Moderated by Namita Wiggers

Moderator Namita Wiggers brought together three businesswomen with experience marketing craft on the internet: Maria Thomas (Etsy.com), Lisa Bayne (Guild and ArtfulHome.com) and Amy Shaw (GreenjeansBrooklyn.com).

The title of this session references Chris Anderson’s book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, which points to a trend in online retail. At traditional retail “brick and mortar” stores, 20% of the products account for 80% of the revenue and inventory is limited by shelf space. Because internet sites like Amazon.com do not have the same physical limitations that conventional stores do, they can offer a huge selection of inventory appealing to a diverse range of consumers. They sell smaller quantities of a wider variety of items, which make up the “long tail” in the demand curve.

Each panelist discussed her company’s business model and how it fits into the “long tail” trend in internet marketing. Maria Thomas explained that Etsy.com supports itself through an extremely “long tail” model that only works because of the volume of items being bought and sold there. The site makes money from listing fees and sales transaction fees charged to sellers, and by selling premium placement for items on the homepage. As Maria sees it, Etsy is less a store than a forum for connecting people and their stories – both the maker’s story and the buyer’s story.

Lisa Bayne discussed the relationship between the Guild catalogs and the Artful Home website. The site is a “long tail” business using a “short tail” catalogue to introduce itself to consumers. She stressed that Artful Home differs from Etsy in that it offers a juried selection of work, more like a conventional gallery.

Amy Shaw’s business Greenjeans (now closed due to the economy) was a similar hybrid model of a brick-and-mortar store with an accompanying website. The website was intended to make the Greenjeans inventory of local artisan-made products available to a larger clientele, but Shaw also maintained a blog on the site where she shared the stories of the makers and the customers who visited her shop.

The panelists discussed how you can help consumers find what they want when using a “long tail” model, in which site visitors could easily get overwhelmed with how much there is to choose from. Both Etsy and Artful Home attempt to curate selections of the work they sell in the way that they market it, for example on each site’s homepage. According to Bayne, a certain amount of editing in how you present your inventory to consumers can help them come to a decision about what to buy. Similarly, Amy Shaw saw the blog component of the Greenjeans site as a way to highlight special pieces and sellers in her inventory.

Bayne, Thomas and Shaw agreed that it can be difficult for online art and craft retailers to help their consumers navigate their inventory. When it comes to art, craft and one-of-a-kind products, tastes tend to be subjective and products are difficult to classify with a simple search algorithm. This makes it difficult to apply the same kind of “suggest sell” technology that allows companies like Amazon.com and Anthropologie.com to suggest other items you might like as you shop.

It was refreshing to see that while each of these panelists is concerned with carving out a viable business model in the online craft marketplace, Bayne, Thomas and Shaw were all wary of overly commodifying the objects they sold. Each panelist stressed the importance of maintaining personal relationships with their artists/sellers and customers. They recognize that the individual nature of the craft work sold through their sites is the driving force behind their businesses.

Reporting by Jenny Gill, “Creating a New Craft Culture” Conference Assistant.

Gimme More!

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Blog coverage by conference attendees:
Ask Harriete, by Harriete Estel Berman
emiko-o reware, by Emiko Oye