Etsy Seller Interview with Abby of CrueltyFreeStitchery

How CrueltyFreeStitchery 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?

When I was growing up, I would stay with my grandparents while my parents worked and went to school. One grandma taught me to sew, and the other taught me to crochet. I was always the weirdo in the back of the classroom with a basket of yarn or a haphazardly hand-embellished bag or shirt. In 2016, I was introduced to Etsy. Like most of us, I thought it would be a nice way to start making some extra income—or at least pay for my supplies. I had no clue what I was doing, didn’t take it seriously, and just listed a few afghans and scarves. Another long-term interest of mine has been environmentalism. I always hated the idea of using things once and throwing them away, and I came across reusable cotton rounds that you could wash and reuse for makeup remover instead of disposable ones. Plus, I always thought the disposable ones were too small anyway.

In true "crafty person" fashion, I decided to buy the materials and supplies to make my own instead of just buying some already made, which included a $200 serger sewing machine. It took weeks and several hundred tries to make a decent cotton round, but it worked! I still use those misshapen ones almost 5 years later. Thus, my Etsy shop was reborn! With nine different prints and colors of the reusable cotton rounds and a few other products like gift bags and cloth wipes, I started making a few orders a month and decided to focus on reusable products instead of crochet.

In 2019, I was invited to do my first craft show. I was so nervous and thought nobody would care about my stuff. Sometimes I’m glad to be wrong—I made quite a few sales and caught the eye of another vendor that wanted to order wholesale! That gave me the confidence to keep going and pursue my business full-time. I left my 9-to-5 job coincidentally (or luckily, depending on how you look at it) the day before the pandemic shutdowns in 2020. My plan to "sink or swim" got way more serious. Thankfully, I swam and have been doing cruelty-free stitchery full-time for exactly three years!

Now all of my products are reusable—all designed to replace something disposable and produced with as little waste as possible. My goal is to help people get started using less waste to help the environment and save money as well, so I go for bright or unusual prints to make the reusables more appealing and fun to use. I usually start a new product by finding materials first, then I design it around the materials so I can make sure there is virtually no waste (ex: I measure a piece of fabric, divide it evenly, and use that to make the product, versus designing a product with dimensions that may not match up with the fabric). Any scraps are then reused for other products, made into stuffing, or used for mending. Even when I’m not making a new type of product, I’m constantly searching for new, more sustainable materials—or secondhand or vintage materials. I phased out almost all synthetic materials last year and only use 100% recycled, recyclable, plastic-free, compostable mailers and shipping labels.

Favorite items

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

My favorites are the non-paper towels and spork pouches!

I use non-paper towels myself every day, and they really do help us avoid paper towels. Being able to roll them up like a regular paper towel is a plus! They are my best-selling product; customers say they love my print selection and appreciate the convenience factor. The Spork Pouches are a favorite, honestly, because they’re so cute and small! I’m the worst at remembering to bring my own utensils to avoid plastic ones, so they’re perfect to throw in a bag, car, or even a pocket. They don’t sell as well as I’d like on Etsy, but they do very well at in-person events.

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 opened my shop on Small Business Saturday (November 2016) and didn’t make a sale until February 2017. It was actually a custom order for a small crochet blanket. Truly an angel, getting a custom order from a stranger’s shop with 0 sales and 0 reviews. Sale number two didn’t come until August 2017!

The majority of my customers actually come from Etsy through recommendations and searches. I post on TikTok and Instagram, where I had a viral video in June 2022. That only boosted sales in the short term, so I can’t rely on trying to do it again. I promote my website on social media and let Etsy do its thing, but I also direct Etsy shoppers to my email list with a discount code for signing up.

Managing CrueltyFreeStitchery

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?

I do everything myself, from the second floor of our house. We moved a little over a year ago, and I was previously running the business out of my small bedroom. Now I have an office, a production room, and a half-bedroom I use for a stock room. Sometimes my husband will help pack orders if I get behind. Recently, I’ve switched to making all products ready-to-ship instead of to-order to streamline fulfillment (and appease Etsy with faster shipping times!).

Currently, I use a Google Sheet as my "hard copy" to track inventory counts of finished products and materials and Trunk to sync the inventory between my Etsy and Shopify (seriously, Trunk would’ve been a lifesaver to have before my viral video; it was impossible to manually keep up with stock between both, which resulted in lost sales.) When I make a new product, I’ll use either eRank or Alura for keyword research and Vela to bulk edit listings.

I also use AWeber to collect email addresses for my mailing list; it integrates with Etsy so I can put the emails into my Shopify list and have them all in the same place.

For shipping, I use Shipstation. It syncs Etsy and Shopify orders and lets me create a pick list, so I don’t have to go back and forth between filling the orders and packaging. I can put all of the products in a bin, take it to my table, and pack mailers from there. (My stock room isn’t big enough for a table, lol.) It was also beneficial when I was making things to order, so I could make products more efficiently when I knew exactly how many I needed.

If I get an international order, I use Pirate Ship. They have a feature called Simple Export Rate, which is much cheaper than USPS for sending smaller items to most countries.

My processing time is 1–3 days, and I usually go to the post office 3 times a week. I’m a night owl with ADHD, so it can be a scramble to get out the door and make it there before they close. To help with that, I started packing orders the night before. All I have to do is get up and go, instead of rushing to pack everything, realizing there’s a product that still needs to be made, seeing an international order that needs a customs form, having the printer jam, and then I don’t make it on time. I could schedule pickups with USPS, but it’s nice to get some fresh air, and it’s only a mile away.

The future of CrueltyFreeStitchery

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

My main goal is to start incorporating more creative products or things that challenge me a bit more. I’m learning dressmaking and tailoring, and I already have industrial machines, so perhaps a second shop? As far as this shop goes, I’m currently in the top 3% of all shops, so naturally, I want to get to the top 1% and be able to have a warehouse and employees. Even if that doesn’t happen soon, a shorter-term goal is to hire out a few tasks so I can spend more time creating.

Advice for new sellers

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

The biggest advice I have is to pick a niche with lots of room for more products, i.e., don’t be too narrow! The more listings you have, the more chances you have to be seen. Try to be a one-stop-shop for your niche so they choose you over someone else. (Think of how a grocery store has aisles of related products.)

Branding is important as well; you can stand out even in a super-saturated niche by having a good brand story, being recognizable, memorable, etc. Don’t be afraid to show your face in your profile picture and shop story photos. People come to Etsy for that personal touch.

My final advice is: don’t waste your money on Etsy ads when just starting out! Wait until you have a few dozen sales and a good, steady conversion rate of at least 1% (which means 1 sale per 100 views). That’s not a "rule," just a suggestion. The Etsy ads will guarantee you more impressions, but they do not guarantee clicks or sales. So if you have listings that don’t have any views and don’t sell on their own, there’s something wrong that’s keeping you from converting sales, whether that’s bad photos, keywords that aren’t good, or are inaccurate, shipping costs that are too high, etc. More traffic actually makes this worse and will make your conversion rate even lower, so identify and fix any issues before paying for ads.