glmr Report post Posted July 2, 2015 Hi there! My name is Kostik and I'm living in Italy. Some months ago I've got an access to laser cutting machine and now I'm trying to produce leather bracelets. For some items I'm using stitching pony and hand stitching, just because I like the quality of handmade stitch and I don't have a leather sewing machine. For the last reason I can't produce any other stuff, but I hope to sell my items and collect some money for sewing machine. Here are my items. Comments are welcome. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
benlilly1 Report post Posted July 2, 2015 Welcome! Nice work! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
glmr Report post Posted July 2, 2015 Welcome! Nice work! thank you! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
King's X Report post Posted July 3, 2015 Very nice work! Hello and welcome to the forum! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
dirtclod Report post Posted July 3, 2015 Nice job on the bracelets !! I really like the first one and the forth one. Looks to me like you should be able to sell all of them at a good price to. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
glmr Report post Posted July 3, 2015 thank you. I have some sales, but the development is veeeery slow, so I'm afraid to die from hunger before (or instead of) success =) Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jake98 Report post Posted July 5, 2015 Your work is beautiful! Keep at it, you will be very successful! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BondoBobCustomSaddles Report post Posted July 5, 2015 Welcome to the forum. Unique work. You should be able to get those sold easily. Where in Italy are you? There are lots of shops there in the bigger cities that you may be able to place your work in on consignment, or wholesale for resale. I think that may be a nice niche for you. With some of the patterns that you have been laser cutting, you may be able to incorporate those into womens foot wear, sandals and such. Again, nice work. Bob Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
glmr Report post Posted July 7, 2015 Thank you. I'm in Friuli-Venezia-Giulia province, ad it is far from Venice. There is no big cities here and population is low. I tried to contact with some shops here, but they don't want to buy. Some shops can take for sales and pay after, but they don't have an interest to sell, because they need to sell that goods they already bought. Another problem is that shop adds 140% so the final price becomes unreachable for the final client. As I know the situation in big cities is a similar. And I'm not sure if Italy is a good place for sales. Maybe you have an idea how can I reach small wholsellers/resellers from USA? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jake98 Report post Posted July 7, 2015 I would say to look up tack stores in the USA. I'm in the Northern part of the United States and we have a pretty big population of horse lovers. I know some of the high end tack and saddlery shops carry a lot of Italian leather products including jewelry and fashion items. I think your bracelets would do really well. Maybe one to reach out to is Chagrin Saddlery in Chagrin Falls Oh. Their number is 440-708-0674 (sorry, I don't know our country code). They might be small enough that you wouldn't take as much of a hit. I would also really use Facebook to network and try to promote your items. Just my 2 cents:-) Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
glmr Report post Posted July 7, 2015 (edited) tack stores? hmm... I thought they use to sell saddles and other horses' stuff Edited July 7, 2015 by glmr Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
rjwsr Report post Posted July 8, 2015 (edited) Kostik as others have said your work is wonderful, great modern creativity and I believe sellable in many forms as mentioned. You may try signing up as a seller on ETSY.com (world wide site) and offering your goods on Ebay to get some cash in your pocket toward creating your own web based store. Keep on tying Raymond https://etsy.com/shop/rjwleatherworks.com Edited July 8, 2015 by rjwsr Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
glmr Report post Posted July 8, 2015 Thank you! I'm already on Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/Qualcosanostra and have only 3 sales in 10 months. Ebay works even worse, so I closed the shop there. I suppose I should try another way to sell, but I don't have any idea. Help, please. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jake98 Report post Posted July 8, 2015 (edited) Exactly, Tack stores:-). You are correct that they sell mostly saddles and tack but the English style tack stores also sell other accessories such as bracelets, necklaces, belts, earings. I always peruse this section in the tack stores. One of the big things this year in English, Dressage and eventing are these colored belts not leather - boo - but there's a market). I'm also seeing padded leather bracelet's that are kind of big. I'm just not sure how beneficial it would be for you though with import/export/customs taxes and such. The other thing (you may already be doing it) you can do is set up a booth at local events such as festivals. The smaller ones are usually pretty cheap and it's a great way to market. Smaller horse shows are a great way too. Here in the states, you can sponsor events. I just did a local one supporting a fire department and made them a couple of brow bands. They let me set up a table and I sold some stuff. It was a win win. Edited July 8, 2015 by Jake98 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
glmr Report post Posted July 8, 2015 thanks, I will try to contact them. But in a while - how do you do your promotions? I tried via Facebook, but they ask too much for click/impression. With 1-2% of CTR (very good result) I should pay them 20 euro for sell 1 bracelet for 30 euro. This sucks. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
rjwsr Report post Posted July 8, 2015 Kostik, I looked at your etsy shop and see that you don't use etsy pay/gift cards. Maybe that isn't offered to you in Italy? I don't have all that many sales although most of them have been purchased through etsy and not paypal. Maybe that could be the reason you're not getting many etsy sales. Also be sure some of your search criteria when setting up your listing includes off the wall words. If your selling a golf club make it so that people looking for a cane also see it in their search results! Just some suggestions! Raymond Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jake98 Report post Posted July 9, 2015 I hope I'm understanding you correctly but let me know if I misunderstood. I will use FB to boost certain posts. FB has an option to boost your post and you can change that amount to whatever you like. I usually do a $5.00 USD boost. It's brought traffic to the page but not a ton of sales. I know my friends who are in business do giveaways. For example, you are trying to get to 1000 likes so if people like and share your page, they get entered into a drawing for a bracelet. I've not done this, so not sure how well it works. I find that FB helps to keep people interested but my sales usually happen at shows. When people can touch and feel the product, they're most likely to buy. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
glmr Report post Posted July 9, 2015 here is my sad result for facebook boost post: 3 Post Engagements €1.39 Per Post Engagement 1,899 the problem is this: before i started campaign facebook told me that "Potential Reach: 69,000,000 people" as result i've got 1899. also the price for 1000 impressions rised from 0.05 to 2.8 euro. that's the reason why i'm not sure if such promotion could be useful. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
huttgl Report post Posted July 9, 2015 My wife has had an Etsy shop for a few years now and the nature of the thing has changed a lot in that time. They used to really make sure that people were only selling things that they had made themselves. In recent years they have bought various other similar sites and IPO-ed, the number of shops has grown massively and Etsy seems to have given up policing the products on offer so there are mass-produced items selling very cheaply alongside hand made ones. As a result it is increasingly difficult for an individual to get noticed. The folk who seem to do best on Etsy are those that spend a great deal of time and effort blogging and collecting followers. Etsy used to do "treasuries" where people would put together a collection of their favourite things (I don't know if they still do this). If you were featured in one of these then it generally caused a hike in visits to your shop. The way to get in a treasury seems to be to make your own with other peoples work in the hope that they will reciprocate. They also used to select shops for features. If you were lucky enough to be featured then that would also boost footfall. As someone has already said, it is important to get the right keywords so that you come up in search results for Google and for Etsy itself. There's advice here https://www.etsy.com/uk/help/article/821 for how to structure your product titles and tags and how to see what people are searching for in your shop stats. Try searching for your own products by various combinations in Google and Etsy and see where you come in the results. Change your title and tags and try again to optimise your chances of appearing higher in the results. There are any number of folks out there selling leather bracelets for example so you need to work out how to get yours to stand out in a search. My wife also believes that you get more visits if you are frequently listing new items (or re-listing old ones) and if you have more than 100 items in your shop and again more than 200. Your bracelets look really great by the way and are very different to the majority of those on offer. I'm sure people will be buying if they are brought to their attention. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
eternoui Report post Posted November 26, 2015 Very nice designs!! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
glmr Report post Posted January 24, 2016 Some new items: http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=68044&hl= Need your critique! Thanks. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
