How One Etsy Seller Helps Fellow Makers Overcome Their Biggest Hurdle — Themselves
Alaina Smith joined Etsy in 2010. However, she didn’t start selling until 2013.
“I think it’s important to note both dates,” she told us recently. “Like many sellers, I had a lot of anxiety about opening up a shop online.”
Now, Alaina is able to make a living by designing, making and selling geometric jewelry and hand painted leather goods for her business, ColdGold.
“If you had told me five years ago that one day fairly soon, I’d be able to quit my job and do ColdGold full time, I would have been shocked,” she said. “Now the fact that I did it makes total sense. It’s who I am.”
For Alaina, the missing ingredient was confidence. It took a major order through Etsy to show Alaina that she was onto something.
Now, she brings that confidence to other makers in and around her home of Knoxville, Tennessee. In recent years, Alaina helped start a maker community action team called The Maker City, partnered with Etsy to hold three Maker City Summits in Knoxville, and serves on the Mayor’s Maker Council.
Alaina also helps nurture and mentor new Etsy sellers in East Tennessee through Etsy’s Craft Entrepreneurship Program (CEP), which equips creative people in underserved communities with the knowledge and skills to start Etsy businesses and earn supplemental income through their craft. In the past year, she has taught five classes and graduated 73 students, resulting in the creation of 65 Etsy shops and more than 1,400 sales, at last count.
“Much of the class is learning the basics of navigating and utilizing Etsy, but I’ve seen that my students mostly just need someone to believe in them,” Alaina told us. “I can relate, because it took me three years to actually list and sell anything on Etsy. I, like them, was nervous that I wouldn’t do a good enough job or that no one would want what I made. Etsy CEP is the perfect place to gain confidence and grow.”
CEP offers a hands-on educational toolkit that helps makers use their existing craft skills to learn how to start, manage and grow a microbusiness. It is designed to be taught in-person by experienced, local Etsy sellers who are trained and prepared for the classroom. Participants put their learning directly into action by creating and running an Etsy shop, and they are able to practice strategies for success across a variety of selling environments.
The program is run in partnership with organizations that seek to empower lower income individuals through creative and interactive programming. These organizations provide our curriculum to students with craft and/or manufacturing skills who would benefit from support in learning to apply their talents to an entrepreneurial endeavor.
Etsy started CEP to support its goal of helping cities across the world realize the vision of an inclusive, thriving Etsy Economy. As middle-skill, middle-wage jobs continue to decline, Etsy sellers’ work represents a societal shift toward empowering, flexible entrepreneurship that generates meaningful supplemental income (see our latest report on the subject here). By offering the CEP curriculum through community organizations, we are helping to make our vision of the Etsy Economy accessible to underserved communities throughout the US and beyond.
We are proud that CEP has brought a meaningful impact to communities since 2013, and we are excited to help offer the curriculum to many more cities. If you are an organization looking to partner, a seller looking to teach, or an Etsy Team interested in bringing this program to your city, please visit our website to learn more.
