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How DIYCraftBlanks 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?
I’m Michael Boltz, and with the guidance of my wife Suzette, We started Creations 101 as a hobby business with the goal of earning $1,000 to $2,000 a month when we retired. Our first Etsy shop was Mug Doodles (www.mugdoodles.com). We started selling sublimated coffee mugs on our first Etsy shop (which we closed at the end of 2022). Mug Doodles Stats: Opened almost 7 years ago. With just over 14,000 sales when we closed it at the end of 2022, it averaged 5.67 sales per day and was ranked 4,498th in Sales Rank globally and 2,880th nationally. We closed it to allow us to focus more of our energy and attention on the Etsy shops that are now our primary earners. It's hard to imagine closing a store.
With the income generated from Mug Doodles, we purchased our first laser and started our second Etsy shop, Twisted Crafters (www.twistedcrafters.com). Twisted Crafters is almost 6 years old, has almost 28,000 sales, and averages 13 sales a day with 175 active listings. It’s ranked 1,486th globally and 967th nationally for sales. Some local friends within the crafting world were asking us to cut acrylic craft blanks on the laser we use on Twisted. As we created blanks for them, they were asked where they got them from by their friends, and word spread quickly. We started DIY Craft Supplies (now DIY Craft Blanks) in 2018 and have been continually amazed by its growth. DIY Craft Blanks is almost 5 years old and has almost 46,000 sales with 943 active listings. It averages 25.3 sales per day and is ranked as the 639th best site for sales globally and the 416th best in sales volume within the US. While we do add a few designs to our blank collection on our own, most of the designs come from requests from our customers!
Originally, we operated it as an entirely family business, running it out of our house. We very quickly outgrew the house and had a pole barn built next to it to run the business out of. We outgrew that within 2 years and are now located in a brick-and-mortar location in downtown Hartford, WI. Our knowledge of computers, crafting, and lasers has helped us streamline production, and we have earned a good reputation for our packaging and speed of processing orders. We purchase blank material in bulk and cut the designs on one of our four lasers.
Favorite items
What are your favorite items? What makes these so special? Why do you think these items might be selling well?
I’m not sure that I have any actual favourites within the DIY Craft Blanks line-up! It’s fun to see what our customers do to decorate all of them! Over the years, we’ve continued to add products to expand from just keychains and badge reels to wedding and party signs.
And of course, our newest product, badge buddies,
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?
It took us a few weeks or so to get our first sale on Etsy for DIYCB. Luckily for us, we’ve done very well with just our customers spreading the word for us. We have a Facebook group page that has just over 1,000 members, and one of my biggest regrets is shutting down our old group with over 5,000 members when we rebranded to DIY Craft Blanks from DIY Craft Supplies in mid-2022. We’re currently looking into starting our first real paid advertisement campaign by reinvesting at least 10% of all of our sales revenue into the advertisements.
Managing DIYCraftBlanks
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?
We’ve had as many as four employees working for us at one time. We had our own "A-Team—Allie, Ava, Abbie, and Heather—working for us. We hated to see them go, but we’re down to just one at the moment—Abby, our ace shipping clerk, has been with us for almost a year. We’re looking for additional talent in the local area to assist us, as well as graphic artists to work with us on an ongoing basis to create new designs.
At the beginning of 2022, we invested heavily in new computer systems (a new server, a raid storage array, a firewall, etc.), as well as hiring two contract programmers to help us automate our daily tasks. What we originally had two employees doing almost all day is now done by the computer in just a few minutes!
Apps? We originally navigated from Etsy’s shipping to XPS Ship and moved onto ShipStation a few years ago. We now rely on Shipstation for all of our shipping needs. Another tool we use on a fairly regular basis is ERank. ERank is fantastic for helping us work not only on our own listings but also for getting an insight into our competition.
At the start of 2023, we began creating a "dashboard" that reads all of the data exports (CSV files) that Etsy provides and gives us a very detailed look at all of the fees and information available to us. It was a real eye-opener when we realised how much of our income is derived from a very small percentage of our customers. It is our hope to actually be able to share that dashboard with our Facebook group members when it is completed.
The future of DIYCraftBlanks
What goals do you have for your shop in the future?
I’m an avid fisherman. My continual goal for the business is to make it so that I have to say, Geez, honey. I’m kind of tired of fishing. Do I have to go out today?" Seriously, I’d like to get our staffing back up so that I’m not as necessary to the daily operation of the business as I am currently. We’ve long since reached our original goal on earnings. Now we need to make it so that we are staffed with the appropriate talent that my wife and I are not required to be here for the business to continue thriving. An occasional vacation would be nice.
We’re finally getting around to opening our own website away from Etsy, and we will continue to operate our Etsy shop in conjunction with the new website. Once the new website is open to the public, we’ll begin advertising to continue growing the company!
Advice for new sellers
What’s your advice for a new seller starting an Etsy shop?
There are many people out there who say that Etsy is expensive. We don’t feel that way at all. It costs five cents a month to have a single listing in your shop. The additional fees are added only when the listing is sold. Track all of the materials (and fees) that go into selling your product and set your pricing to cover those as well as a profit for yourself.
If possible, continue adding products to your shop. It takes a little while to get a good footing with Etsy, but once you accomplish it, it's easy to keep it going, and it just gets better. If Etsy is expensive for what you’re selling, you’re either pricing it wrong or not finding the best source for your materials!
Deliver the best support you can to your customers: quick responses, fast shipments, and if needed, great service AFTER the sale. Do your absolute best to build an actual relationship with your customers. A great deal of our communication with our customers is based around a sense of humour. We have a team of "dwarves" that do everything for us. We have a particular dwarf that used to polish the crown of the Queen. We get a lot of feedback on our email notifications, with quite a few customers stating that the emails alone are worth ordering from us for.
When possible, give back to the community. We’ve done our best to assist local business owners in getting set up on Etsy and don’t mind helping others with almost any aspect of selling on Etsy.
Some sellers really get inspired by hearing numbers. Feel free to share these if you like.
Question: How much is your monthly revenue?
Answer: We have averaged a little more than $250,000 a year in sales for the past 3 years. Our growth is currently at 14% year over year. With the new additions to our product line planned for 2023 and 2024, we plan on doubling the annual revenue without any increase in hardware.
Question: What is your average profit margin?
Answer: Our average profit margin is classified by our crack team of dwarf accountants. While some of our products allow us to not quite double our base cost, we earn at least a 7x markup on our primary products.
Question: What is your shop’s conversion rate?
Answer: Our conversion rate is currently at 4.5%, with a lifetime average of 4.9%. Use that relationship with your customers to the best of your ability. Almost 70% of our annual income comes from just under 30% of our customers! In our experience, the relationships you build
