Etsy Seller Interview with Elizabeth of ElizabethHarbour

How ElizabethHarbour 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 started making artworks - drawing and paintings - from a very young age. I attended the local art school - Maidstone College of Art in Kent UK – and after that the Royal College of Art in London. I won several national competitions for my work. I was very active in the illustration of children’s picture books and also made my own prints. I continued doing illustration and prints right through the time I was bringing up my two children. I worked to commission and sold my work directly at markets and other art events. It was very important to me that I brought up my children myself and working from home made sure I was always around. The products that are now on sale on Etsy are really just a development of the work I was doing before I started selling online. The start of the wooden hanging decorations was a small range that were completely individually hand painted. As I had been a successful illustrator where everything I did was made for printed reproduction, it seemed that if I wanted products that had the quality and individuality of that work then to design for print was the way forward.

The only difference was that I would be in charge of what I designed and would also be working closely with the print process myself with no middle man. All the designs in the current range - that numbers almost 200 now - originated as hand drawn and painted artworks. They each go through a long design and prototyping process. I am very conscious that the designs have to be absolutely right. Each has the benefit of my huge experience as an artist over many years. The drawing, the colour and silhouette involves a huge amount of time and thought. The subject matter is also very carefully worked out and considered. High quality design is no more expensive than poor quality design. I want to design things that are kept and treasured as the very best they can be.

Favorite items

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

There are no particular favourites, some are more popular than others, but the point of building up a coherent range is to give customers choice. The favourite thing to mention is what a pleasure it is to see my designs in other people’s home environments. They fit in both modern and traditional surroundings. Good design lifts people’s spirits. Customers tell me that they use the decorations throughout the year and that they make lovely gifts. They often say how surprised they are at the very high quality and of the detail in them.

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?

Sales came on the very first day I put up my Etsy shop. I am on Instagram and have thousands of followers. I don’t like to post on Instagram only to bring people to my shop. I rather like to show examples of other things that interest me or that I find beautiful. There is no significant division between my art and my life. Some customers may feel that by buying my designs they can also share some of that life style.

Managing ElizabethHarbour

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?

All the work in my shop is my own design and comes from my own ideas. I take inspiration from all sorts of English art. There is some new interpretation from old vernacular designs but I never copy the work of other artists. I am helped by my husband Llewellyn who is also a professional artist of great experience. We have been creative collaborators for a very long time and our house is full of the collections of paintings, original prints and objects that we have put together since we set up our first home. We discuss ideas for new additions to the range and test them out in our own environment to see how well they work. I am a slow maker and hand making is very important to me. Everything in my shop is made in England.

The printing process that is essential to enable the products to be made at high quality and to the large numbers that are required means that the handmade designs do have to be translated into a digital file. Llewellyn looks after this side of my business. It is not a question of him just clicking buttons - there is a huge amount of skill to ensure there is a genuine hand rendered quality to the final output. They are as close to a handmade product as it is possible to achieve to the price point and to the numbers required. My business could not exist without Llewellyn. On occasion some designs have emerged in a finished state ready to sell only after a full year of work.

The future of ElizabethHarbour

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

The products in my shop very much represent the cutting edge of the technology that is available to make the items I design. It would not have been possible only a short time ago to do what I am doing. There is really no end to the ideas I have for building up the range. The goal for the shop has always been to make things that people will love and keep forever. They are all future antiques. It has taken a full four years to get to the situation the shop now enjoys with nearly 17,000 sales. I am only now enjoying the benefit of this huge investment of time and of course money.

Advice for new sellers

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

Etsy is full of very good ideas and practical skills that new sellers should read and act on as the build their shop. But just as the longest walk starts with a single step, your shop will start just as mine did with just one item. It does take courage to take that first step but there is no point in holding back because you think what you are selling is not good enough.

We all buy things online, and we all have good and not so good experiences when we do so. Use these experiences as you build your confidence as a seller in your own shop. You will never be an Amazon but you can make sure your orders get to the customers as quickly as they can – and safely. If there are any problems with the progress of an order then make sure you communicate quickly and helpfully with your customer. When customers know they can communicate directly with the person who will be collecting and packing their order it makes the experience of shopping from you much more engaging. There will always be a tiny number of parcels that somehow don’t get delivered, but if you communicate with your customer you can easily remedy that issue that was outside your control. My customers know that they will get really nice items quickly and safely – whatever – and I get many returning customers buying large and larger quantities of my designs.