New Year, New Start

After much deliberation, I have finally decided to move my (fairly) new Etsy Supply Shop over to Zibbet.

For all the bells, whistles, and traffic that Etsy has, I just can't get past a few issues, like the utter disregard for sellers' requests and needs, the lack of customer service (whether seller or buyer), the refusal to deal with obvious resellers, and the cavalier abandonment of the site's founding dedication to handmade. Don't be fooled by their "redefinition" of handmade; Etsy now allows manufactured goods under the guise of handmade.

Zibbet, on the other hand, listens to its sellers. Really! They are ALL about customer service, they swiftly boot resellers, and they remain steadfastly devoted to those whose work is truly handmade.
And as far as the bells and whistles available on Etsy? Well, Zibbet will be rolling out a total rebuild in 2014: New Year, New Start!

One small example of how they listen to sellers? They created a brand new category (handmade supplies) within 5 minutes of my mentioning, in an e-mail to one of the site's founders, that there was a need for such. 5 minutes!

So, with all the negatives on Etsy, plus the fact that views dropped drastically (for almost everyone) in September (don't even get me started on this - theories abound as to the reason, but Etsy is mum on the topic), I have set up my supply shop on Zibbet, under the name "Sweet Supplies" - to reflect it being a division of Sweet Freedom Designs. Starting last night, I began moving my existing listings over from Etsy. The migration process is a slow, tedious one; while Zibbet has a fantastic tool for automatically importing the listings, I have decided that this is a great opportunity to redo photos where needed, and just in general tweak each listing: New Year, New Start. So I'm keeping all the listings deactivated until every one of them is migrated, and then I'll have the grand opening, so to speak; I'm aiming for January 1.

And if I have time during this Holiday break from the bead shop, I'll also be migrating over the last 45 or so listings in my Etsy jewelry shop - my jewelry will all be available on Zibbet.

I brought home 3 separate beading projects that I really wanted to work on during this down time, but I realized yesterday, while working on a new bracelet, that there would never be a better concentrated stretch of time for all the drudgery involved in re-doing the photos and re-working all the listings. And once I return to the bead shop, I have a lot of enameled beads to make (and photograph, and list). It never ends, right?

I hope you have a Happy New Year! Do you have any changes planned?