Well hi there. Welcome to my blog!
If you are reading this, you probably found me from my Etsy and as the title implies, March will be my last update for an indefinite amount of time and if you were curious, here’s why!
Hitting Pause and Life Updates
If you have followed me for some time, or just found me, you might know that I am a college student who has been doing Etsy for the last 2 years. When I started my Etsy shop, I was in my 3rd year of college, and my studio at Georgia Tech had just shut down for renovations. Because of this I ended up finding a studio off campus and transitioned from teaching to selling.
So in 2020, I started my Etsy shop, thinking that I wouldn’t sell a thing. I’ll circle back about Etsy a bit later, but its now 2022 , I’ve sold more than I would’ve ever thought on Etsy and I’m graduating!
Last November, I interviewed for my dream job in California, and in January, I found out that I got it. I am so excited to make the casual 2,500 mile cross country move from Atlanta to San Francisco to finally become a real engineer working in technical ceramics. I’m super excited, really grateful and it feels like a dream come true.
But, with that, I am also terrified and nervous about starting over again. Between looking at apartments, moving companies, game planning on how to ship my car and where to put my plants, the blank page is really daunting. And this is definitely the number 1 reason that I am putting a bit of a stop on Etsy for the time being, and don’t have a specific time that I will be returning. I think I know where I am going to live, and I am in the process of applying to different studios in the Bay Area. This whole process, while super exciting, has been really scary since I am often applying blindly to a studio and hoping that they have space for me. It’s also terrifying to think that for the last 2 years, I have finally nailed down what I want to sell, and my favorite glaze combos, and now I kind of have to start all over again.
The second reason I am hitting pause on Etsy is because of all the people that are currently in my life. Saying goodbye is really hard, and saying goodbye to a whole community of people that have been with me for 4 years has been really tough. I used to go to the studio 2x a week to make sure I could make monthly updates on Etsy. This has dropped to maybe going once every week or once every week and a half. I can’t really make products, take and edit photos, upload and ship everything out very consistently nowadays. Without getting too sappy, I have been in this “semester of yes” since February and have said yes to as many things as possible to maximize the limited time I have left with these people that I love so much.
The third reason is kind of similar to the previous one, but I also have been making a lot of things for myself and people in my life. While I have clay and glazes that I like, I have been making stuff for my really amazing lab group (and stressing about what to make for my research professor), goodbye gifts for friends and little requests from my mom and my boyfriend. I also have been making myself a set of dinnerware for myself which has been one of the hardest things I’ve every made. This has taken up the limited time that I am in studio, but I do have fun projects I want to document and write about – so maybe those posts here in the future!
The fourth and last reason has to do with Etsy itself. When I started Etsy, I really didn’t think I would sell a single thing. My first sell on Etsy was from my friend (Thanks Lauren!) and then when I got my second sale, it a big shock that it was from someone I didn’t know. At that point, I was trying to recoup anything in terms of money and was just having fun. When I passed 100 sales, I was still pretty sure it was a fluke, but I started taking it much more seriously and started to take better quality pictures, having better glaze combinations and also putting more money into Etsy ads.
But, people I knew in the pottery world had warned me about Etsy and how the percentage that I make off of Etsy is not as great as it seemed to be. In January of this year, Etsy announced that they had a record year in sales, and then promptly raised their commission fee from 3.5% to 5%. This meant that I now paid a fee for shipping labels, a fee for transactions, a listing fee, their ad fee and their commission fee that has now increased. With all of that, I was really barely making anything off of Etsy and many people had told me it was time to start thinking about transitioning off the platform.
On the other hand, I have been starting to sell here and there in person and to people that I know, and the amount of money and time that I save was astonishing to me. From small collective sales, holiday sales and selling on Facebook to people on campus, it has really opened my eyes to the percentage that Etsy takes off every sale I make.
I think I know that while in college, running my own website, ads, and everything else is not feasible. Etsy is not even profitable enough to be my job in college, its actually truly only a side gig that I do. With the majority of my time spent on school and research, there has been little time for me to dedicate to the administrative side of running a small pottery operation.
What’s next?
So the first thing on my list is to graduate, and hopefully sell off the remainder of my stock here in Atlanta. In the short term, I am wrapping up projects for people and I’m really optimistic in documenting the the last months I have at Mudfire. I am also still going to apply to studios in the Bay, and also planning the move and spending time with loved ones.
I have a few more blog posts in the works. I have a wrap up of 2021 that was supposed to be the post before this, but I have more pictures than I thought so its taking a bit to consolidate. I also have a breakdown of some of the projects that I have been working on in 2022 and then will be probably be back in Texas for a bit, probably hanging out with old pottery friends.
As for Etsy, I will make my way back on there soon. Hopefully, before the end of this year, but I will really be back soon-ish. The end goal is to eventually transition off of Etsy, but that takes time and investment and hopefully those two things will be more plentiful once I start working full-time. If you see anything that you want on my Etsy in the meantime though, my DMs on Instagram are always open and I do have a few things I will hopefully be slowly selling from my “back catalog”.
Thanks is not enough
I was writing this in my research lab, and my labmate was like “Woah this is really long”, so sorry that this was a bit of a long winded post. I really do need to take a second and say thank you for everyone who has bought from me, or saw my stuff. People that I’ve met in person or bought stuff from me off of Facebook have been super incredible and I’m always blown away. I got some really encouraging messages in my Instagram DMs these last 2 years and I have all these feelings that I really can’t put into words. So all I can offer is thanks, though thanks is not enough.
The staff at Mudfire and the people I have met in the pottery world have been fantastic. Long talks about all the ins and outs of business made me realize the limitations of my current situation and gain infinite appreciation for pottery folks. I really think I’ve made so much progress on my craft these last 1.5ish years at Mudfire. These last years really flew by fast.
Mudfire also taught me a really key idea about starting over. There’s a youtuber I watched that said “being in your twenties is being able to accept that your life is in a constant state of transition”. I am the first to say that I am not good at change (and my boyfriend would be the second) so when the studio at Georgia Tech shut down, I was devastated. But being at Mudfire made me realize that taking that leap of faith and starting over is possible, and so now, 2 years later, I have more faith that no matter what comes, it’ll be ok. My stuff, my craft, it won’t be “this” anymore, but it’ll transition too and hopefully y’all will stick around and see what I make next 🙂
Thanks being apart of a really fun journey. I’ll be back on Etsy hopefully sometime this year, but I’ll be here in the meantime if you want to stick around. Thanks for reading ❤
Leila's Ceramics 