A vintage seller dying to sell on icraft!

[Erin Brennan]

The title pretty much says it all, but I was brought here over from a very big site that seems to be going through A LOT of negative change lately *cough e*** cough*

Anyways, I am Canadian and love almost everything about icraft, the problem is I sell vintage jewelry. When oh when will vintage be a sectionon here. I'm very nervous with all the changes happening on the other site where my shop is and it's very hard to find decent, nicely laid out sites that help us vintage sellers!

Is there at least ANY inkling that vintage may be a sectionhere in the future (pretty please with sugar on top)??

[iCraft Admin]

Hi Erin,

Glad to hear you like our site. We've had numerous discussions about Vintage and Supplies, and even Handmade Food before, as people who sell on Etsy or Artfire expect to see the same categories here on iCraft.

We'd like to expand into those markets too, but without losing focus on Handmade here on iCraft.

So one of the ideas we had is to give those who sell Vintage a separate site with it's own look and feel, but with the same features as iCraft and a single login to both.
This would allow us to focus our marketing efforts on a particular niche - vintage, handmade, supplies etc., making it easier to drive targeted traffic to each site. And we could still do cross-promotion between the sites.
At the same time those who sell a variety of things could segment their products using different stores on different sites. I've heard before that sellers on Etsy are not always happy with seeing dog food beside their expensive jewelry. So we are not sure it's a good move for us to mix handmade with vintage or supplies.

We have not decided yet on the approach. Would love to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks!

[Erin Brennan]

What a great idea to segregate the two or three different shop styles! I definitely think that is smart. Like you say it will help give those other vendors an option to still come by and add to the reputation of icraft while also bringing you into the same market as other sites like Etsy as well. It will also be good to help keep icraft the way it is for those handmade artisans here who are content with the way this site functions already. You could somehow link all the sites together with widgets so a person only has to click on one of these on say, the vintage website, and they are transferred over then to the adjacent supplies site, crafts site, etc. What about just tying them in through name as well? I have no idea what the process to secure a domain name is like but it would be interesting (and easier for the new users/buyers) if there was an icraft, ivintage, and isupplies. Or something like that.

Anyways, as I'm sure you can tell by my enthusiasm, I would definitely sign up to any vintage site that icraft set up. I could pretty much guarantee with all the unwelcome changes on Etsy, if it leaked onto their forums that this was available to vintage sellers there would be quite a few willing to transfer over here!

And thanks for getting back to me so quickly.

[iCraft Admin]

Hi Erin,

Yes, we thought about similar names for all sites too. (Great minds think alike )Though it’s hard to get .com domains now with good names. We didn’t want to use .ca domain only this time. Ideally, we should get both .ca and .com domains.

Here are some domains that we’ve purchased already. But we are obviously not done with deciding on the name yet. We’d need to find something that would speak to buyers and sellers of vintage items.
ivintage.ca
vintagedig.com
vintagemine.com
seriouslyvintage.com

They all redirect to our own page listing vintage inspired handmade gifts for now.
Any suggestions for the name are welcome! 

I guess here are the things we’d need to seriously pursue this option.

• Decide on the name and secure the domain name.
• Find a small group of vintage sellers to work with us (at least 10-20) on site design and testing. If you know some sellers on Etsy, that’s great. There are a few people on iCraft who sell vintage too. I am sure they’ll be interested in this offer, especially if we’ll give promotional accounts to those who help us build the new site from the ground up.
• Create a list of Categories that will work well for vintage products.
• Find out about the preferences in design and look and feel.
• List required, desired or nice to have features
• Figure out the Pricing model… (Btw, we are still deciding on iCraft’s pricing)

I am curious what “unwelcome changes on Etsy” you are referring to. Thanks!

[Craft Boutique]

I've also seen posts on Etsy about  three groups of sellers (handmade, vintage and supplies) that are not getting along under one roof.

I am afraid that handmade items would get lost very quickly in the sea of vintage and supplies. We just can't compete with those shops, as we have small quantities of products. I think other marketplaces, like vintage and supplies, would benefit each other, if properly connected, but I would not mix all together. Just my two cents.

[SarahMars]

Yes, vintage has been discussed many times here on forums. I wonder if there are more people selling vintage than handmade? Is it a big market? I personally like both and would buy both.

[Fairy Cardmaker]

I like the idea of linking without merging the three styles of shops (handmade, vintage, supplies).
Just for fun, I like the name "vintagelife".  I think of buying vintage as a lifestyle choice more than just a style choice.  Just me.  I don't follow the vintage scene myself though.

[Erin Brennan]

Admin – I imagine the domain names and process can be a difficult one for sure! I love to hear that you are actually in the process of having a vintage site too. Knowing that the domains are there and waiting makes me very happy. As soon as you get any one up I will be hopping on board. 

And I personally quite like the .ca domain but then again I can see the other side of the coin and how it could be difficult for new international buyers to find since .com is the typical sought after ones. Out of all those options I would definitely say seriouslyvintage strikes me the most. But my first choice would still be ivintage.ca. lol

In terms of getting some other sellers on here, that may be something I can help with. I can casually mention on the forums that I have found another site for vintage sellers and maybe even start a group that would be interested in transferring over to here (if not fully, partially). I’ll have to figure out a way to do it that doesn’t get me into hot water with Etsy, but I think it wouldn’t be too difficult to wrangle a few people over here! I hope this link works, but it basically outlines how there are now people on Etsy that are masquerading as handmade sellers when in fact they are actual mass market stores acting as resellers (which was something big against Etsy’s policy’s).
www.regretsy.com/2012/04/24/update-ecologica-malibu/

Needless to say A LOT of people are pissed about it over there – hence why it’s on Regretsy, a mocking site of Etsy. Also they have revamped the weddings section (and I believe are planning to do it in the future to all sections) and they’ve actually made it so thousands of sellers and items are being lost and customers can’t even find their items in a replacement. Sad, eh? So ya, quite a few people unhappy over there!

Craft Boutique - I completely agree! I would never want Handmade to get lost in the sea of vintage and supplies. I buy way too many handmade things as gifts I would be lost every birthday and Christmas. Lol

Fairy Cardmaker - That is a pretty good name! I like vintage life!

[iCraft Admin]

Hi Erin,

Yes, we discussed it seriously before and even made some progress sketching the new site. iCraft was redesigned this year to make it easier to use it as a platform for adding other sites to it, with a single login to all. We always wanted to add other closely related communities, like vintage and supplies, as they would benefit iCraft as well - raise site's profile and drive additional targeted traffic to it.

No, we don't want you to get in trouble with Etsy. We would not ask people to close their stores somewhere else in order to start selling on our site.

We are planning to send a message to our sellers this weekend and see who'd be interested in the vintage site too. The sooner we can organize a group of vintage sellers to work with, the sooner we can start doing the real work on the new site. Exciting! 

[iCraft Admin]

Just read that post on regretsy.
WOW, so much drama! I have to say that was a good read. Loved the humor! Ha ha 

On a serious note, we struggle with the same issue of "collectives" vs "resellers", what's truly handmade and what's not. It takes sometimes a lot of rereplacement to make that determination. Some people tell us they are resellers, but work on behalf of an artist or a group of artists.  So far it has been on a case by case basis. However, at this point Etsy should have no doubts about their Featured Seller. I don't understand why they just didn't remove them from the featured spot and closed their account...

Removing all comments is weird too. I think that's the whole point of having a community - listening to their feedback, good or bad.  Hmm... 

[iCraft Admin]

Here is another domain that we thought is kinda interesting.
www.oldsuitcase.com

It doesn't have word "vintage" in it, but it implies it. What do you think?

[Fairy Cardmaker]

Personally speaking,  It's not great.  It implies clothing or clothing related.  Not furniture, or vases/decor, dishware, collectibles and other things you wouldn't ordinarily pack in a suitcase.

[iCraft Admin]

Good point, Fairy Cardmaker! I didn't think of that.

[iCraft Admin]

I guess one of our concerns of having "vintage" in the domain name is that it would limit us in including other related product categories, like antiques and collectables. So the name would have to be more inclusive or, at least, not too limiting.

[Fairy Cardmaker]

Ok... brainstorming...
"OldWordCharm"
"ofThingsPast"
"ShopTheEras"
"ShopofAges"

Ultimately, I think you are going to need the word "antique" or the word "vintage" in there somewhere though, so you'll have to pick one.  In addition, consider whether "vintage" will be confused with where it originated from: wine.  Wines have vintages and I'll bet there are tons of wine sites with that word.  In fact, my previous suggestion of "VintageLife" could be mistaken for maybe a connoisseur's blog!

More brainstorming needed.