Etsy Seller Interview with Aviva of Sieberdesigns

How Sieberdesigns 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 Aviva Sieber, and I am the owner and designer at SieberDesigns. I create full-time in my home studio in Northampton, MA. I have been designing and quilting for over twenty-five years, starting out just as a quilter but then expanding into purses, accessories, and organizational items. Now, after years of selling, I have found that selling the "big stuff," e.g., large quilts that take tons of time and cost a lot of money, won’t sustain me and that selling the smaller, more useful products is what keeps me going as a small business. My quilted line of table decor still does well (placemats, table runners, and coasters), and over the years I have expanded my line to include bags, zipper pouches and wristlets, organizer boxes, and decorative bowls.

I pride myself on each item being one-of-a-kind. While you may find two items that look similar, have the same colors, shapes, sizes, or even fabric choices, you would be hard-pressed to find two that are exactly alike. Often I will use a different fabric for the backing or binding on a quilted piece, or a different color thread to quilt it. If you were to come into my studio, you would find small bins full of my yardage organized by color or theme, and then huge bins categorized similarly but FULL of scraps. Those scraps are what give my work the look of my signature style, which you will find on the majority of my work and which makes it so recognizable.

In recent years, I have been collaborating with my husband, Mark, who is a fine artist, to create limited-edition, exclusive pieces. These exclusives are a combination of Mark’s watercolor paintings transferred to fabric and my fiber art designs. Each line is a short run of just a few items from each painting, and each piece that is made is unique and one-of-a-kind.

Favorite items

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

My favorite items these days are definitely from my exclusive line. I truly love working with my husband, picking out the six paintings that we want to use for each of our lines (we have been doing three or four launches a year of 30 organizers and usually some coasters or another item that inspires me).

The exclusive lines sell well, and often we sell out before we have another line ready. Some of my customers collect organizers with their favorite paintings on them, and others buy the newest designs for each of their friends! It has been a great success since we launched them a couple of years ago, and I hope to continue the line as long as I can keep my husband painting.

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?

Before I began selling at all, I had the plan to create enough products to at least "fill" my shop. I believe I had over 50 items ready before I actually launched my shop in late June or early July 2008. I had my first sale (and second) within a week! I couldn’t believe it. Things didn’t go like lightning after that, and I still have days and weeks without sales. Other times, I have more than one in a day and several in a week. I am not a mass producer, and with everything being an original piece, it takes time. I just remember to do a happy dance each and every time my phone and/or iPad make that lovely "Cha-ching" sound.

Currently, I use social media to engage with my customers. I had a plan for 2022 to help me keep posting on social media. I started a temperature quilt—making a quilt that represents the highs and lows of temperatures for an entire year. While the posts about the quilt got a bit stale, it did get me to post almost daily, and I did finish the quilt. I enjoyed it so much that I am doing another one for 2023 and posting about that about every 4 days, and I am continuing to do my best to keep up with daily posts as well.

I do not pay for Etsy advertising, but I appreciate that they do it for me and don’t feel bad when they take that added percentage that they do when I get that extra sale. In fact, most of those sales turn into repeat customers, and since I have not had luck with my own advertising (spent lots of money to no avail), I would rather they spend the money and I get the occasional sale and pay that percentage when it comes through.

Managing Sieberdesigns 

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 am a one-woman show here. I do all my sewing from start to finish, photography, photo editing, listings, bookkeeping, and taxes! My husband does help me when we do shows (which we still do a few a year), and he also built my studio and rebuilt it over and over each time I decided I needed something new or wanted a change. To run my store, I don’t use any apps, but to keep my bookkeeping organized, I do use Quickbooks. I used to use a spreadsheet, but after years of keeping so much paper, I was so happy to move to a more digital world. I have found that my best tool is a lightbox with my iPhone 13, which makes it so that really I just need to crop the photos and list the items.

The future of Sieberdesigns 

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

So 2021 was my best year in sales, but 2022 was better in terms of sales, and I almost made it to my 2021 sales. I had attributed my 2021 sales to the pandemic, but with 2022 staying pretty strong, I am hoping that 2023 can continue on that trend. I know that things are harder in our country or world, so I am staying hopeful, but I also know that each year is new and different, and I have to stay the course and be ready to pivot and see where things take me.

This year I started a "work journal." Each day before I leave the studio, I write down my goals for the next day. In the morning, I begin listing the accomplishments I make throughout the day. At the end of the day, I list the total inventory I added and the amount of money that inventory will bring in. I also have a section for the total number of items sold that day and the total amount of money made that day. The first page of the journal shows last year's monthly income on Etsy and so far what I've made on Etsy each month this year. I plan to continue this comparison and hope to do better in 2023.

The idea of the journal is ultimately to see how much inventory I am adding each day, week, or month and compare it to last year (once I have that information) and also to compare my month-to-month sales. While I can just look at all of those sales numbers online on Etsy, having those daily, weekly, and monthly goals will push me each week and month as I progress year over year, which is what I personally find most helpful.

Advice for new sellers

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

I have three pieces of advice, but the third is part of the first and second:

1. Make sure to respond to your customers in a timely and polite manner. You don’t need to respond in 5 minutes, but if you know that you might not be able to respond in 8 hours (you might have another job that keeps you from your shop), have an auto-reply set up and be sure that you check your messages every day on your lunch break and when you get home.
2. Ship your packages on time! If you know that you aren’t going to ship within 5 days, have your shipping set for 5-7 days. Don’t get yourself into a bind! My shipping is set to 1-3 days, and 99.9% of the time I send out packages by the next day. However, I have it set to 1-3 days in case I am sick or if an emergency comes up and I just need that extra time. (I am not talking about setting up the label five days in and then not shipping for ten days either! Your customers will NOT like that, and you could get a bad review for that kind of behavior. Always give yourself that extra time so your customer isn’t expecting your package to go out earlier than you get it out.
3. Customer service matters, ESPECIALLY ONLINE!