Etsy Seller Interview with Adam of FantasyWireShop

How FantasyWireShop 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 there, I’m Adam Wight from FantasyWire. We started the company over 10 years ago, when my father's hobby of wire sculpture massively grew in popularity on social media. Robin creates life-sized wire sculptures of fairies. It got to the stage where he could no longer work on a commission basis because there were far too many requests, and it became impossible to keep up. This spawned the idea of a craft kit to create your own wire fairy.

We thought well, if we can’t create sculptures for everyone, then we can teach people to do it themselves, so we provided all the wire, tools, a skeleton, and instructions for a craft and mentioned them on Facebook. This took off, and this is when I got involved. I started making the skeletons in my spare time around my previous job to help meet the demand, and when it got to the point where I left my job and worked on them full time, It has gone from strength to strength, and we now employ a total of 9 people.

We couldn’t just keep selling these via social media and email, so I discovered Etsy, created our shop in 2016, and have been selling on Etsy ever since.

Favorite items

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

My favourite item has to be our original 8” craft kit

This is where it all started and remains one of our best sellers. I think these sell so well because wire crafting is a hobby that is very cheap to get into; you literally only really need some wire and some pliers. You don’t need lots of additional equipment or any experience. Anyone can do it, and it's addictive to create your own art.

Another one of our best sellers is our Fairy Wishes, which are individual wire dandelion seeds. These are such a popular git idea and can be used as an add-on to our craft kits, so they sell really well.

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?

We were quite lucky; as I mentioned before, we were already selling via social media and email before I created the Etsy shop, so we were able to direct our quite large following straight to our Etsy shop. So our first sale was instant.

We still use social media to direct our customers to the Etsy shop, along with Etsy ads, which we find work great.

Managing FantasyWireShop

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 have an employee who, along with myself, manages our online shops. We print all of our order receipts ⅔ times a week and package them all up, ready for shipping. We currently have an account with DPD, which collects our orders ⅔ times a week and ships them all over the world. We have used most courier companies in the past, but DPD is definitely the most reliable.

The future of FantasyWireShop

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

We want to continue to grow our shop and product line. We are working on more products that we don't have to physically produce by hand. Instead, we design and manufacture them externally, as this is much more efficient when selling in larger volumes.

Advice for new sellers

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

My advice would be to get to know Etsy well and really use all of its features. Spend time on your product description, photos, etc. because these are what sell your products. You know how good your products are, so you need to communicate that to your customers.

Also, get your price points right and check on what fees are deducted from sales to be sure you are making the profit that you want for your products.

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 average around £5,000 a month on Etsy

Question: What is your average profit margin?
Answer: We are around a 30-40% profit margin

Question: What is your shop’s conversion rate?
Answer: On average we have a conversion rate of 1.2%