I recently got some unique beer bottle wine glass candle holders from The CraftStar. It's a website that sells handmade and vintage items and looks really neat. I got a chance to interview the founder to learn more.
1. What was the inspiration behind The Craft Star?
I've
always been a "crafty" person, but with my "real" job (I spent 25 years
as a TV and Radio producer in the entertainment industry), I rarely had
time to make things. I got very sick a few years ago, and as I was
too ill to work, I had to leave my job and basically didn't have the
energy to do much more than go from my bed to the couch. t was a
horrible time for me as I'm a do-er! I got out my craft supplies, and
started making jewelry again. A friend suggested I start selling it, so
I opened a shop on Etsy. I became very involved with the community
there, and spent a lot of time in the chat rooms with other crafters. This was like a life-line to me, as I didn't have the energy to have a
real social life, as I was still too ill. Then, one day, with about 24
hours notice, Etsy told us they were closing the chat rooms. This may
sound ridiculous, but people were devastated ... this ability to connect
with other like minded people wasn't just something I loved ... it was
something A LOT of people loved and were very involved with. There are
many sellers who they turned their hobbies into income streams for a
variety of reasons: they lost their jobs through the economic downturn,
were, like me, too ill to work, or were retired and liked the extra
money to help their retirement funds. It was at that point the first
inklings of The CraftStar started in my head ... these people, small
business owners, needed the community aspect, and Etsy was taking this
away bit by bit.
When
I started to get better (finally the doctors figured out what was
wrong), I was asked to do a consultancy project for The Home Shopping
Network. This was great, I learned a lot about tele-commerce,
e-commerce, and found that a seller had to have at least 20,000 of any
single item to get on a platform like HSN or QVC, etc. This sparked off
another component for The CraftStar. I wanted to create a site for
small businesses (it was handmade and crafting supplies at the
beginning, we welcomed Vintage a few months later), that was community
focussed and built around a broadcasting platform. This is what we've
done ... The CraftStar is all about community ... for us to grow, our
small businesses need to grow, and we're doing this together. We also
broadcast LIVE 2 - 3 times a week and use these broadcasts to update our
members on new features, as educational sessions which focus on how to
build their small businesses, and spotlighting our members shops. We've
now begun LIVE SALES ... we've been planning this since we started, and
we had our first one last week! SOOO exciting! This is where it all
comes together for me ... we're providing a platform between a one
dimensional website and the likes of QVC and HSN. Small businesses now
have a place to sell LIVE. The reaction we've had as been amazing ...
including from Google themselves praising us on our innovative use of
their Hangouts (where we broadcast from). This is the very beginning of
LIVE SALES for The CraftStar ... but this has the promise to become
very big.
2. Are there guidelines that sellers need to adhere to?
You
can sell handmade, crafting supplies, and vintage on The CraftStar. One of our unique features is that you can have multiple shops, with no
additional membership fees, under a single log in. So people can have a
HANDMADE shop AND a VINTAGE shop and easily control both of them
through our site. We do NOT accept resellers ... something that has
become a huge problem on other sites ... and we have closed down many
shops attempting to resell. (Resellers are people who buy their items,
usually wholesale from overseas, and resell as "handmade.) Resellers
are not fair to the true handmakers as they totally price them out of
the market.
3. What sets The Craft Star apart?
There
are quite a few things that set us apart ... but the one I am most
proud of is our community. We have a great bunch of sellers who help
each other - even if they're basically competitors! We also have many
unique features that our competitors don't have, like the ability to
have more than one shop under a single log in, chat rooms on site, our
live broadcasts, LIVE SALES, The Trading Post, the list goes on!
4. What has been your biggest challenge?
There
have been a few major challenges along the way. The first tech team I
used was a disaster ... I lost A LOT of money and a lot of faith from
our members in The CraftStar because I was misled. I *knew* something
wasn't right, but being a non-techy person, I couldn't identify it and
kept believing the stories they were giving me. It was a nightmare ...
with many many tears and sleepless nights. Finally, I woke up one
morning and thought "enough is enough" and hired a new team. It was
like my life turned around immediately ... I went from being a
completely stressed out wreck, to having faith that things were going to
improve. And they did! The other huge challenge is having such a
dominant competitor who is pretty much a household name these days. Our
job now, is to let the small business owners out there know there is a
site that is focussed on them, is there for them, will work with them
(often one-on-one) to help them build their businesses. While The
CraftStar and our competitors may look the same on the outside, we're A
LOT different on the inside!
Learn more - like The Craft Star or http://twitter.com/thecraftstar.
No comments:
Post a Comment