Get Folksy
Posted by Joelle
July 16, 2008
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Rulers by GetFolksy on Flickr
Enchanted by the name, I’ve been keeping an eye on folksy.com for a year or more, since a mysterious message appeared there about beta testing. It seems the project finally launched in beta a week ago, and is taking it’s first faltering steps towards becoming a suitably marvellous site.
A lot like a UK based Etsy, this is a place to buy and sell items by crafters and small designers. There’s also a making section which will showcase how to guides and stories about the making of items on the site. Currently there’s a good showing of work for sale from design graduates. Here’s my picks:
Saturday Morning screenprinted tote bag by Mr.PS, 300 plate by CJ O’Neill
Alice in Wonderland moleskin notebooks by Champignons, Laminated chair by Jamie Ward, all on Folksy.
12 comments Categories: craft, design, shopping
July 16th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Wow, I love those notebooks! And I have been wanting a UK based Etsy for a while now, Dawanda is the closest I have found so far, so will definitely be checking it out! That’s great! :)
July 17th, 2008 at 11:39 am
You are so clever at finding cool stuff! This definitely looks worth a gander.
July 17th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Em, just out of curiosity, what’s the appeal of a UK-based site for you?
I only ever sell supplies on Etsy myself – I’m about to organise a huge clear-out of my craft cupboard even as we speak – so I perhaps don’t know enough about the actual business of selling crafts there, but I’d always assumed that the location of the site didn’t really have any bearing on the seller’s experience. I’m interested to know about your experiences.
July 17th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
To be honest, the main attraction is being able to deal in pounds sterling – Paypal charge for exchanging currency and I find it confusing knowing what to charge in other currencies (which is ridiculous considering I’m a mathematician, but I’m all for an easy life!)
I haven’t actually sold anything on Esty, but I worry both about over/under charging, and also about items being damaged in shipping.
I have always wanted to be able to sell on a UK based site, but now you have asked me about the reasons I’m not really sure where this comes from! As really, the reasons I have given are clearly easily resolved.
July 17th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
For me, the most important thing is: does the site reach my target market?
Etsy, love it or loathe it, definitely reaches the crafters themselves, crafty shoppers and the people who like to blog about neat finds. Sites like DaWanda, Ruby Lane, etc., don’t. I’d always rather get my head round a slightly different pricing structure and benefit from the massive exposure that Etsy has than languish in an unloved corner of the web – heck, I have my own site for that (kidding, kidding).
As for folksy, I’m not sure it’s doing anything different enough. If it’s just “the British Etsy”, then I’m not interested – lots of sellers on Etsy are British, if that’s important to you, and if it’s not then it seems strange to restrict your focus like that. If it were, say, “the art Etsy” or “the furniture Etsy”, something specialised and high-end, I’d be interested. As it is, I can’t see the appeal. Add to that that the colour scheme is horrible, some very poor-quality items have already been listed (and picked for the front page!) and it has retained some of Etsy’s most annoying features (logging in to buy – why?)… It strikes me as a wasted opportunity, to say the least.
July 17th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Yeah, I’ve never really understood why I have to log in to Etsy.
Obviously I’d have the opposite problem to Em on the folksy site, in that I’m all about the dollars now! I do like the bean, eggs and sausages bag, though!
July 17th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
I sort of agree with you Kerry about it being too similar to Etsy. I’d like to see it take a more high end or specialised route – and offering really nice items like furniture and quality jewellery. I guess that’s the filtering you get with good shops, but then you lose the direct contact with sellers. I never have the patience to hunt through so much poor quality stuff as there is on Etsy – almost always just following recommendations in other blogs rather than browsing. The Folksy blog says the most interest they have had so far is from UK people who are already on Etsy. They are looking at ways to target more design grads though – that’s what I’d like to see.
Still, I do think it’s good to have a UK based site – I try to avoid buying stuff that has to be shipped round the planet to get to me, and the exchange rate does work against UK Etsy sellers at the moment.
July 19th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I guess my thinking was that since these other sites are smaller, there was more chance my items would get seen on them than on Etsy, which has a lot more sellers. But I guess I never considered the fact that, of course, Etsy will also have more potential customers looking round!
July 28th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Hey,
Kerry, Em – I thought I’d just chip in and respond to some of your comments.
Folksy has a different proposition to Etsy in that we’re trying to be more top end. Our focus is in serving the graduate market of designers and ’serious’ crafters. That’s not to say we don’t support others but our principal market is definitely more top end – and we’ve already got lots of very talented people on the site. However, we also have some items that are not probably deemed ‘desirable’. How we deal with that is a big issue for us but we have some plans in the pipeline to deal with it. When we researched the service back in 2006/7 we spoke to a lot of crafters and designers and the thing that was brought out again and again was that Etsy was too downmarket. But we believe that a lot of very talented ‘amateur’ crafters and designers exist and we did not want the service to be for Craft Council types only. For us much of the most creative and interesting work is from ‘amateurs’ rather than the preserve of full-time ‘artists’ / ‘designers’. But it’s not easy bridging the two: we’ve found that most ‘trained’ designers see themselves as distinct, as an ‘elite’.
In terms of market, Etsy was once small and actually from the research we’ve done we found that awareness of Etsy was actually very low outside of the hard-core online crafter groups in the UK. There are two things we are pushing to do:
1. raise awarenes of Folksy to a more mainstream audience – this we’ll be doing in activity through the year [can't say much about that now as we don't have everything signed and agreed]. Much of the activity on Etsy seems to be between crafters and we want to be more mainstream than that – we want to give you a wider market to go at and be a more customer faciong brand [but this takes time!]
2. make sure the service is findable and usable to buyers. We believe that our architecture and our design [UI] makes things easier to find that Etsy and many of the craft and design ecomm sites [proven in usability tests we've done]. We’re trying – whilst in early beta – to improve this and we’ve had some great feedback so far. Actually one of the things we’re reviewing is the requirement to register / login to buy which you raise [which we - and presumably etsy do - to allow the feedback mechanism to work]. Expect changes there in the coming weeks and months.
As regards the aesthetic, i’m sorry you don’t like it. :( Most of the responses we’ve had have been very positive but it’s good to have critical feedback to keep us on our toes and know we’ve got to do better. Of course, if you come and join and comment through the feedback on site and in the forums you’ll be able to effect change more easily :)
Cheers,
James
@Folksy
July 28th, 2008 at 11:38 am
eek.. forgot the end tag for italics!
and thanks @joelle for the riff :D
July 29th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Actually, having a UK site IS important for us UKers. – I’ve been looking around the Folksy site and blog and have been impressed by their going-out-there attitude, in the way that the Etsy team do – but of course, Etsy do that in America, which isn’t much use if you’re not over there. They seem to be more than just a selling site and want to actively promote crafting, (as Etsy does in the USA) so hopefully in months to come we in Britain can have the same kind of fairs, get-togethers and workshops. How much promo does Etsy do in the UK?
As for it reaching my target audience, I’ve lost count of the amount of feedback I’ve had through UK people reaching Etsy through my own website and thinking it was purely an American site as it is all in dollars, getting confused with the way it works and giving up. And so many US based shops in Etsy seem oblivous to International shipping, and don’;t offer it, or price it way too high.
And on a personal note, it is so nice to be able to price in pounds, have postcodes first instead of zip codes and generally feel more ‘at home’. I am hoping that the publicity they do will be aimed a lot at home magazines – America has Martha, we have Country Living/Selvedge and others.
Etsy has benefitted a lot through word of mouth, people linking their shops on their blogs, it grew because people helped it grow, and there is no reason why Folksy shouldn’t do similar – I will be giving it a mention on my blog, in fact, through one person telling me about it in an email today, I have already been spreading the word and people are very interested.
I personally like the look of the site, (these things are always going to be a matter of taste) and I really, really like the atmosphere – it has a buzz and energy about it which I find sadly lacking on Etsy nowadays.
July 29th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Thanks James for taking the time to respond – to me at least it sounds like the aims you have are spot on, and I hope you achieve what you’re trying to.
Thanks for your comments too PG. It is exciting I agree to see some UK craft promoting going on. I did hear that Etsy had a UK street team but have never come across them anywhere, and I haven’t seen any advertising or editorial in UK press. I think the UK audience for them is very much crafters and readers of craft blogs. Would be great to have workshops or big renegade style craft fairs!