Yesterday I touched briefly on when not to open a second (thrird, fourth, etc.) Etsy shop. Today I would like to talk a little bit about when it is right to open another shop. Much like in the world of brick and mortar, your Etsy shop can become over whelming to your customers. Shops with thousands of items are hard to keep organized.
When you have so many different types of items that you run out of categories to organize them into it might be a good idea to split them into multiple shops. Now if you have just jewelry or just crotchet, 10 categories is probably going to be just fine. It is when you sell vintage goods, supplies, jewelry and crochet that you start to run into problems.
In my opinion a supply shop should always be on its own. You are marketing to people who will use your supplies to craft their own items. I have been to supply shops on Etsy that also sell finished goods and to me it would be like going to Hobby Lobby and seeing booths set up inside selling items made from the craft supply goods that Hobby Lobby has for sale. To me, it makes more sense to sell supplies to crafters and finished products to consumers.
The most important aspect of "the right time" to open another shop is when you have the free time to dedicate the same amount of time to your additional shop as you do your primary shop. If you do not have the same amount of time to dedicate to advertising and networking something is going to suffer. If you are lucky enough to have the time to devote to it, then go for it!
That is all for today. Keep those comments coming and please feel free to share this blog with your friends. I also tweet some as @MarketMyShop on Twitter and have facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/MarketMyShop And of course my Etsy shop here: http://MarketMyShop.etsy.com and soon at http://www.MarketMyShop.com Want to know what I do on Etsy for retail? http://TangledMetal.etsy.com
