my online shop :: little brown pen

and we are back for another interview and our last one! just a reminder that these interviews are about online markets, why sellers choose their places online, and the advantages and disadvantages they find on their most successful shops. we had {tina crespo} on tuesday, {gabrielle kai} on wednesday and {a alicia handmade} yesterday. today it is nichole robertson’s turn from {little brown pen}. i bet you also know this lady, because her colour collections on paris are exquisite and makes us pay attention to details we probably never noticed before.

hello, how are you? so can you tell me a bit about yourself? great, thanks! i am nichole robertson, a writer and photographer, and i live and work in the nyc metro region. i have a bit of a crush on paris (okay a big one), and i am never without french butter.

i know that you have an online shop, right? how many do you have and where? we have two shops. an etsy shop and an ecommerce site of our own at {little brown pen}.

what made you choose having those shops? we started selling on etsy a few years ago because we liked the ease with which you could set up a shop, and i had many friends who had positive experiences there.

what is your main shop? our main shop is at {little brown pen}. though i love etsy, it’s limiting when it comes to branding and user experience. one thing that consistently frustrates me about etsy is the inability to visually group similar product offers together. the section feature is not enough. you don’t have a whole lot of control over how your shop looks.

can you tell us about 3 advantages in having a shop on your main shop? control over the design, the ability to feature products as I like, brand building.

and disadvantages? can you also name 3? it’s harder to drive as much traffic to our own domain. etsy has so much built in foot traffic. other than that, i am very happy with our site and what it does for our brand.

did you ever consider in having other online shops? why? we considered a big cartel shop, but realized it lacked the foot traffic that etsy had.

so, what do you think? nichole raised a new opinion, having a shop on our own domain. but the question about foot traffic remains, just like other shops, be it on big cartel or supermarket, sellers need to drive traffic for themselves, and etsy does a part of that work for sellers… actually sellers also work for each other. but it is always good to read another opinion. so, let me know your thoughts on these interviews… were they helpful for your plans? did they help you make any decision? i hope so! well, now it is time to go and delight myself with a new weekend! and i will be away on the beach enjoying the sun and family! take care my friends! happy friday!

p.s. make sure you read nichole’s {blog}… it is filled with paris and food… delicious. both of them!

images: little brown pen via etsy (click on each image for further details)