Alura help me grow and stay on top of everything.

Managing COCOLEMONDESIGNS

How do you manage your shop? Are you running solo or do you have any team members? What tools or services do you use to run your shop and how do you handle fulfillment?

Coco Lemon Designs is a husband and wife team's family business. With my husband Jack joining me around a year and a half ago, this is now both of our full-time jobs! That can sometimes be very stressful as we go through the ebbs and flows of the year, but we continue to learn and seek out new ways of pushing sales each time we are faced with a slow month. We use many websites and apps,  bring us key words and listing ratings, as well as stock and order management spreadsheets that Jack has created from scratch.

On the design side of things, I have 12 years of experience with Adobe Illustrator, and without it, I am not sure I could get through the day. Each part of my business process seems to find its way onto Illustrator, from initial designs to postage label prep. It is not the most conventional way to run certain parts of the business, but it is the program I know inside and out and where I feel most confident!

To sit alongside Adobe Illustrator, I import designs into Cricut Design Space to cut personalization before creating the products in real life. We offer free delivery on many of our items and use Royal Mail as a standard delivery service, buying all postage directly through Etsy. We each have our own office space within our home, and towards the end of last year, we had an outbuilding built in our garden with storage for blank stock and bulk packaging. This was an expensive outlay, but it will in time help us save on bulk ordering and make sure we can keep our prices competitive and our margins strong.

The future of COCOLEMONDESIGNS 

What goals do you have for your shop in the future?

We are currently aiming to grow our designs by 150% next year. starting with a soft launch of four new full stationery sets in January. Each set will contain all stationery, from save the dates to thank you cards. with everything you could possibly think you might need in between. We will then launch a further 12 in March! We are also planning on breaking down our bundles in the personalized gifts section to allow customers to shop individual items too. (This should hopefully in turn, offer a bigger variety for customers and help us grow through a very hard time with the country and the economy) 

Advice for new sellers

What’s your advice for a new seller starting an Etsy shop?

My main piece of advice for a new seller starting an Etsy shop is simply: Don’t give up." It will be hard work with long days and late nights, but if you have the passion and drive to keep going, it will happen eventually. It may not be within the first month or even year of launching your store. But if you keep going and pushing through the hard days, you will eventually have the ability to take control of how much or how little you want to grow your business. All while making products that you enjoy making! 

‍Some sellers really get inspired by hearing numbers. Feel free to share these if you like.

Question: How much is your monthly revenue?
Answer: Ranges from  £8000  to  £13000 (best Month)

Question: What is your shop’s conversion rate?
Answer: 4.3%