How crokinolecanada 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?
Crokinole Canada started off as a small drop-ship operation for some beautifully handcrafted crokinole boards made in Nova Scotia, Canada. Crokinole is a Canadian game and invention that involves a bunch of people flicking round wooden discs towards a hole in the middle of a round or octagonal board. The goal is to get as many middles as possible while clearing your opponents' discs off the board. It's a simple board game that anyone from 5 to 110 can learn in about 2 minutes or less.They say it takes two minutes to learn and a lifetime to master. which makes it an enduring and fun Canadian tradition. Every year, Canadians and Americans gather around crokinole boards for simple pleasure during the Christmas holidays.
Crokinole Canada started selling on Etsy after developing their website, www.crokinole.ca. Etsy was an attractive partner for the business because they offered low entry-cost listings, free Google Shopping ads (at that time), and a wonderfully simplistic interface to create and market our products. Our handmade wooden products also fit well with the general landscape of Etsy, being niche creations from the shops of various farms and small businesses in Ontario, Canada. In fact, Crokinole Canada is working towards having all our crokinole game boards made in Canada. There is only one board we don’t make in Canada, but of the 12 or more models we sell, they are all made in Canada! It is appropriate for a game that was invented in Perth County, Ontario, to be locally sourced and sold worldwide. Many people still have yet to discover crokinole, and so we are excited to see where and how the media will help spread the word about this great game.
Favorite items
What are your favorite items? What makes these so special? Why do you think these items might be selling well?
My favorite listings in our shop are the Baltic Bircher crokinole board set and the Gold Standard crokinole board set. The reason I like these listings is because, for the Baltic Bircher, I was heavily involved in the planning and design of this game board. It has been wonderful to see many families just love the design and get this board for play and even to display on their wall!
The other product I like, the Gold Standard, is simply a fun board to play on. The reason for this is that there is plenty of room between the pegs to score your disc into the center hole. I find that customers give this product rave reviews because it is such a natural-looking board. It isn’t overly expensive, yet it is still made of real wood and has a quality construction. So I am very happy with the fact that customers are so pleased with it!
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?
I don’t think it took too long after starting my Etsy shop to get my first sale. Because crokinole is such a niche product, there weren’t many of these kinds of game boards listed on Etsy. There still are not many listed other than ours, and so it made it easy to get a sale. It isn’t an overcrowded market. Especially since Etsy was putting up Google Shopping ads at the time for people, this helped drive our sales up. A Google shopping ad will display a picture of your product and direct people to your Etsy store from Google. Other important facts are that we had good photography and well-developed listings with good descriptions and keywords throughout. And we are aiming for all our products to be of quality construction through and through!
Managing crokinolecanada
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?
Initially, I would list the products with my wife, and she would set up the shipping profiles. We started out in a small office space, which quickly became full of crokinole boards. Beside our office space, there was warehouse space that opened up. This warehouse space is now at maximum capacity with two portable school units at our homestead, which are also full of game boards.
Our peak season is around Christmas time. We spend the entire year gathering stock for the Christmas rush because our suppliers are small woodworking shops.
As for tools and apps that we use, we like using ShipStation to create our shipping labels. Orders from Etsy, Amazon, and our website are automatically synced into ShipStation, so no copying and pasting of mailing addresses is required. ShipStation also has a built-in rate comparison tool, which is useful. Overall, ShipStation is an efficient tool that has tremendously helped our order fulfillment process.
We also found good success in getting negotiated rates with UPS and Purolator. We partnered with a business next door that was already doing good shipping volume, and so we benefited from having a shared shipping account with them. We were still able to have our own shipping account numbers, and everything was billed separately. Finding business synergies can drastically improve your company's performance rather than having to learn everything on your own.The business we shared this account with also allowed us to use their truck bay to bring in product, and they still let us use it. It is a win-win as we have shared our workers with them as well. It is important to have a good pool of workers to draw from.
We like Etsy’s ability to set up multiple shipping profiles and apply them to different groups of products. For example, we sell small crokinole discs that have a profile designed specifically for them. This saves our customers money by having accurate shipping rates.
For Canadian sellers, we recommend utilizing Canada Post lettermail services for small, thin items. It is the most cost-effective way to send small items within Canada. Using lettermail services with Canada Post, you can save $8–15 CAD per shipment.
Rather than taping on paper shipping labels, it is worthwhile investing in a thermal printer like a Rollo printer to print labels with adhesive already on them. The Rollo printer is fast and cost-effective, and the thermal labels are inexpensive. I believe their new Rollo printer is wireless as well, which definitely helps for moving from one workspace to the next.
We also recommend having a fast computer, such as a newer Mac, to process the orders. one with lots of ram and speed. Your business can’t afford to have a slow computer with a slow internet connection in this day and age, where even the graphic design is done online.
We also recommend using Shopify for creating and selling on your own website. A domain name that is very closely related to what you sell is vital for good rankings on search engines like Google. You shouldn’t always choose a name that is trendy, but consider choosing a name that people will search for on Google. Google processes billions of shopping searches per day, so it makes sense to incorporate your top keywords into your business name. The name "Crokinole Canada," for example, is a direct search term that people will use when searching for a crokinole game board. What I don’t recommend is keyword stuffing and those kinds of practices, but instead, an intentional look at your customers' shopping behaviors and working with them. We also recommend using answerthepublic.com to discover what people are searching for in relation to your product. After harvesting the frequently asked questions compiled on answerthepublic.com, it is also critical to create a FAQ page. You must have detailed answers in your FAQ and quality information about your product in order to rank well on search engines.
The future of crokinolecanada
What goals do you have for your shop in the future?
One of our goals is to have all Canadian-made crokinole boards in the future. We are nearly there as we work on the design of one board we had originally made offshore. Another goal we have is to get all our crokinole disc listings on Etsy as well. We are introducing new shooting disc colors (see the colors here: https://bit.ly/3V5JUF6) and have so far found that they are really popular. Another goal would be to introduce wholesale accounts on our website. Etsy currently doesn’t have this as far as I know, but it may be worthwhile for them to consider offering a wholesale setup for hand-made creators. Because of technological advancements, many handcrafted creators are now able to mass produce. So from a business perspective, it would be beneficial to offer products to resellers through a wholesale option on Etsy.
Advice for new sellers
What’s your advice for a new seller starting an Etsy shop?
My advice would be to try a bunch of things to sell on Etsy, Amazon, and your website. You never know which item will sell the best. So it’s best to offer multiple startup products and then go with the ones that show signs of selling. My other advice would be to donate some of your proceeds to a worthwhile cause, whether it is poverty, hunger, child trafficking, etc. I think you will be blessed by God if you help those in need. Not to sound religious, but I recommend always praying and seeking God's help when running your business. Don’t try to do it all alone; find people who have different gifts and abilities and welcome them to work alongside you. You will find strength and motivation in a small but dedicated team. Always reward your workers or teammates well, and persevere and advance your business using helpful and innovative technology. If you continually develop new things, I think you will find joy in doing that. Enjoy what you do and make it your goal to help others, and you will find success in anything and everything you do.
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Crokinole Boards For Sale
