This month it was my pleasure to interview Lisa Chamoff. Lisa has run Indie Untangled since 2013 and has a wealth of experience running handmade businesses. She shares her story on the creation of the marketplace and how it has evolved since it was originally launched. Find a problem and solve it has been Lisa’s mantra and recipe for growth.
See below for answers to all the basics about Indie Untangled, and check out the interview on YouTube for even more gems and nuggets of wisdom as part of our interview.
Can you share the origin story behind the marketplace?
I started knitting around 2007. A few years later I got an invitation to the the website Ravelry. And that was a pattern marketplace that also has forums and I found like a local knit group through it.
That started me down the the rabbit hole of Indie dyed yarn and also visiting one of my local yarn shops. I live in New York City and there was a shop that sold Madeline Tosh. Back then it was the founder basically just dying in her kitchen.
That was kind of like the gateway. Through my one of my local knitting groups, I heard about all these other dyers, heard about the New York sheep and wool festival and Rhinebeck. All of this got me this this art form deeper.
Six years later I was laid off from my job. When I was on the Ravelry forums, several makers started talking about the growing challenges with Etsy. This was before they relaxed the rules around handmade as they were eying going public.
I had a light bulb moment. I thought- there should be something like this for hand dyed yarn. I use Ravelry to keep track of shop updates. At this time not a lot of dyers had their own websites.
And then there would be some dyers who’s yarn would sell out like within five minutes. So you’d have to plan your day around um getting this. I thought that there should be more of that kind of platform for yarn dyers. This was around this time in 2013.
What countries/locations/categories are eligible to be sold on your marketplace?
We serve the yarn industry. Independent yarn dyers, anyone who makes accessories like so project bags, and stitch markers. We also have knit and crochet pattern designers for fiber crafters. Since it is posting on our platform and selling through your own individual site, we are able to welcome sellers from all over the world.
Are you focused on specific niches or is it a general marketplace?
We are a niche platform for the yarn industry.
Can you share more of how the marketplace worked when it first launched, and how it has been evolving?
So when I started in 2013, I had to explore what was going to work for the platform. I couldn’t really make the investment in something completely new and then, you know, just hope that the dyers would follow. And actually, in in retrospect, it was a very smart decision because there are just so many challenges that come with running a marketplace. Like just sales tax for one. A lot of states have marketplace facilitator laws. So if you run an online marketplace, you have to handle sales tax for for all of your sellers. That’s a lot.
So anyway, I ended up hiring Aeolidia, which is a design and development firm. They had designed a website of a dyer that I really liked. And then worked they worked with me to to create a custom site. It works like a social media platform or a blog in a way.
The sellers will fill out a form basically just like publishing a post with a number of images. And then that gets published to the site after I review it.
I realized what resonates with me and what resonates with my fellow crafters is really that call single, you know call to action. So like if somebody’s coming out with a new series of yarns inspired by something or um like a big thing or like these holiday countdown boxes. I’ll ask the other seller to create one URL to to that product and then so when someone clicks the button, they’re taken directly to that listing.
I started with small fees. The minimum was $2. Over time I updated the prices for posts. The marketplaces has worked very similarly to the beginning, with the exception of the subscriptions.
How do your fee structures work?
We have two different models, one is a la carte, and the other is membership based.
Our platform is comprised of posts. For a la carte, the cost of the post is $5. And then there are fees like $25 for a featured post, which that gets them higher up in the newsletter that I send out every Friday. Featured posts also get posted on Instagram. I also have Instagram stories that they can upgrade to.
There’s also a way that they can be featured in the newsletter.
I have one main featured product and then the subsequent product. I also started memberships that get you in front of the audience more regularly. That costs $100 per year, and then they can post every week, so as much as as they want.
What do you do to attract both sellers and buyers to your marketplace?
When I launched, I knew that that a newsletter was going to be a big component. I had a background as a writer. And that was just a key, that was always going to be a key element and that just that personal connection. In general, when you’re talking about handmade sellers, that’s really a given because of the big buy-ins that business owners are supported, they create that personal touch and it’s art coming from them.
It shows who we are and the direction of our business. I would tell artisans this is an important part of your business that helps you connect with your buyer.
Years later I also added a trunk show event prior to Rhinebeck festival. This has also led a lot of buyers to come to my site. I continue to add things by looking for a problem and solving it. This has helped me bring a lot of buyers to our site over the years.
From your perspective, what makes a good product listing for your site?
I would say definitely inserting yourself into your promotion as much as possible and to try to create a connection point. There have been great promotions, like there was a group of dyers, I think like four or five from the Colorado area and they’d work together to have this yarn from Navajo churro sheep, and each one of them dyed a color, and they were selling it as a set. They approached it was like one set, one dyer who facilitated the promotion through the indie untangled marketplace. Something like that really resonates with people, where they can just see the the thought that was put into the process of developing the product.
If it’s a holiday box and it’s inspired by like someone’s favorite holiday movie, that’s a way. And and even if like you know I haven’t seen that, I can still like that their passion for for that particular project comes through. And I always try to encourage so like when a seller posts to the marketplace, and I’ll approve posts where it’s written in the third person, but I just find that a post or or listing will resonate when somebody you know speaks in the first person and and talks about their own connection to the product. As a shopper, that’s always going to move me a little more- someone’s personal story behind the product.
What advice would you give artisans when looking at a marketplace to know if it might be right for them?
Yeah, so I would, I would think about where, where your customers are. So, um, I think in my industry, that’s, you know, Etsy was always really where people, what people thought of it’s where a lot of like the larger yarn company. So like Madeline Tosh, for example, that’s where they got started.
Etsy’s definitely evolved over the years, but there is a lot of, sellers of hand dyed yarn. I would look at where you think your customers would go, what kind of work the marketplace does on its own to attract customers. Do they have the expertise to help buyers?
I would also consider the mission of the marketplace, and who they are serving. And finally I would consider being on multiple marketplaces to see which ones work for you.
How do people get started on your site?
You can go to our website to sign up!
