Etsy Seller Interview with Genevieve of BestiesPetTags

How BestiesPetTags 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?

I’m Genevieve Vasquez, the owner, and founder of Besties Pets. We make silicone pet ID tags that are silent, durable, and (most importantly) adorable. We offer a wide variety of designs that let your pet stand out from the pack. I founded Besties back in 2020 with my husband, Eric. Like many founders, we started with an idea, a dream, and just enough naiveté to believe we could make it. My background is in product development, and my husband is a designer. It felt very natural for us to combine our talents and offer our unique and creative spin on a product that we love.

While searching for a new ID tag for our pup Hubble, we stumbled across silicone dog tags. We immediately loved its functionality, but we struggled to find any designs that fit Hubble’s spunky personality. This sparked the idea to design and develop a series of silicone tags that are as fun as they are functional. We wanted to create designs that are reflective of the pets' personalities and what they love to do, rather than just bones, stars, and fire hydrants.

Eric is a graphic designer, and he is the creative force behind all of the designs, while I handle the sourcing and supply chain. We focus on designs that are expressive of things we love doing with our pets: being outside, going on adventures, and seeking joy in everything around us. When it came time to source our tags, I searched far and wide for a silicone supplier with a long-standing record of using the highest quality materials, molders who are masters in their craft, and QC standards that go above and beyond. The supplier we use is a family-run business that cares about the quality of our tags as much as we do, which is exactly what we wanted to find; it’s a true partnership.

Favorite items

What are your favorite items? What makes these so special? Why do you think these items might be selling well?

By far, my favorite items are in our Design Your Own Tag collection. Within this assortment, we offer an exciting opportunity to design your pet a tag that is as unique as they are. We offer 13 colors, 11 designs, and 4 fonts to choose from, and we are always working on new designs and colors to keep the collection fresh. We even offer the ability to create one-of-a-kind custom artwork. We’ve made so many cute designs inspired by characters, foods, locations, favorite games, etc. The possibilities really are endless!

This collection sells exceptionally well for us. I believe this is due to the desire for products that feel personal to you and allow you to express yourself. Our pets aren't boring, and their tags shouldn’t be either. They have vibrant and unique personalities, and people want to let them shine.

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?

We had been in business for about a year before we opened our Etsy shop, and looking back, I wish we had opened it sooner. To our surprise and excitement, we got a sale the very first day our listing went live! It didn’t take long for us to catch on to the massive potential for our products on Etsy. One of my favorite things is how supportive the community of shoppers on Etsy is. We find that our shoppers on Etsy genuinely appreciate the time and care that goes into our products and are more supportive of small shop makers like us. Another thing I love about selling on Etsy is how user-friendly it is compared to other platforms. Etsy makes it so easy to share your listings, and their advertising is extremely easy to set up and very seamless to use. Right now, Etsy brings about 73% of the traffic to our listings, while 27% is generated through direct traffic and ads.

Managing BestiesPetTags

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?

I personally manage the Etsy shop and order fulfillment myself. We integrate our Etsy shop into our Shopify store using Shuttle. The Shuttle app serves three main functions for us. The first is that it offers automation to push our listings on Shopify into Etsy, which pre-populates a lot of the fields for us and cuts down on our setup time for new listings. The second is that it automatically pushes orders from our Etsy shop to our Shopify store, where we can integrate them with our other orders and batch them all for fulfillment at the same time. The last is that it pushes the fulfillment data and tracking information back into Etsy. With this integration, we have been able to streamline processes and save a lot of time and effort.

Outside of Etsy, we use all kinds of tools to keep ourselves organized and running on all cylinders. The list of tools we use is long, but these are our most-used apps:

• G-Suite for all of our file storage
• Adobe Creative Suite for generating assets
• ShippingEasy for shipping orders
• QuickBooks for accounting

The future of BestiesPetTags

What goals do you have for your shop in the future?

Our goal on Etsy and for Besties, in general, is to continue building relationships within our community to bring Besties to as many people and pets as possible. We plan to do this by growing our product assortment into new categories of pet products, all while continuing to deliver the best customer care, shopping journey, and product quality.

Advice for new sellers

What’s your advice for a new seller starting an Etsy shop?

My advice for new sellers is to set their fears aside and start where they are. We have been on Etsy for a little over a year, and our store has evolved so much in that time. I would say to prepare as much as you possibly can, and then take the leap into getting your listings live. From there, you can always improve and optimize your listings as you learn more. The sooner you launch your shop, the sooner you can start to generate customer feedback and reviews, and you can iterate on what is working well from there.

I would recommend spending time researching Etsy's best practices on listing names, SEO keywords within your product description, tags on your listings, product photography, and cross-promoting on Pinterest. If those aren’t your strong suits (like myself), there are so many accessible resources out there to connect with experts who can help you in those areas. I have personally worked with Etsy experts from the website Fiverr, and I was really pleased with the outcome.

Thank you for taking the time to read! We wish you luck and success in all of your future endeavors.

            -Genevieve and the Besties Pack 

Some sellers really get inspired by hearing numbers. Feel free to share these if you like.

Question: What is your shop’s conversion rate?
Answer: Our conversion rate for 2022 was 4.5%, and we have seen it steadily increase over time. Our conversion rate is currently at 4.8%, and we hope to continue growing that number.