Etsy Seller Interview with Jeanne of PikePoleProducts

How PikePoleProducts 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?

My name is Jeanne Williams, and I started Pike Pole Products in 2013. I was just finishing college, and my youngest son was graduating from high school. Going back to college had reignited a long-time dream of running my own business. My son, working hard to qualify for the local fire department, asked me one day if I would make him a wallet if he brought me a set of used firefighter gear. I searched the internet for ideas and inspiration and realized that what I was envisioning wasn’t out there. So I designed the wallet and then a utility holder out of the firehose and opened my shop.

Favorite items

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

My favorite product is my large duffle bag.

With the large bags, the duffle in particular, I get to work with people’s personal gear. Gear that they, their father’s, grandfather’s, or other family members wore as they fought fires. It is such an honor to work with the personal gear that people send in. Like a retiring father who sent in gear to have a bag made for his son, who was just hired on in the same department. Or making memory items from the gear of a firefighter who was killed while working a structure fire. The bags have a story before they ever leave my shop. Some of the gear I get is very old, smoke-stained, or patched. One group of firefighters sent in a batch of gear for bags to be made. "But this one particular coat," they said, "we used it when we went to help out at Ground Zero after 9/11. Can you use a piece of it on each of our bags?"

Another customer wrote to me that one day her five-year-old son was being very quiet, so she went looking for him. She found him curled up in his dad’s duffle bag, reading a book. When she asked him why he was in the bag, he said that it made him feel close to his dad to be in his gear bag. That he felt safe in it! It would be so much easier to purchase new fabric rather than cut apart seams and work around worn places, but then the bags wouldn’t have the history or impact that using decommissioned gear creates.

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?

My first sale came after three very long months. I tweaked my listings, changed my descriptions and titles, and searched for new key words, trying so hard to find that perfect formula that would attract customers. When the Etsy app sent off that first cha-ching, it was both thrilling and overwhelming.

Attracting people to my shop is a hard one for me. I love business. Marketing is my nemesis. I have a niche product for a relatively small segment of the population, and to tell hard-working, extremely courageous people why they should spend their well-earned cash on my products is not within my scope of talents. At first, I relied on Etsy’s search and advertising. I studied SEO and joined the Etsy teams that featured SEO so I could learn more. I ran sales and put ads on various firefighter websites. I tried social media, but I don’t like to talk, and my posts were too few and too irregular. Nothing was giving me the boost I was looking for. Sales were increasing, but at a very slow rate. I knew I needed to hire someone. All of the business advice says that if you can’t learn to do something, hire someone to do it. So while I was extremely skeptical, I hired my daughter-in-law’s social media marketing company. I told her that I had x amount of money and that I would hire her until it was gone. If the sales didn’t come in, I wouldn’t go into debt for this ‘experiment’. That was right before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and while nationwide stores and businesses were closing their doors, mine started to really gain ground for the first time. For my shop, consistent posts, getting my brand popping up weekly, and having regular interaction with followers were the methods that worked.

Managing PikePoleProducts

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?

While I do all the jobs from CEO to janitor in my shop—minus the marketing, of course—I have a wonderful team backing me up. My husband has an IT and graphic arts background. He and our son are the inspiration behind the majority of my products, and I never have to stress over a computer issue. My elderly mom moved in with us. While she can no longer see well enough to sew, she helps to deconstruct the gear that comes in. She will also help pack products for shipping or run the vacuum cleaner through the house when I am super busy. The Christmas season is the busiest time for Pike Pole Products, and during the holidays, my husband will step in and run the sewing machines for me.

I like to keep things simple—less is more! Quickbooks keeps all my income, expenses, and inventory tracked. An antique window, hanging in sight of my work table, serves as a whiteboard to track my orders. Last year, I finally designated a cabinet for a shipping station where I had everything in one place and within easy reach. I use Etsy shipping labels and took the time to fill out all my presets, so shipping is just a few simple clicks away. I love that Etsy shipping not only gives me comparable pricing to other shipping programs but also marks the orders as completed and sends my customers a notification and tracking numbers.

The future of PikePoleProducts 

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

This next year, I want to be more on top of the paperwork for the shop. It tends to get put off! I want to streamline some of my processes and designate time for new products instead of squeezing them in between orders. Custom orders are a great source for new products and I have several that are still in the think tank.

Advice for new sellers

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

When I started the shop, the task list was overwhelming. Color theme, branding, consistent look, searching out vendors, developing products, taking photos, writing compelling descriptions—you know the list! Putting my products out there for the world to see was very scary. It can take awhile to realize you aren’t really exposing yourself when you open a shop. The real struggle is to be found amid all the other shops. While being consumed with this new venture, you still have to juggle the normal things of life, like family, work, health scares, etc. I read two things that helped more than anything else. First, do at least one thing in your shop every day. Second, define your own success. Now, ten years later, I can look back at my shop, and I’m again overwhelmed, not with the task list but rather with what has been accomplished. One simple task at a time. Every time my shop reaches one of the goals that I set for it, I am successful. Not because I have reached somebody else’s defined x amount of sales or because I have x number of employees. My goals for success are simple and include things like having satisfied customers, buying gifts without needing to go into debt for Christmas, covering the monthly bills and putting some away, and enjoying my work day. I can enjoy my success now because I have defined it.

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

Question: What is your shop’s conversion rate?
Answer: 2.6%