Etsy Seller Interview with Robert of TimeFramedStore

How TimeFramedStore 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 was working as a graphic designer in Cambridge when my wife told me about someone who was making quite an income with her Etsy shop, so I started to think about how to create gifts by merely printing stuff on paper. I’ve seen how custom star maps became a thing. I liked the general idea, and it was in line with my interest in astrology, but I didn’t like how these star maps are difficult to interpret. So I came up with a custom print showing the planets of the solar system on a given date instead of a bunch of stars. It looks like I wasn’t alone, because it quickly became a bestseller on Etsy, and I spent hours every day next to work to create the designs. Fortunately, we had the advantage of being the first to come up with this idea.

Favorite items

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

We’ve experimented with a lot of ideas, but the solar system print is currently the only kind of item we sell in our shop, so it’s an obvious favorite. It’s personal and relevant in all seasons, and I hope it gives people a sense of perspective about us being just a tiny speck in our solar system.

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 only a day or two till orders started coming in; we were shocked at how quickly it started out. Nowadays, we’re doing a lot of discount offers to attract people. It’s become increasingly difficult to sell gifts since the war started.

Managing TimeFramedStore

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 used to create custom designs manually in Photoshop and get a local printer to print them and post them. Because of the demand for these solar system prints, I wanted to automate the customization process, so we’ve got a custom web app developed that generates the artwork for us. This allowed us to decrease the price of the prints massively because it reduced the time it takes us to fulfill orders. However, it took us more than half a year of work with a development team involved to ship the artwork generator, so it was quite a ride.

The future of TimeFramedStore

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

We’re hoping that the economy will normalize soon, and then we can start planning ahead on how to develop new items or enhance the current ones.

Advice for new sellers

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

Throw new ideas at the wall and see what sticks. Then, if something does, stick with it and focus on it. Make those ideas happen first that you feel most excited about. Also, don’t skimp on the listing images. Your product might be great, but without tasteful representation, it’s going to be hard to make a sale.