Etsy Seller Interview with Jamie of JungleCulture

How JungleCulture 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?

Hey! I am Jamie, one of the co-founders of Jungle Culture. We started our business when myself and my co-founder were in Vietnam and spotted bamboo straws being used at a local restaurant. We decided to investigate further, and eventually we visited some bamboo farms to source the product!

Initially, we sold via our own website, but we opened our Etsy store after a few months, and we’ve been adding new and interesting handicrafts ever since!

We are lucky enough to work with some fantastic artisans in Vietnam, and we generally design products in collaboration with them. We choose new products based on how useful we think they’ll be, how interesting they are, and if they are made in an ethical and sustainable way!

Favorite items

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

I have a lot of favorite products! My personal favorites are not always the ones that sell the best, but I love our reusable safety razors, which you can find on Etsy here.

I use our mint-coloured razor and it really does look fantastic in my bathroom. Since I switched from disposables to an everlasting razor, I have basically spent nothing (or very close to nothing) on shaving and used no plastic at all! I also use our vegan shaving soap as a replacement for shaving foam or gel and it lasts way longer and does exactly the same thing.

Both products are bestsellers for our business, but don’t perform particularly well on Etsy. They do okay, but I think Etsy is largely focused on handicrafts over plastic replacements.

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 don’t think it took very long at all. Maybe within the first day or so. We focused on building our brand as a whole, on Etsy, Google, in shops and everywhere in between, so people managed to find us on Etsy. It might help that many of our products are unique! 

At the moment, we always include links to our Etsy store on our social accounts and email newsletters, which really helps drive traffic to the shop. We also offer automated discounts on Etsy to loyal customers.

Managing JungleCulture

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?

It started off with myself, my business partner, and his mom, Janet, who helped us fulfill a few orders a week. Now we have a warehouse and a team of five staff members, with a few extra people who help on a part-time basis! 

In the beginning, we fulfilled all of our orders in house, but over time it just became too much to handle, so we outsourced it to a really great, responsible third-party logistics company. It’s important to make sure that your customers receive a really great experience, so I would say fulfilling orders in the beginning is a smart move, but eventually using a good 3PL is important. 

We don’t use any apps from Etsy’s app store as not many of them work well across different platforms. Instead, we use things like Klaviyo for emails, Sortly for inventory, Sage for accounting, SEMrush for keywords and SEO, and then a lot of Google tools.

The future of JungleCulture

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

We’re hoping to keep the store steady, keep building, and keep offering our Etsy fanbase great service! As we grow, we’ll be introducing a host of new handicrafts and plastic-replacements to help more people become sustainable and plastic-free.

Advice for new sellers

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

Customers are a little different from customers on Amazon or eBay, for example. Etsy customers do not mind paying a little bit more to receive something a little bit special. So I’d encourage any store starting out on Etsy to focus on the customer experience, make every order special, and keep at it. In time, you’ll build a loyal fanbase!