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Home Studio: Lauren Bobowski and her jewelry in progress at the workbench in her Dollar Point home. Photo by Ryan Salm |
Comments (1)Etsy Offers Global Market to Local Artisans
By Olivia DwyerPublished: March 11, 2010
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Annais Avery has a unique way of cutting back on calories. She sits in bed, shaping polymer clay into the decadent food she would like to eat, turning a craving into brightly colored, scrumptious jewelry.
Lauren Bobowski makes jewelry as well. For her, experiences as foreign as traveling through Asia or as familiar as a tree branch at home in Tahoe provide equal inspiration for her simple, elegant designs incorporating wirework and semi-precious stones.
How do these two women, and many more artists around Tahoe, find a market for their wares? Simple: etsy.com. Etsy is a website that offers a global platform to artisans and crafters without leaving their home or studio.
Etsy offers its sellers the opportunity to seize upon a lifestyle that is hard to come by in Tahoe: creative fulfillment and financial reward. For Tahoe Etsy-ians, a region long on beauty and wilderness but sometimes short on career flexibility, it’s a dream come true.
“I’ve found this magical formula where I do what I love for work and I do what I love for play,” Bobowski says.
Getting started on Etsy
Avery first heard of Etsy when she helped an employer open a virtual shop on the website to sell his carved wooden bears. As the page views grew, Avery saw an opportunity for herself.
She began creating polymer clay jewelry using toothpicks and warming the clay by rolling it between her hands. She joined Etsy in the fall of 2008, and as she began making sales, she studied up on technique using tutorials on YouTube and blogs. Now, she uses a pasta machine to soften the clay, and has her own set of tools to shape clay into cupcakes or sushi or produce to wear at the ears, neck, and wrists.
“I make what I want to eat, but I’m too lazy to get up and go to the grocery store,” Avery says. “I love it. Even if it were only one sale a day or one sale a week, I’d be stoked. The art is so much fun, and it’s nice to know people like it.”
Without Etsy, would Avery, age 21, have gone into business for herself? “No, absolutely not,” she says. And while she’s not the breadwinner for her family yet, Avery has high hopes for where her shop is headed.
Living by her art alone
By contrast, Bobowski has been depending upon her art for income since she was a teenager. Growing up in Hartford, Conn., she and her friends would frequent a store called Designs in Silver and Gold for birthday and Christmas gifts. The proprietor, Kurt Litter, hand made the jewelry he sold, including nameplate necklaces long before the TV show “Sex and the City” made them a fashion statement. At 17, Bobowski got a job in the shop. Litter passed away in 2001, but he has had a lasting impact on Bobowski’s jewelry-making.
“On his deathbed, he did a written will saying the girls who have worked for me can have whatever they want from the shop,” Bobowski says.
Among the tools Bobowski kept from Litter’s shop were a hammer, reinforced many times over the years with wire, and a stone polisher. Both reside in the guest bedroom of her house, where she has added a workbench handed down to her by a Tahoe City jeweler for her makeshift studio. From here, Bobowski creates the stock for her Etsy store, which has grown into her full-time job.
“It’s easier to be creative when you’re not stressed and working too many jobs,” she says. “I’ve been making jewelry for so long and it’s finally coming together.”
Bobowski apprenticed with Tahoe jeweler Ali Athari, and when he retired, she decided she was ready to branch out on her own as Lala Design Studio. She frequents the summer art festival circuit, and sells her jewelry at Tahoe Yoga and Wellness Center and Closet Cowgirl. Until now, she’s always had to make ends meet with a job outside her trade.
“If I didn’t have Etsy, at this time of year I would have to find another job,” Bobowski says.
Instead, she is busy at work finishing enough stock to fill orders while she travels in Ethiopia for two months. An apprentice of her own will manage the Etsy store while she is out of the country.
Always room for one more
The Etsy nook of cyberspace is overflowing with sellers. The community continues to grow, but the market appears to respond in kind.
“I feel that if you have that creative drive and a style that’s truly individual, there’s definitely a market for your wares,” Bobowski says. “Etsy is what most people want. When people go to buy things for their home and to adorn themselves, they want that special story; they want creative and individual stuff.”
The Tahoe artisans that have embraced Etsy provide those special stories. Karen Conant creates soy candles as a way to celebrate the legacy of her deceased grandmother. She started selling on Etsy last fall and will be a vendor at farmers markets in South Lake Tahoe this summer.
“This is for my soul,” she says. “It was done more for fun, you know, what the heck, let’s see.”
Cortney Harrington paints and knits to support the pursuit of her dream of becoming a professional snowboarder. “This lets me keep doing art and have an audience, and maybe sell a piece or two,” she says.
Linocuts and prints are Michelle Murdock’s chosen medium, and she hopes to build towards practicing art full time. “Once I saw that pretty much anything goes on Etsy … I just started posting and it became a motivational force,” Murdock says. “You can reach anyone in the world by posting your artwork there.”
Karen Colbert, who works with fabric arts, has had a gallery, Artists at Lake Tahoe, for five years in Incline Village, and has found a way to reach an audience that will never walk past her storefront. “I was trying to come up with things that were under $100 and that might have more broad appeal than my normal pieces,” Colbert says of her Etsy strategy.
With virtual labs on every subject from word choice for naming colors to generating more page views, Etsy provides tools for sellers to build a startup business.
“Etsy allows me to concentrate on the creative side of things and see if I can turn my hobby into something more. As a busy mom of three girls, being online with Etsy is so convenient,” says Audra Naccarato, creator of a line of “Tahoe Girl” metal accessories. “I love the sense of community and its fresh, creative, and energetic vibe.”
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And More...
A selection of local “Etsy-ians” appear above. Search for their shops at etsy.com, or use the shop local feature for more.
What is Etsy?
Etsy was founded in June 2005 with the mission to enable people to make a living making things, and to directly connect makers with buyers. Etsy reports there are over 400,000 sellers and 4.2 million members, drawn from a worldwide market representing over 150 countries.
The bottom line
Growth is a signature trait of Etsy, as the website has seen sales increase by leaps and bounds each year. Gross merchandise sales started at $166,000 in 2005, and Etsy reported $180.6 million in transactions for 2009. Sellers pay 20 cents to list an item for four months, and Etsy collects a 3.5 percent transaction fee from each sale.
Shop local on Etsy
Visit etsy.com, and click on the “Buy” button in the taskbar at the top of the page. Select “Shop Local” from the following page, and enter the name of the town, city, or region you would like to shop in.
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