How flamigos 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?
Hello, world!
We are flamigos, a team that consists of three 3D artists that are very close friends too (aka amigos). We all come from Greece and our company is based in Patras, Greece, too. One member of the team lives in Glasgow, Scotland, and works remotely while the other two work in-house.
We all used to work in different companies as 3D designers but the fact that we shared the same vision made us take the decision and start our own small business putting our full energy into that! While still working in the gaming industry, one of us bought a 3D printer (CR-10 mini) and started experimenting with different techniques on various concepts and prints. We loved the idea of bringing into life almost everything we could imagine through printing, hence, in our free time we started working on team projects based on scaled miniatures and props for tabletop gaming
.In the meanwhile, we were also designing and printing cookie cutters for our families while some friendly jewelry artists approached us, introducing the polymer clay world to us. Some small commission works followed getting very good feedback for our products. However, the feedback was not excellent so we started working a bit more on some of their properties. Before realising it, we found ourselves spending days and weeks on how to achieve the best results ending up -according to the reviews- having some of the sharpest plastic cutters online. This big change was the step from good to excellent and as a result, everyone was encouraging us to start doing it professionally. And we did!
Etsy platform was the best choice, by far, for handcraft creations and small businesses offering a huge community of sellers and buyers. What we didn't know about it, was that Etsy also provides a very easy and user-friendly interface with lots of tools and statistics in order to make both sellers' and buyers' life easier. After comparing it with other similar platforms, the choice was easy.
Favorite items
What are your favorite items? What makes these so special? Why do you think these items might be selling well?
We love all of our products to be honest, however, there are some of them that we may show a bit of favoritism. Some of our flower and leaf cutters are very special to us as some of our embosser stamps such as our pattern, branches, or mandala series.
Most of these products have become bestsellers and people have loved them due to the fact that their design is minimal but impressive while leaving the artists' creativity options open. Our customers' feedback is that this type of design provides them with more flexibility during their making and also offers a very detailed and elegant aesthetic result. You can find some of those below:
Polymer Clay Cutters - Tropical Leaf
Polymer Clay Cutters - Rose shape
Polymer Clay Cutters - Autumn Leaf Shape
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?
It took long for our first sale, however, this was something we expected. Since life is not a movie, it wasn't a surprise that it took so long for someone to trust a shop with no reviews, no sales, and no followers. We didn't get disappointed and never gave up uploading new designs and products while putting even more effort into promoting our stuff!
We always pay a lot of attention to the design of our listings and their presentation while making sure that our descriptions are also clear and straight to the point. Moreover, we often offer discounts, sales, and share giveaways with a lot of vouchers for our shop. Customer service is one of our specialties too as we always put customers first, help them and fix any issue, or even try to be proactive and don't even have a problem to solve. And our customers love it, simple as that.
We have one giveaway running right now we are writing this article. You can find it here.
Managing flamigos3d
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?
We use different software for designing our products, such as 3ds Max, Zbrush, Photoshop, Illustrator, and more. We also use our printing software (Chitubox, Cura, Simplify) and Slack, Trello, and Dropbox for fast sharing and communication plus Etsy's various tools which are also handy and user friendly too.
Regarding the shipping and fulfillment of our parcels, we have 7 printers -so far- producing everything we need, we have hired 2 new employees, a packing station for preparing our products plus a hired service that picks them up on a daily basis so as to dispatch them on time and send them all over the world.
The future of flamigos3d
What goals do you have for your shop in the future?
This is a question that we love to answer, even if the answer is never enough to describe our dreams! Keeping it short, one of our goals is to become one of the best online shops in terms of product and design variety, all focusing on polymer clay tools. We currently have two products (cutters, embossing stamps) but we are already working on more, such as d-embossing stamps, flexible texture sheets, extruder disks, roller stamps, etc.
Advice for new sellers
What’s your advice for a new seller starting an Etsy shop?
Our advice consists of four parts:
Ask for feedback
New sellers have to make sure that their product is competitive enough. Most people have the tendency to attach to their work and, as a result, they are not very open to constructive feedback which has been proved to be the only way to improve. Always try to detach from your work and try to be in your customers' shoes.
Marketing
After making sure that your product is at a good level of quality, advertise it, within your power and budget, in any possible way. As we always use to say, even if you own the elixir of life nobody will know unless you give a shoutout!
Consistency
Cliche but true: Easy to get to the top, hard to remain there. Show consistency with your customer service, your product quality, your prices, and your business ethics. The public is very smart and will spot the differences at once.
Patience
Please, be patient and do baby steps. You will be running soon!
flamigos3d
Experts of 3D Polymer Clay Tools
