Etsy Seller Interview with Veronica of SilverwingArmoury

How SilverwingArmoury 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?

Veronica Leonard(aka The Lady V, or V for short)is a planner and visual artist. She's Also a big tabletop roleplaying games(TTRPGs) geek. She loves her gaming group and how every week they get to sit around a table a spin a tale of daring and hilarity, roll some funny shaped dice, and generally bumble their way through to eventually saving the townsfolk and defeating the big bad villain. In all of the games that she's played in, she's usually (and voluntarily)ended up being the group's scribe. She is that person who actually writes down where they're supposed to be going, the name of the tavern owner from five sessions ago, and the plot point that they will need to remember in order to defeat the villain. In short, her gaming notes were important.

SilverwingArmoury was born out of necessity. Veronica was enjoying participating in various TTRPG groups but found herself struggling to find ways of organizing her notes for all the different games she was playing in. She wanted a system that did not require her to have multiple notebooks for each game, that allowed her to find things she'd taken notes of with ease, and that had enough structure to encourage meaningful notes. Enter bullet journaling. Bullet journaling is a daily planning system that attempts to increase productivity by using various types of simplified notes to detail daily tasks and events. She had found the system to be excellent at keeping her work life organized and decided to implement some of its features into her gaming notes.

She incorporated the front index, page numbering, and the concept of utilizing the available next page rather than separating her notebook into sections. It worked! Her notes became more focused, and she was able to reference names and in-game goals and quests much faster. Veronica has given each aspect of her notebooks a great deal of thought and care—from the hand-stitched spine to the original artwork to the customizable inside page options. She believes in offering a quality product at an accessible price that celebrates geeks everywhere.

Favorite items

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

While I also sell digital printable resources for roleplaying games (RPG), my favorite things to sell are my campaign notebooks. Their design is a place where I can really let my imagination fly. I like to create immersive notebooks—something a character in a roleplaying game might have on their person. One of my favorites is my bestselling notebook, Nordic Runes. It's one of the first notebooks I designed for Silverwing Armoury, and the front inside cover features an illustration of a map I drew during the first Dungeons and Dragons campaign I Dungeon Mastered. The front cover features a Nordic rune that is meant to protect travelers during their journeys. The life of an adventurer is filled with travel. It is a universal theme amongst many RPG campaigns, no matter what system they’re being run on. For this reason, I believe that the theme of this notebook appeals to many players.

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 remember my first notebook sale very well.For some time before I started Silverwing Armoury, I listened to and followed the GM Word of the Week podcast by Brian Casey. When I officially opened the shop, I did a lot of social media promotion on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. At the time, Brian was quite active on Twitter, and he retweeted some of my promotional posts. I was very excited about this, as I’d been a long-time admirer of his work. Little did I know that Brian would soon become my very first customer. As time went on, he not only continued purchasing my notebooks, but he also promoted them on his podcast, wrote a lovely blog review about them, embarked on a journey into writing with fountain pens, and even purchased a series of custom notebooks as part of a Patreon reward for his backers. (Side note: Yes, our notebook paper is great for use with fountain pens.)

Currently, I focus my promotion on Instagram and Facebook. I’ve left Twitter. Etsy’s search engine is also a good place for me since my product is somewhat niche. I ensure that I have relevant tags and descriptive product titles and make use of Etsy’s ad spaces. In terms of social media, I use Meta’s Business Suite to schedule posts on Facebook and Instagram. Since I am also the artist behind Silverwing Armoury, I like to create my posts and such using artwork and graphic design software.

Managing SilverwingArmoury

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?

Silverwing Armoury is a collaborative effort between my husband and me. I manage the day-to-day business activities of running the business and creating and designing the products. I do the packaging and shipping prep and chat with customers and brick-and-mortar stores interested in stocking my notebooks. My husband is primarily in charge of order production. While I sew all the bindings, he cuts, presses, and keeps track of orders that need to be fulfilled.

For shipping, I exclusively use Canada Post, with 90% of my labels being prepared via Etsy shipping. I also use Wave Accounting as my accounting software. I have found that Etsy keeps decent track of financial statistics and provides me with the information I need to keep track of my income and expenses.

The future of SilverwingArmoury

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

I would like Silverwing Armoury to continue growing in the direction it has been going. I’ve made some great connections with other small business owners and content creators making geeky things for RPG players. It’s been a really great experience starting and running this shop, and I am excited to see what the future holds. I will continue to express my love for role-playing games through this medium and look forward to new adventures and notebook artwork ideas.

Advice for new sellers

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

1. Etsy is a vast marketplace. Do your best to determine how your product can meet a niche need. How is it different from all the hundreds of other items that are similar to what you make?
2. Determine your target audience and tailor your item tags and descriptions to them.For example, my notebooks are blank inside and could be used as regular notebooks by anyone; however, I focus my marketing efforts on folks who play role playing games. 
3. Do some research into how to take photos that draw people in, even if you’re just using your phone. Good lighting and an interesting layout that showcases your product being used can help your customers visualize themselves using your product.
4. Make sure that you keep up with any international shipping requirements and price hikes.
5. give really good customer service. I know that sounds cliche, but as a small business, feedback, reviews, and word of mouth go a long way. Doing your best to solve your customers’ questions and issues really helps to keep them coming back to purchase from you.