Considerations - The Art in Marketing
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"Utterly Utterly Too Two"
The title here is a take-off on a late-19th century song title, and kind of illustrates how I've been feeling about a dilemma concerning my shop name/identity up until a few minutes ago when I finally settled it (I think LOL)
I'm just about ready to add a 2nd shop on Etsy. I was waiting to see what the 'new and improved' site changes involved before spending more money on re-listing everything that's moving over to the new shop. The 'artsfarm' shop will keep the jewelry that's already there plus whatever art I produce from time to time, in any form. I will be making more paintings, assemblage, ACEOs etc and while I really like the shop to have a variety (and customers love it too), I don't want it to become unweildy.
The new one will be my vintage merchandise and sewn items I make from vintage materials. It works because it makes more sense to the customer, plus I'm a member of the Vintage Street Team and one of the requirements is that at least 75% of your shop is true vintage and/or products made with vintage components. So this will work out well in that respect.
But, coming up with a name for the new vintage shop has been making me nuts.
I must have gone through 50 different names, versions and rewrites; wrote some down and looked at them a few days later only to toss them out anyway. The thing is, I've been using the name 'artsfarm' for 10 years now, and it's kind of got a life of its own at this point. It's on everything, everywhere; I use it for shows, e-mails, my website, etc and most people just call me that instead of my 'real' name. I don't want to lose that identity advantage; it fits anything art-related and that's cool.
But--I'm already concerned that the vintage shop is going to lose business for several reasons:
1-As it stands now, I have a LOT of vintage items with many hearts and views and will lose them once I deactivate the listings to move them. This will cause me to basically start over like a new seller.
2-Whatever followers and repeat customers I do have won't find me. I know we're supposed to mention any sister shop in our shop announcements, but I know from experience that barely anyone reads the announcement, profiles or even entire item listings.
3-The new search function on Etsy will have vintage and supplies in a drop-down list underneath handmade, so a new customer will have to know to do this to find me. Again, I'm betting on less than half of new visitors to know instinctively to do this. Each extra click to do anything online is one less chance to be seen.
So what to do? Like I said, I went through lists of name ideas and chucked them for being too cute, pretentious, boring, weird and more. Then I got an idea that was almost too simple: Adding something to 'artsfarm' that indicates the two shops are connected. I remembered places like "The Limited" adding "Too" as they expanded, and others like it. It seems to work for huge mega-chains, so I suppose it's proved its merit. So 'artsfarmtoo' it will be, it seems. I tried out 'artsfarm2'--boring and looks like an e-mail address; 'artsfarmII'-hard to explain to others and it looks like two lower-case "L"s. Using "too" indicates it's also me, or in addition to me.
BONUS: I did a username search on Etsy on just 'arts' and got 10 pages with me about 1/2way down the first page, which is great. They're alphabetical so this new name will most likely end up right under the original one making the connection for buyers easy to make. While there, I was totally amused to see how many different versions of the phrase 'artsy-fartsy' people came up with LOL!
As a side note, I had an antiques shop a while back called "Aesthetics and Old Lace" which I thought was extremely clever, being a play on the film title and I've always loved the word 'aesthetics'. The problem with that one was the surprising number of people who had no idea either what the word meant, nor knew about the movie. Oh well, you learn to adapt.
Thoughts?
-artsfarmtoo :-)
I'm just about ready to add a 2nd shop on Etsy. I was waiting to see what the 'new and improved' site changes involved before spending more money on re-listing everything that's moving over to the new shop. The 'artsfarm' shop will keep the jewelry that's already there plus whatever art I produce from time to time, in any form. I will be making more paintings, assemblage, ACEOs etc and while I really like the shop to have a variety (and customers love it too), I don't want it to become unweildy.
The new one will be my vintage merchandise and sewn items I make from vintage materials. It works because it makes more sense to the customer, plus I'm a member of the Vintage Street Team and one of the requirements is that at least 75% of your shop is true vintage and/or products made with vintage components. So this will work out well in that respect.
But, coming up with a name for the new vintage shop has been making me nuts.
I must have gone through 50 different names, versions and rewrites; wrote some down and looked at them a few days later only to toss them out anyway. The thing is, I've been using the name 'artsfarm' for 10 years now, and it's kind of got a life of its own at this point. It's on everything, everywhere; I use it for shows, e-mails, my website, etc and most people just call me that instead of my 'real' name. I don't want to lose that identity advantage; it fits anything art-related and that's cool.
But--I'm already concerned that the vintage shop is going to lose business for several reasons:
1-As it stands now, I have a LOT of vintage items with many hearts and views and will lose them once I deactivate the listings to move them. This will cause me to basically start over like a new seller.
2-Whatever followers and repeat customers I do have won't find me. I know we're supposed to mention any sister shop in our shop announcements, but I know from experience that barely anyone reads the announcement, profiles or even entire item listings.
3-The new search function on Etsy will have vintage and supplies in a drop-down list underneath handmade, so a new customer will have to know to do this to find me. Again, I'm betting on less than half of new visitors to know instinctively to do this. Each extra click to do anything online is one less chance to be seen.
So what to do? Like I said, I went through lists of name ideas and chucked them for being too cute, pretentious, boring, weird and more. Then I got an idea that was almost too simple: Adding something to 'artsfarm' that indicates the two shops are connected. I remembered places like "The Limited" adding "Too" as they expanded, and others like it. It seems to work for huge mega-chains, so I suppose it's proved its merit. So 'artsfarmtoo' it will be, it seems. I tried out 'artsfarm2'--boring and looks like an e-mail address; 'artsfarmII'-hard to explain to others and it looks like two lower-case "L"s. Using "too" indicates it's also me, or in addition to me.
BONUS: I did a username search on Etsy on just 'arts' and got 10 pages with me about 1/2way down the first page, which is great. They're alphabetical so this new name will most likely end up right under the original one making the connection for buyers easy to make. While there, I was totally amused to see how many different versions of the phrase 'artsy-fartsy' people came up with LOL!
As a side note, I had an antiques shop a while back called "Aesthetics and Old Lace" which I thought was extremely clever, being a play on the film title and I've always loved the word 'aesthetics'. The problem with that one was the surprising number of people who had no idea either what the word meant, nor knew about the movie. Oh well, you learn to adapt.
Thoughts?
-artsfarmtoo :-)
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Once you get it going, be sure to give us an update. I've toyed around the idea of a second shop, although I'm nowhere near ready, so hearing about it will help.
I love that movie!!!!!