Kayla_Chp15

Etsy

I saw that someone else wrote about Pinterest, which lead me to think of Etsy. Etsy is essentially the amazon of homemade and vintage items. In fact, according to this article, people get angry when they think that the items might not have been made by hand. In 2014, they made over 1.93 billion dollars in merchandise sales. Personally, I have bought a custom engraved-buckle dog collar for Milo (he always loses tags), and several personalized items for my room as well as jewelry since I first discovered Etsy. A lot of the sellers rely on Pinterest and other social media platforms to get them noticed. For example, the woman I bought my dog's collar from gave me 20% off my next purchase when I showed that I made a post about it on Instagram. Sellers can also pay to have their stores "promoted" on Etsy, but that requires people to know about Etsy in the first place. But I came across them when I was searching for a very specific item that I could customize, so Google definitely recognizes that they exist.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/16/business/media/etsys-success-raises-problems-of-credibility-and-scale.html?_r=0

(Sorry, that I won't be there, I'm still running a participant. Also, take my capstone for CE Points and a chance to win a $50 gift card! ;) )