Etsy Seller Interview with Holly of LittleFlowerSoapCo

How LittleFlowerSoapCo 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 opened my Etsy Shop, The Little Flower Soap Co., in 2011 with just soap from an amazing heirloom recipe. Because my degree was in business management, it was on my mind to diversify our offerings and set ourselves apart from the MANY other soap sellers by adding lip balms, bath salts, and healing salves to our collection. We decided to only make things we would use ourselves on a daily or weekly basis. My husband Justin used his background in chemistry to help develop incredible recipes for everything, and I focused on developing beautiful packaging.

Favorite items

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

Since the beginning, our most popular item has been this Spa Gift Box of our original five products. We believe it sells as well as it does because it’s a universally useful and loveable gift that makes sense to give to anyone who could use some self-care. The bonus is that after people receive this as a gift, they often return to buy more soap, lip balm, or muscle rescue balm for daily use.

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 3 weeks to make our first sale, and then we received about 1 a month for the first 3 months (February, March, and April 2011). By May, we were getting 1 a week, and by November, we were getting 7–10 a week. During this first year, the majority of our sales were at craft fairs. After that, our sales began to double each year for a while.

Managing LittleFlowerSoapCo

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 have a team of 8 full-time employees that run the Etsy shop, Amazon handmade shop, website, Faire.com wholesale site, our own wholesale site, and a retail shop in our barn-turned studio. Our favourite tool is Shipstation, which imports all the orders from every website listed above and allows us to create batches of labels in one place.

The future of LittleFlowerSoapCo

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

We want to keep creating great things and making better versions of the bath and body items that are already out there. We take inspiration from a trending product like face cleanser with grapeseed oil but then make our own version superior to the ones we see already on the market. Specifically, we expect our products to smell amazing, work exceptionally well, and be packaged tastefully.

Advice for new sellers

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

You may hear some people say that Etsy is saturated," but we believe that if you are making a version of something that is the best in its category, it doesn’t matter that you have 500,000 competitors because cream rises to the top. Focus on offering the BEST version available of whatever your specialty is. It helps to also have the best photography and listing descriptions, of course, but we notice growth when we invest more of our time in new product research and development than when we spend it on search engine optimisation.

Some sellers really get inspired by hearing numbers. Feel free to share these if you like.

Question: How much is your monthly revenue?
Answer: In 2020, it averaged 40,000/mo.

Question: What is your average profit margin?
Answer: We never sell anything for less than a 50% profit margin, but many items are closer to 80%.