Captains' Log: in the Works

Even Howard here with our second Captains' Log post. (You can read Rebecca's here.) I'd like to share our upcoming events and team visions, built with the help of our Leaders and members. We have so much to look forward to in the coming months.  The main thing I want to share is that all our members are welcome to participate in the team in your own best way. One of the best ways to get more involved in the benefits of SF Etsy membership is to attend an event or host a small one yourself. As the leadership team, we try to offer what we hear is needed and wanted, and one of our driving principles is peer to peer discovery and sharing of knowledge, skills, and joy.

So, please do attend and participate where you can and when your own idea sparks, let us know how we can help you make it happen! You can contact myself or Rebecca, or any of the leaders if you already see a close fit with their committees.

We've begun using the team calendar more. You can always check there for events and share events you think others would find of interest via the submission form.

Upcoming Special Dates

Februrary 7th: First Fridays, Meet and Make hosted by Armani Mondragon, San Jose
February 8th: Beehive Coop Trunk Show in Mountain View
February 13th: Goorin Bros Hat Shop Trunk Show on Haight Street, SF
February 13th: Etsy Meet and Make at Museum of Craft and Design, SF
February 13th: Bottle Cap Jewelry Workshop at Spread, Campell
February 22nd: Stitches West Marketplace Meet Up, Santa Clara
February 27th: Giant Team Party! TBA, SF
March 1st: Zippered Box Sewing Class at MCD with Rebecca Saylor
March TBA: Ship Shape Shop, Spring Bootcamp 1: Social Media
March TBA: Ship Shape Shop, Spring Bootcamp 2: Elevator Pitches and About Page
March TBA: Ship Shape Shop, Spring Bootcamp 3, Product Development, Booth Display, Photography

Reccuring Events

Thursday Tweet Chats: 10am Online! with Amanda Jayne
Friday Field Trips: 2 fridays a month, locations vary with Deb Styer
Business Group Meet Ups, once a month, Outer Sunset, SF with Imelda
Second Thursday Etsy Nights (Meet and Makes) at Museum of Craft and Design, SF
First Fridays at the Museum of Quilts and Textiles, San Jose

Thanks for all you do team! Your creativity and ingenuity is infectious!
~Even

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If you're an Etsy seller in the San Francisco Bay Area, visit Our Team Page about joining SFEtsy!

#SFEtsy October 2nd - Product Selection

Etsy's Holiday Bootcamp has started again this year and I know many team members are participating or have done in the past. Even for seasoned sellers it can be useful to keep an eye on the articles for additional tips or reminders.

With this in mind I thought it might be useful if our tweetchats at least vaguely mirrored Etsy's Bootcamp schedule so this week we're going to be looking at product selection.

We'll talk about how we choose our price points and range of items. We'll also discuss how to work out what sells and how to build a line around that or discontinue a product, as well as how we choose new products to work on.

If you like to use tweetchat.com to follow our chats this is the link tweetchat.com/room/sfetsy

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If you're an Etsy seller in the San Francisco Bay Area, contact Katy or Steph about joining SFEtsy!

Savvy Entrepreneur: It's Not Too Late To Save Christmas

With the recent onslaught of Holiday marketing and prep articles, some of which I'm guilty of writing, many of you may be pulling out your hair feeling you need to do it all. Right now! This very minute!

Trust me I know that feeling.

Lightbox SF is here to help. We've put together a Save Christmas Bootcamp to help you focus on one of 3 areas where we can help you make quick, significant changes.

If this is your first year doing major craft shows for the holidays we can help you put together an amazing booth display, feel confident talking to customers, and making sure your doing everything necessary to gain long term fans.

However if most of your sales come from an online shop we can help you tune up those item descriptions, get amazing product photos, and welcome customers into your best shop yet.

Maybe you're feeling you've got these two areas down pat, you've been selling at fairs and online years and you're doing just fine. But how's your publicity efforts going? When's the last time you were featured in a gift guide? Yep, we can help you with that too.

So let us help you Save Christmas! Sign up for our bootcamp by November 1st and we'll get you on your way to the best holiday season yet. After the 1st we're still willing to help, but we just may not have enough time to get it all done.

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 I encourage comments directly to this post, but also feel free to email me directly with questions, reactions, struggles, etc. genevieve [at] lightboxsf [dot] com

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If you're an Etsy seller in the San Francisco Bay Area, contact Jen from Mama's Magic Studio about joining SFEtsy!

Etsy Success Holiday Boot Camp - Another Way to Pump Up Your Brand

I drew this in honor of the "Holiday Boot Camp Pledge"

As we all know, the busy Holiday Season is just around the corner. September went with the blink of an eye and craft stores are already putting up their pine wreathes & golden ribbons.

Being owners of our micro-businesses, we are often pushed into the roles that big-box businesses might have several (hundred) people filling. Store managers, sales associates, stock people & marketing teams are all encompassed in each one of us. Although we are expected to wear these many hats, we may not all know how to wear them well just yet.

That's where DanielleXO comes in.

DanielleXO is the Etsy admin in charge of helping Etsy Sellers find the resources they need to become successful in a virtual handmade marketplace. Having taken a survey about the Etsy Success mailing list earlier this year, we were asked how we felt about being given tasks to designed to help us reach our business and sales goals in the year to come. A moderate portion of the Seller population welcomed this idea & patiently awaited the start of a "boot camp" email for months.

The first email finally arrived on Thursday, 23rd September, 2010 (click here to see it in HTML format). Etsy Success Holiday Boot Camp is a task-driven regime in which you, the Seller, can pump up your shop into tip-top shape, just in time for this Holiday Season's rush of shoppers.

Some of us may be new to the role and some of us are Holiday Season veterans, but all of us could use help with sales. What better way than to utilize our networking skills to promote ourselves & each other in order to generate yet another venue for free advertising of our brands?!

With a community that's becoming ever-aware of the need to buy handmade & support local business, how can we pass up the opportunity to learn how to reach the masses? With exercises on branding, Google Analytics, merchandising & more, the Etsy Success Holiday Boot Camp hails to be one of the best places to be these upcoming weeks.

One of the first items of business is to pick a Mascot for the Etsy Success Holiday Boot Camp Team. Check out the treasury they put together.

'Etsy Success Holiday Boot Camp Mascots' by daniellexo

Who should be the Etsy Success Holiday Boot Camp Mascot? Let me know in the comments below!Keep your eyes on Etsy's blog for more information about the Holiday Boot Camp on Thursday!

Roman Warrior Hat G... AlyInBloom $	Birds in Helmets n0... poordogfarm $10.00	Camouflage Cutie Do... ProperPuppy $14.99
Camouflage Monkey homehooked $20.00	French Bulldog Camo... TheFabFrenchie $	Punkin tu2couture $50.00
Army Boy 2 piece ha... DownUnderDogDe... $50.00	Cat Art Fine Art AC... TaraFlyPhotos $5.00	Dog Sweater Small B... aandboriginals... $25.00
Lou the brown monst... MonstersEtc $35.00	Camouflage Print Do... dogties $8.00	Alfreda -Woodlands ... JanisCarletonA... $16.00
Norwegian Viking Ca... Olsentrademark... $15.00	Woodland Warrior - ... BeaumontStudio $11.00	Boot Camp Bandana rocstardogbout... $14.95

Generated using Treasury HTML code generator by Whale Shark Websites.

Another awesome inclusion to the Boot Camp is having weekly forum threads set up to help everyone help each other with sharing tips & tricks, links & success stories. You can check of those out here. There's even a Facebook Page from which you can take the Holiday Boot Camp Pledge!

For more info on how YOU can join the Etsy Success Holiday Boot Camp & pump up your brand, check out the article in the Storque.

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Steph Cortés from nerd JERK is the Roving Reporter, one of the newest members of the SF Etsy Blog Team. She enjoys going out to new crafting events and supporting the handmade movement. Look forward to more reports on her artsy shenanigans in weeks to come. Feel free to email her comments & tips on shows anytime.

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If you're an Etsy seller in the San Francisco Bay Area, contact Jen from Mama's Magic Studio about joining SFEtsy!