It's not Storenvy vs Etsy

There seems to be some line drawn where handmade people think you have to either sell on Storenvy OR Etsy.

Total myth.

You can sell on both. They work well together. And it's easy. Storenvy never set out to compete with Etsy. They just wanted to create a place where indie artists and creative entrepreneurs could open a free online store and enjoy the benefits of being part of a marketplace full of other creatives!

Here is some blunt perspective on this non-existent Etsy vs Storenvy war and how they can actually work hand in hand:

Say you are already selling on Etsy and you want to expand to reach a new market and build your own branding identity by having a fully customized shop, but you're all like "Ugh, I have eleventy billion items listed on Etsy, it's just not worth it to me to spend time setting up on another site" you can start jumping for joy right now because Tonka Park has built an Etsy to Storenvy importer that quickly and easily copies over listings, product photos, descriptions, tags and prices. Pretty awesome, right?

And if you are worried about selling an item on Storenvy that you have listed on Etsy and then that same item selling on Etsy and you're all like "Oh noooooooo, what do I do if I double sell?!" stop worrying and set up an account with Stitch Labs to easily, seamlessly manage inventory on both platforms. When you sell an item from Storenvy, the identical item will be automatically removed from your Etsy shop. Boom. It's that simple. Check out their Storenvy and Etsy integration to learn more.

Then there's the people who think Storenvy doesn't have a place for handmade shops - not true, they have an entire marketplace set up just for handmade shops which makes up a huge chunk of their total number of shops. And I have heard "But I see resellers" - well, yeah. I see resellers on Etsy too, but if you're already selling there, I don't quite understand that concern regarding Storenvy's handmade market, you know? I think as artists all we can do is create beautiful, quality wares - because realistically, true artists are not competing with resellers. But that's a whole different topic altogether. 

And of course there's the concern you can't print shipping labels straight from Storenvy like you can from Etsy. Not directly from Storenvy, but they integrated with Shipstation so their users can print shipping labels for Storenvy orders quickly and easily!

So what have we learned?

It's easy to have both Etsy and Storenvy shops. There's not battle between the two sites. Etsy provides you with a great audience and buyer visibility whereas Storenvy provides you with the ability to create a brand for yourself by allowing total shop customization and the ability to domain host (so you can be yourshop . com). Storenvy is also backed by a powerful search engine within it's marketplace that ranks products in real time popularity base on recency of listing, Envies, and purchases so you also reap the benefit of your products reaching a new audience in a much less saturated market, allowing your products to really stand out and evolve.

There's one thing I want to say though - I've helped a lot of people set up a second shop on Storenvy.com and usually, three months later they say it's not working for them. Why? You have to promote it as much as you promote your Etsy shop. You can't just open shop, import products and leave it - you have to market it, talk about, drive your clients to or else how can you expect it to be a success?

What do you think? Will you be taking Storenvy for a test drive?