Etsy Seller Interview with Samuel of UncommonTee

How UncommonTee 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?

Hi, I’m Samuel. I run Uncommon Tee on Etsy, where we create unique designs and sell them on clothing. I started my Etsy store in 2017, but I started selling clothing many years before that.

The Uncommon Tee started while I was at college. I would create a design and then get a local screen printer to print the design onto t-shirts. The issue I had was that they had a minimum order quantity of 25 shirts per design. My first collection only had about 5 designs in it, but that left me with 125 shirts to store! As you can probably imagine, the space it takes to store this many shirts quickly outgrew my bedroom.

While these shirts did sell well, I realized that if this was going to support me full time financially, I’d need many more designs. didn’t have the space for, nor  the initial capital for. At this point, I ended up getting a graphic design job and putting my clothing business on pause.

Fast forward a few years and I was now realizing how much I didn’t enjoy working for somebody else. I needed to work for myself. I tried freelancing and this didn’t work out too well for me either. This is when I started looking at my clothing line again and seeing if there was any way I could make it work.

This is when I discovered print-on-demand. Instead of using my local screen printer, I could send my orders to a POD company who would then print my designs on demand. This solved all my problems, as I didn’t need any initial capital or storage space.

I instantly got to work, setting up my own website and opening an Etsy store. It was a slow start, and at this point, I was still working a full-time job. Luckily, around a year later, one of my shirts gained traction; it was getting shared on social media and was even included in a Buzzfeed article. This proved to me that I could make this work and it could financially support me. So I quit my job and haven’t looked back.

I work more now than I ever did at any job. But, it’s work I enjoy, and I’m enjoying the process of building a growing business.

Favorite items

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

My favorite designs that I’ve created are the Farmers Market design, the Great Wave Off Kanagawa design, and the Helping Hands Assassin Services design.

These do sell well, but they are not the best sellers. I’ve come to realize that the designs that I like and the designs that become best sellers are rarely connected. This is why Uncommon Tee has such an array of designs. I’d get bored if I was designing the same thing or similar things over and over, and you never know what designs people are going to like until you list them.

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 had to go back and look. I posted my first listing on June 30, 2017 and I got my first sale on July 10, 2017. So it took me about 10 days to get my first sale!

We mainly focus on attracting customers by ranking high in search results. This goes for both Etsy and Google, but Etsy SEO is the most important. Most of our sales come from people searching on Etsy, so we concentrate on this.

We also run an email club that people can join. It’s basically a newsletter that we send out a few times a month, and people subscribed to the email club get access to our monthly giveaways.

We’ve tried doing social media, but it doesn’t seem to work for our business. I think this is due to the fact that we don’t have a niche. However, we have started using Pinterest, and this does seem to be bringing in some traffic.

Managing UncommonTee

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 run the shop mainly, and my partner helps out sometimes if we get busy. I try to use software and automation wherever I can. This has so far been successful, and I haven’t had the need to hire anyone yet.

I do try to keep it minimal when it comes to apps and software, and because I have some experience with coding, I’ve even created custom software for my business. Here are some of the apps and software I can’t live without:

Notion: I use this to organize my business in general, from product databases to project management. It's definitely a must-have for me.

N8N: This is what I use to quickly create software to either automate tasks or interact with APIs. At this point, it’s a vital part of my business. Tasks that normally take days can be done in minutes. The only issue is that it’s not compatible with Etsy’s API yet. For instances where I need to use Etsy’s API, I use make.com.

I despise Creative Cloud but love Photoshop and Illustrator. Unfortunately, I haven’t found anything that comes close to them in terms of functionality. I use both of these apps daily and wouldn’t be able to do design work without them.

Woocommerce/Wordpress-This is what I use to create my online store and is what I use to sync products to Etsy. It essentially works as a central hub. Any changes I make to my products in Woocommerce then get synced to Etsy.

Dropbox: When you’re dealing with high-resolution image files and design files, they quickly take up a lot of space. I keep all my designs on dropbox in online-only mode and just download them when I need to use them. It saves me a lot of hard drive space!

Endel: I’m a little strange and find music distracting. Endel creates AI "music" that keeps me focused throughout the day without causing distraction.

The future of UncommonTee 

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

My major goal is to become a place people come to when they’re wanting a specific shirt, be it a seasonal item or some specific niche that they’re interested in. That and I’d like to eventually open up our own printing facility instead of relying on POD services.

The more near-term goals I have, the more I’d like to start showcasing independent designers. Instead of everything being designed by me, I’d love to give artists a small platform and a chance to earn an income from their art.

Along with that, I’m starting to dabble in custom items. I opened a second Etsy store for this called MakeThisYou, which is seeing some moderate success.

Advice for new sellers

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

No matter what store or what niche you’re in, you need listings. Don’t just add one or two listings, try to get to 50-100. If you don’t have the inventory for that, try listing each color or other variation as separate listings. Use different titles, thumbnails, and keywords for each listing; this way you’ll get the most exposure.

Think of Etsy as Pinterest shopping; use pretty or aesthetic images as thumbnails. This will get people to add your stuff to their boards on both Pinterest and Etsy.

Forget about Etsy Ads at first; instead, focus on improving your listings and improving your Etsy SEO. Then only use Etsy ads to boost already selling items.