Etsy Seller Interview with Mirian and Jacob of LittleBirdShopCo

How LittleBirdShopCo 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?

My husband and I started woodworking as a hobby to relieve the stress of daily life. We owned some rustic woodworking tools and decided to acquire a laser cutter. We started to experiment with different wood sheets to see which one would work best for our laser cutting machine. From there, we identified a niche of business that was new and not yet explored, as a supplier of wood sheets for woodcrafters that owned laser machines like us.

And we quickly began to receive requests to share our wood suppliers and/or sell the sized sheets for laser machines.With the growing demand, we decided to open an Etsy shop to be able to have a formal small business and help us manage the upcoming orders. That was back around December of 2019, and we have been a small family business on Etsy since. As the years progressed and many competitors surfaced with different prices and ways of making themselves known to the market, we developed different products to stay relevant. We've been in business for almost 4 years and have a great variety of listings and product catalogs to offer our clients, as well as a value for remaining flexible and being able to custom make special products so our clients can have their needs met at a reasonable price and high quality.

Our products are inspired by our customers' needs and are designed specifically for them. unique and of superior quality. We also have partnerships in which we produce exclusive items for clients to resell that we do not add to our portfolio, so it becomes an exclusive item for the reseller.

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 in our shop are our wooden catch-all/sensory trays. They are versatile and very cute. They are also customizable, we can make them in any shape or form or  wood. Currently we offer them out of  ASH hardwood, and have fewer listings with different shapes, but as we have more requests for different shapes we add more listings. They do sell really well because they are so cute and  useful.

However, one of our best sellers is this cute box. They sell easy and fast, very useful multi-piece boxes in any size the customer needs.

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?

Within the first week of opening, we had several sales in our shop. It was a very busy season for COVID, seeing asVID, seeing as everyone was at home quarantined and crafting, so our revenue during the pandemicWe lost a lot of revenue as things progressed and competitors appeared, but creating different items and maintaining the quality of our products, such as the wooden discs and wooden sheets for laser cutting, and offering masked sheets, helped us not only diversify from competitors but also stay relevant.o stay relevant.

Our marketing channels began by offering our products and services within the laser community through Facebook groups specifically for this category. For a while, the Facebook groups were what brought most of our revenue to Etsy. But with the growth of the laser craft niche, the market became saturated with competitors selling wood sheets and rounds, so we felt the lack of loyalty within the community and started to branch out to Pinterest marketing as well as using Etsy ads and Instagram. Even now, the majority of our customers come from Instagram posts, Pinterest pins, and Etsy listings.