Creative types flock to online marketplace to sell their work

In the current economic climate, starting your own business can be a risky and expensive affair, especially when dealing in so-called luxuries goods such as art, jewelry, clothing or accessories. But creative souls all over the world, including dozens in the Pikes Peak region, have found a way to make a full-time living or supplement their salaries through the online marketplace Etsy.com.

“I wanted to be part of a marketplace where I could get a lot more eyes on my work,” says local jewelry designer Jennifer Hunt, who owns Jennifer Hunt Designs and runs the store jacksoncreede on Etsy. While she’s offered her work in local stores and sold to wholesalers for many years, when she joined Etsy, “I went from, through my Web site I had up, getting five views a day and maybe one sale a week to, with Etsy, getting hundreds of views a day and one to five sales a day.”

Hunt is one of more than 250,000 sellers on the 2005-founded Web site, which boasts more than 2.5 million users/registered customers and clocked $87.5 million in sales in 2008. Through May, their 2009 gross sales total $58 million, putting them on track for significant growth in a challenging year.

“My business model had to change or it was going to die,” says graphic designer Brinda Hammel of Etsy shop Brinda Kay Design, who once worked solely in paper goods.

 Now she’s shifted her business focus toward accessories and her marketing focus online, though she maintains a presence in one local brick-and-mortar store.

“It seems foolhardy to count on someone walking in and stumbling on my work,” she says. “But you’re reaching everyone on Etsy,” in her case including orders from Canada, the United Kingdom and Greece.

“I thought it might be a good way to make some extra money on jewelry and art sales, especially during the winter when tourism is down Colorado Springs,” says painter and jewelry maker K8E (pronounced Katie) Orr, who sold her first piece of jewelry within a week of starting her Etsy store, named Little Shop of Orrs. “So far I have been blessed to make money off my business venture, but it’s a buyer’s market.”

“It’s been such a Godsend for my company,” says Hunt, who as a mom with two small children, thrives on the flexibility of working for herself. “There’s no way you’d be able to run a business in this kind of economy without a large investment. It’s so easy to run a business through this place, it’s ridiculous.”

Charging what these sellers say is a small fee — $.20 per listed item plus a 3.5 percent transaction fee — Etsy provides valuable services like a shopping cart, accounting, communication with buyers, forums for sellers, supplies for sale and more.

“How everything was set up for you — the shopping cart, the photo uploads — was great. Now I’m really busy and it’s all I do,” says Hammel, who supplements her husband’s income. “It’s tough right now, but you adjust by branching out, doing different things, and it turns out fine.”

While economic circumstances obviously compel some sellers, Hammel also thinks current trends are leading buyers away from big-box corporations and toward handmade. “We maybe pull on their purse strings a little that way.”