How AerisWings got started
Introduce your Etsy shop and tell us your story. How did you begin and decide on what to sell on Etsy, and how do you create your products?
We started our handmade ring business five years ago when we were university students. At that time, the team was made up of me (Balázs), the maker and designer of the rings, and my twin brother (Kornél). We always dreamed about working with gemstones, which we were collectors of ever since we were little children. I always liked working on something and had a passion for art, so the idea to make rings came from me. We even managed to find a way to include our interest in gemstones by creating continuous inlays of them in our rings, giving them an interesting look that was unique and rare in Hungary, meaning we couldn’t find anything like it at commercial jewelry stores.
At first, we didn’t have the necessary tools for ring making, and as former university students (we even quit to focus on our idea), we had no money to buy fancy machinery. We didn’t even have a lathe, but this didn’t stop us from making our first rings. We bought a drill, a few chunks of wood, and made one for ourselves! These were the early days, which we are very proud of; we even included them on our Etsy page to share how our determination to make art for others kept us going. Of course, nowadays we have a proper lathe and many other tools, and we are always searching for new ways to make our rings better than ever!
Etsy came into the picture on day one as an easy-to-use international platform for handmade items. The ease of use was crucial at first, as we did not have any experience with selling on the internet. It helped us find the people who were interested in the kind of jewelry we are making, moving us forward as a business. We can never express how grateful we are to each and every one of our customers who entrusted us with the creation of their wedding rings or wedding bands. Etsy helped us find them (and keeps helping us do so).
From the very beginning and to the present, all of our rings have been made-to-order and handcrafted for each of our customers, which enables us to follow their wishes and ideas for every ring. Nowadays, a large portion of our orders are custom requests, meaning that a customer looks at our Etsy page, finds an interesting ring design, and requests some modifications to their liking. Different metal base, different gemstones, different finishes Then we start working on it from scratch, and once it's ready, a completely new ring design is born, which is then uploaded to Etsy so that others can see it, too. This lets us easily follow the current demand for ring styles in a natural way by closely following the needs of our customers. But we also like experimenting on our own! There wasn’t a time when we didn’t have a new project running behind the scenes. Whenever we have extra time, we look for new gemstones, metals, tools, and ways to make something completely new.
Favourite items
What are your favorite items? What makes these so special? Why do you think these items might be selling well?
When you put so much work and care into making a ring from scratch, you start to like each and every one of them in a certain way. When you realize that a work of art in your hands will be a symbol of love for someone on the other side of the world and will be worn for years, you feel a sense of responsibility that is unparalleled in other fields. Even if we initially find a specific request or idea from a customer odd, on many occasions, by the time we finish the ring, we are absolutely in love with the result.
Some of our rings are especially close to our hearts. For example, not so long ago, we started working with fossilized dinosaur teeth. We apply them in the inlay the same way we do with other gemstones, and it gives an interesting result, which we really like. This one here was made from a grade 5 titanium metal base, which we turned on a lathe ourselves, and was filled with Velociraptor tooth.
Imagine wearing something more than 70 million years old! Lately, a lot of our customers are requesting rings with dinosaur fossils in them, even for other ring designs! Sometimes we even put iron-nickel meteorite fragments next to it (we were a bit surprised when they first asked for one). It’s kind of ironic, considering that the dinosaurs themselves were wiped out because of a large meteorite.
Speaking of meteorites, these fragments look good with other materials, like opal. This one is one of our favorites. It’s a black ceramic ring with black obsidian, ocean blue opal, and gibeon-meteorite flakes. It includes unconventional materials but also has a really deep color at the same time. The black ring base lets the opal dominate the feel of the ring; it looks like a floating piece of inlay in itself when you look at it. The materials are a bit chaotic; there’s no order to how the pieces are arranged, resulting in an interesting continuous texture.
Wood rings are a style we haven't mentioned yet but are a big part of our shop. There’s a large variety of exotic types that we use, each with a different texture or color (even black and white). It took us years of experimenting with skin-friendly binders and coatings to develop techniques enabling us to make durable rings from them, and we are really proud of the results. We included a classic one here made from fumed eucalyptus with an inlay of two colors of opal.
Our favorite material to work with is tungsten carbide, commonly referred to as simply "tungsten" when used in a ring. It is a type of ceramic, very strong, very hard, almost impossible to scratch its surface, and surprisingly heavier than our medical-grade stainless steel rings. The material is so strong that they use it in metal-cutting tools, but after polishing, it looks like metal itself. When polished, it retains its luster indefinitely; even sandpaper cannot harm it occasionally. This ring is an asymmetric design made from this material with crushed amethyst in the inlay. We love the color purple (and our customers do too), so amethyst is a regularly used material at our place.
Getting sales on Etsy
How long did it take for you to earn your first sale and how do you currently attract customers to your Etsy shop?
Our first sale was two weeks after we opened the Etsy store. It was a nerve-wracking wait during those few days. Remember, this was our first time selling anything on the internet, or even anywhere! We'd already spent most of our money on basic tools and materials, and we'd made a few ring designs, but we knew we wouldn't be able to take off without some marketing. Thankfully Etsy was on hand; it streamlined a lot of the tasks for us, and we decided to start advertising on the platform to help customers see our rings. The decision was that if no one would buy a ring before spending a set amount (about 100 dollars), we would need to stop, otherwise we would not have enough money to continue.
Then came our first order! It was a simple wood ring with no gemstone in it, just a shiny, colorful layer on the inside, and it barely had a price of 10 euros. It gave us a confidence boost that whatever we were doing was starting to make sense. It did not take much for the next order, and by the end of the month, business took off. The next month we had 12 orders, and we no longer had to worry about success; we knew we had to continue.
Nowadays, the main platform is still our Etsy page. We have been continuously uploading rings after rings as they were made, updating descriptions, working on our photographing skills, and growing ever since. Of course, we made social media pages, too, like Facebook and Instagram (which are currently the most active pages), where we upload photos of our newest products regularly and link them to our Etsy page. However, most of our customers are still predominantly from Etsy; they reach us by browsing the page for rings. We know that for us, there’s still much to learn about digital marketing, and the world of selling on Etsy still holds great potential for growing even further. Sometimes it’s hard to work on rings and try to wrap our heads around various statistics, think about suitable keywords, and manage the shop at the same time, and we appreciate all kinds of help dealing with it.
Managing AerisWings
How do you manage your shop? Are you running solo or do you have any team members? What tools or services do you use to run your shop and how do you handle fulfillment?
The team has grown since starting the store, but managing it is still handled mainly by Balázs and Kornél. Newer team members are in charge of assisting with the decision-making process. Balázs tracks the details of what rings are to be made, and Kornél communicates with customers, updates the progress of orders, and does the engraving and packaging of finished rings. Etsy’s "Orders & Delivery" page helps us track most of the little customizations, gift messages, and wrappings needed for each customer. We still need to include a lot of private notes (additional information that only we can see) next to orders due to the large number of possible customizations for our rings, which are currently not handled automatically by Etsy. These are usually discussed with the customer in writing prior to making the ring, and sometimes we have trouble keeping track of them. Private notes are helpful because we do not need to reread an entire conversation to find the requested customizations; we just include them next to the order whenever we agree on a specific request.
What we realized early on about selling on Etsy is that communication is by far our most important task. When someone is planning to order a ring, possibly spending a substantial portion of their salary on a single item, they value it if they can talk to someone about it and not just read descriptions and automatic messages. Only a few of our customers buy rings without ever contacting us beforehand. Ring-making is a difficult process, especially if you are sending it across the world. There will be problems with sizing, expectations about colors and materials not being met, changes of mind, and shipment problems, but the outcome depends on how well we communicate them to customers.
We always encourage everyone to contact us about issues, and after 5 years now, we are confident to say that we can always (!) find good solutions. Our reviews reflect that as well, and we believe that the difference between a 4 star and a 4.9+ star store is the ability to handle customer requests with openness. For this reason, we regularly allocate time to keep in touch with customers at least daily, and it has been a considerable part of our store’s management ever since we started. For other tasks like shipping, we have great partners who developed online interfaces where we can initiate shipment of our rings with just a few clicks, but before them, we had to manually copy shipping details to the respective delivery companies’ pages. Thankfully, those days are over. Our biggest drawback by far is that we have little time to think about keywords and market research in general. We just upload products, sometimes reusing the same keywords, and do not update them to more closely match the market as time progresses. Though we are satisfied with the current state of our store, any further growth will necessitate more effort in this area, and we are in search of possible apps that could help us.
The future of AerisWings
What goals do you have for your shop in the future?
Our long-term goal is creating a store which gives the opportunity for customers to select from a seemingly infinite number of materials and designs for their rings, fully customized, and still be able to receive it as fast as they would get a premade ring from a jewelry store. experiencing all the advantages of working with a goldsmith, but with the simplicity of a web shop. This means that we intend to continue creating made-to-order rings (no premade rings in bulk), focusing on the requests of our customers. We continuously expand our inventory of gemstones and materials, and we are on the lookout for tools that help us finish a ring faster while maintaining and improving its quality. On the short term, we are planning to put more effort into our marketing and branding, which is essential for growing our business beyond its current state. An interesting feature on Etsy that we still have not had time to implement is making videos of our rings, which would massively help in showing our customers the true beauty of our rings.
Advice for new sellers
What’s your advice for a new seller starting an Etsy shop?
Anyone planning to sell handcrafted items on the internet has already taken the first step by opening an Etsy store. From then on, the most important thing to focus on is the product itself. Don’t stress over the pricing and competition; there’s enough room on Etsy for everyone! Take a few hours to browse Etsy and get a general feel for how people advertise a given product. Check the price range of similar items and don’t settle on the lowest one; people coming to Etsy are not interested in the cheapest they can find; they are looking for unique items! Don’t inflate your prices either, because the higher the price is, the higher the expectations are, both in terms of the quality of the product and the experience working with you as a seller (customer service), and it's easier to fall short of those expectations if you have less experience. This is true whenever you start a new type of product later as well. Take time to put work into making your product a convincing "front page." For us, photos are the most important, because most of the time, whether people get hooked on a product or not is decided in a millisecond by looking at the thumbnail. You could have the best product in the world, but if your thumbnail photo is of poor quality, is not centered, or has bad proportions (the item is too small or too big), people will rather jump to a more interesting thumbnail instead.
Some sellers really get inspired by hearing numbers. Feel free to share these if you like.
Question: How much is your monthly revenue?
Answer: Around 10 000 EUR monthly.
Question: What is your average profit margin?
Answer: 25-30%
Question: What is your shop’s conversion rate?
Answer: 0.6% (not good, but enough for a business like this)
AerisWings
Unique Handcrafted Jewelry
