Etsy Seller Interview with Katee of CiderRose

How CiderRose 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 Katee Blalock, the owner, and founder of Cider Rose on Etsy. We create and sell paint-your-own canvases with a variety of designs to match any theme, as well as paint-your-own plaster magnet kits and themed craft kits. I started Cider Rose in November of 2017 with the intent to create an additional income source for my family when my department at the university I worked for transitioned to a 10-month format. I knew I wanted a business fueled by my love of art and making things by hand, but also one that incorporated family traditions.

The inspiration for Cider Rose originated from a beloved family tradition. I adore family traditions; they are the ties that bind us even when we are separated. My family has an annual Christmas party where each family makes a small gift to hand out to each of the other families. I always make a handmade Christmas ornament each year, so I opened Cider Rose with a selection of my handmade sled ornaments and a line of hand-painted wood slice ornaments and holiday-themed paint-your-own magnets.

Knowing I needed more than a holiday to realize my dream of being a creative business owner and helping to support my family, I began thinking of all the fun crafts and activities I did with my kids when they were little, the memories they created, and the sweet keepsakes I have to this day that came from all those crafts. It’s such a fun, creative, and meaningful way to spend time with your kids. It teaches self-expression and fine motor skills, and it creates a relaxed environment to unwind and chat about their day. Their creativity comes to life, you make memories, and maybe, just maybe, a family tradition is born! So Cider Rose evolved into what it is today: arts and crafts to inspire celebration, quality family time, making memories and family keepsakes, or "crafting traditions," as I like to call it.

Our most popular designs have been inspired by our own family traditions. I took past crafts I created for my kids and packaged them up into complete kits for busy parents, teachers, grandparents, and anyone else looking for a meaningful, creative gift to give. Whether it’s for a birthday celebration, a holiday, a classroom party, or a rainy day activity, our paint-your-own canvases and magnets are made to be displayed, used, and cherished as a keepsake.

I hand paint each and every canvas myself, and I hand-pour each plaster magnet. My husband and I bake each batch of magnets, and package, and ship everything from our home workshop. We use a spare bedroom in our home and a small building in our backyard as our workshop, where we store all of our inventory and shipping materials. The ideas for our products initially came largely from the art and craft activities I had done with my kids, but more recently, product ideas have been inspired by popular requests from our customers for birthday themes and holiday parties.

I’ve always loved art and creative expression. I've painted since high school and have even sold some pieces locally. I was a cake decorator for years and ran a bakery specializing in wedding cakes from our home for several years. I’ve always needed a creative outlet, and Cider Rose has been that for me. I love that I can work with our customers to create something tailored to their unique style or their particular birthday theme. It’s very gratifying, and I feel honored to create something unique and specialized for each family.

Favorite items

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

My favorite products are our "Paint Your Own Easter Eggs," "DIY Party Kit," and "Set of 10 Canvas Paint Kits." These products are not only some of our top sellers, but some of my favorites as well! The Easter egg magnet kit was inspired by the holiday magnets I made with my kids and was featured by Etsy the year it debuted. You can’t beat a complete craft kit that is not only a keepsake decoration, but all you need to do is open the box and let the fun begin! The DIY Party Kit was inspired by a classroom party where I had brought a similar activity for the kids to do. I love its simplicity, and we offer 14 different themes, so there is something for everyone. The canvas set is a Cider Rose classic, and like everything else, it was inspired by my kids. This time it went from a single art activity to a party-size kit. We offer canvas kits in a range of sizes from 10 to 50 canvases, but this one remains the most popular.

Birthday parties are a tradition I adore; so many of our products are geared towards this yearly milestone, but really, they are great for everyday celebrations too! Rainy days, school closings, summer vacation activities, sleepovers, having a bad day, or "I miss you" kind of days are all great times to have a craft on hand!

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?

I spent months researching all things Etsy before taking my shop to live, and I feel very proud and incredibly fortunate to have had my first sale on my second day. Thank you, Ali, in Brentwood, Tennessee! I was very quiet about opening Cider Rose; I didn’t tell very many people. I was terrified of failing and just didn’t want the added pressure of friends and family inquiring until I felt I had my feet under me, so getting that first sale on day 2 was immensely rewarding. I felt so honored to have a complete stranger trust me and my brand-new shop with no sales to deliver a quality product.

These days, I still rely on Etsy for most of our customers through a combination of SEO and paid to advertise. I have an Instagram for Cider Rose and a Pinterest account, but social media is difficult and time-consuming for me. I don’t enjoy doing it, so it is a constant struggle, but I am continuing to persevere and am getting better! We have been fortunate to have gotten a few social media and web exposures from bloggers and influencers sharing our products in their posts, which has given us a small boost in growth and having Etsy feature us and select our product as an Editor’s Choice has given us great exposure and many repeat customers.

Managing CiderRose

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 ran Cider Rose for about two years solo—first as a side hustle to make up for the loss in income of having been downsized to a 10-month position, but by 2019, we had grown so much that I couldn’t keep up by myself, and now my husband and I both operate Cider Rose. We are still growing and aren’t comfortable going full-time just yet, so we are both still working 40-hour weeks at our jobs and coming home to work on Cider Rose orders for another 40–60 hours a week. We work together out of our home in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

As a company in the arts and crafts business, we use a lot of parts and pieces and try to keep our operation well organized. We have multiple large storage cabinets with clear drawers containing the various magnet designs, sizes of canvases, paints, brushes, and all of our other supplies in our building as well as our shipping supplies. We have a desk, cabinet, and several shelves in the spare bedroom turned Etsy office in our house that hold our current projects, a regular printer for our craft box activities, and our label printer. I use clear drawers and open shelving to monitor our stock levels and manage our inventory. I usually order once a quarter, with more frequent and/or larger orders around the holidays. 

Because we have limited space available, we try to keep ourselves as organized and efficient as possible. Some of my favorite tools and apps include

Text Expander: This is basically autocompleting, but so much better! I don’t like auto-replies, so I use this for quick and consistent customer service responses without having that robotic auto-reply.

iPhone 11: My go-to for product photography I still have a lot to learn about photography, and this makes it quick and simple for me while still producing beautiful photos. My dream is to hire a product photographer one day!

Snag It: This advanced screenshot capture and editing application is great for creating quick mockups and order previews when working on custom orders for customers. It’s faster and less complicated than Photoshop for simple modifications such as adding text or simulating a background color.

Marmalead: I use Marmalead as a tool to audit our shop's SEO, analyze keywords and phrases, and see what’s trending on Etsy and how I can tap into those trends for our shop. It’s a great tool for coming up with search terms for your items.

G Suite by Google: We use Google’s G Suite for email, calendar, and customer service. We also store all our files in folders on Google Drive, which allows me to work from my phone when I am not at home.

Dymo LabelWriter 4XL: This little shipping label printer was a game-changer for me. Prior to getting it, I was printing out shipping labels on plain white paper, cutting them out, and taping them to packages. Once we started sending out 50+ packages a week during the holidays, this method was taking too much time, so we invested in a label printer, and it remains my favorite business purchase!

For shipping and fulfillment, we use Etsy’s integrated shipping labels for mailing. We schedule daily pickups with USPS to collect our outgoing packages from our garage. As we complete orders each day, we stack the boxes on our dining table and put them in a dedicated area in our garage in the morning before leaving for work.

Most days, you can find us sitting comfortably in our living room, sealing up packages and applying shipping labels to the day’s orders while listening to some good music, discussing the day's orders, and asking each other if the timer was set for the latest batch of magnets baking in the oven!

The future of CiderRose

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

I’d like to eventually launch a standalone e-commerce website off of Etsy as a secondary outlet to sell our products. I don’t have any plans to discontinue selling on Etsy, but I think that with continued growth, it would be beneficial to have a dedicated web presence. I think directing non-Etsy leads to a stand-alone site would garner some more interest and could lead to some wholesale opportunities.

Advice for new sellers

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

I believe thorough research into your market and how Etsy operates is vital to a shop’s success. I knew nothing of SEO and algorithms before opening Cider Rose and spent months learning as much as I could before I opened the shop. Understanding how it all works will lessen frustration and aid in your overall success.

I believe quality photography is important to selling products, but it’s also not something that everyone is good at (hello, that’s me!). so it can be intimidating when you’re first starting out! Don’t be afraid to try different angles, lighting, and backgrounds. Experiment with your camera and/or phone settings, and if it’s just not for you, don’t be afraid to admit it and enlist a friend or family member for help. If you’re able, you can also hire a photographer to photograph your items. That’s definitely on my wish list! Take the time to fill out all the keywords on your listings and fill out all the shop sections. To this day, when I look at a shop’s story and read about the owner, it helps create trust between you and your customers when you put your story and identity out there.

Don’t be afraid to change directions as you learn from yourself and your customers and hone in on that magic combination between what sells and what you actually enjoy creating. I changed directions, and it ended up being the best thing for our shop. At this moment, we are entertaining the idea of adding new companion products to what’s already available in our shop!

Lastly, don’t expect instant results; it can take months for your first sale and years before you’re able to go full-time. We’ve been open for just over 5 years now; we’ve been featured by Etsy, been an Editor’s Pick, weathered selling during a pandemic, and are on the cusp of going full-time, but are not quite there just yet. I am actually very thankful for the organic pace of our growth; it has allowed us to learn and scale our business during each season of growth because each season has brought with it its own challenges and opportunities to navigate.

We’re incredibly grateful for each season our business has had so far, and we are looking forward to growing and changing with Cider Rose as we ourselves grow as small business owners. It’s been an adventure and a challenge, but most of all, it’s been a family tradition.