Case Study: Crafting a Multi-Platform Ceramic Business

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How Brenda turned her handmade creations into a cross-platform success with Crosslist

Brenda has always been drawn to art. As a child, she would often try to fashion all sorts of intricate designs from the mud in the garden — much to the chagrin of her parents. As time went by, her love for turning mud into art led her to pottery.

As she grew older, she continued to hone and explore her skills in regular after-school pottery classes. After the very first class, she knew that she had found her passion. Once she got the hang of it, she spent all her free time creating: adorning the shelves in her house with her ceramic creations.

Brenda had always dreamed of turning her passion into her career by being an artist for a living, so as soon as she had the chance, she started selling her handmade ceramics at local markets.

The products resonated so much with the local community that she knew it was time to expand, and so Brenda’s online selling story began.

Her Etsy store, BriCeramics, which specialized in handmade ceramic Christmas trees, quickly became a haven for those seeking unique, artisanal ceramic items. Here’s a look at one of her beautiful creations:

Her handcrafted bowls, plates, and decorative items garnered a loyal customer base on Etsy. With her growing popularity, Brenda was urged by friends and customers alike to consider reaching a broader audience by venturing into other online platforms.

One platform that repeatedly came up was eBay, known for its diverse customer base and potential for high sales volumes.

The challenge:

While the idea of expanding was exciting, the practicalities were daunting. Brenda’s items were unique – each product description, image, and price was specific to the individual piece.

Recreating her extensive Etsy inventory on eBay seemed like a monumental task. Plus, given the unique nature of her products, inventory management was crucial – selling a one-of-a-kind ceramic piece or custom order on Etsy and having the same item purchased on eBay would be a logistical nightmare.

She also worried about maintaining the personal touch in her product listings, which had become her signature on Etsy, across multiple platforms.

Finally, the sheer volume of her existing inventory stopped her in her tracks as transferring it to eBay would be impossible. Even if she copy-pasted each of her listings, it would take her days to get through them all, giving her less time to work on actually creating.

But, the idea of selling on more than one platform had lodged itself in her mind. So, she began looking for solutions.

The solution:

A fellow artist Brenda met at a local art show mentioned that he had been selling wall art on Etsy and eBay for a while. When Brenda asked him how he juggled selling on two platforms without losing his mind, he mentioned that he used a cross listing tool called Crosslist.

With a blend of curiosity and hope, Brenda decided to look into Crosslist that evening. After seeing the many glowing reviews and the app’s simplicity, she decided to try it. The tool’s promise of making multi-channel listing easier and less time-consuming as well as giving her an easy way to transfer inventory between marketplaces also really appealed to her.

And she hasn’t looked back since! Her experience with the tool has been nothing less than transformative for her budding business:

• Tailored listings: Brenda’s products were unique, and she wanted each listing to reflect that. With Crosslist’s customizable templates, she could ensure each product description remained personal and detailed.
• Efficient listing process: Manually listing each ceramic piece was a thing of the past. With Crosslist’s bulk import and upload feature, Brenda was able to transfer her entire Etsy inventory into the Crosslist app and then easily upload to eBay in a fraction of the time she had anticipated. Crosslist also automatically informed her about any missing pieces of information that she had to fill in before she could cross post her inventory to eBay. This saved her from the big headache of having to check each listing for missing information.
• AI-generated listings: No matter how many unique pieces she had, Brenda could easily create engaging and informative product descriptions using Crosslist’s AI add-on. All she had to do was upload pictures and the entire description would be generated for her. She could tweak them to fit her voice and voila! Her listings were ready in minutes! Another bonus that she really appreciated was the fact that the AI add-on also gave her pricing suggestions. This helped her whenever she felt stuck on how to price a particularly unique creation. 
• Amazing picture quality: Brenda feared that by using a cross listing app, the quality of her images would be reduced when cross listing. However, with Crosslist, she quickly found out that images are stored at their native resolution in the Crosslist database. As a result, the quality of the images did not deteriorate when cross listing! Moreover, she could also enhance her images easily with Crosslist’s built-in advanced image editor.
• Brand consistency and inventory management: Crosslist’s single dashboard helped her keep track of her inventory very easily. This helped her make sure that she was not accidentally overselling any items. And by using the tool to create a single listing and post it on Etsy and eBay, she was able to maintain her brand consistency across both platforms as well!

The results:

1. Doubled sales

In just three months of branching out to eBay, Brenda witnessed a 90% uptick in her monthly sales. In fact, most of her sales are now made on eBay.

2. Broadened audience

Brenda found a new set of customers on eBay who were not active on Etsy, amplifying her reach. Many of these customers were looking to buy in bulk to resell in their physical stores, which meant a healthy uptick in the volume of units being sold.

3. Consistent brand voice

Despite selling on two different platforms, Brenda’s brand voice remained uniform, a testament to Crosslist’s meticulous listing management.

4. Tons of time saved

When selling on Etsy, Brenda used to manually upload each of her listings to the platform and recheck everything to make sure no fields were missing, which ate up quite a bit of her time. But, surprisingly, after expanding to eBay as well and using Crosslist to help her, Brenda found that the amount of time she spent on listing her products had actually reduced!

What Brenda has to say:

The takeaway:

Brenda’s journey highlights the potential growth artisans can achieve by tapping into multiple online sales platforms.

In niche segments like handmade ceramics, where each piece tells a unique story, tools like Crosslist ensure that these stories are told consistently, regardless of the platform.

By simplifying the listing process and ensuring inventory accuracy, Crosslist empowers sellers to focus on what they truly love – creating.