Moving From Etsy to Shopify: An Ecommerce Migration Story (2024)

In 2009, the Polder family decided to grow to be farmers. On the time, they were living on a half-acre property in Melrose, Florida, and had no prior farming experience. They made the small space work for them, raising rabbits, making jams, and selling them each locally.

Today, the Polder family lives and works on a 115-acre farm, where they run a successful handcrafted picket home-goods business, Old World Kitchen.

The business makes most of its sales on its Shopify store, but this wasn’t all the time the case.

Old World Kitchen began offline, before launching on Etsy. While the Polder family credits Etsy helping establish the brand, it was a move to Shopify that unlocked growth. After moving platforms, conversions increased and Old World Kitchen was capable of expand into resale goods and email marketing.

Here, business manager Loran Polder speaks about her family’s journey and the advantages of moving from a marketplace to an internet store.

Meet Old World Kitchen

After dabbling in basket weaving, blacksmithing, and leather work, Loran’s dad, Trevor, found his stride with woodworking. The family began selling his handcarved picket spoons at local farmers markets, garnering positive reception. The success of the spoons prompted the family to pursue the farming business in a serious way.

“We just went for it,” says Loran of the family’s early days. “We actually weren’t getting wealthy doing it, however it was moving within the direction of our dreams.”

The Polder family then packed their bags and moved to a bigger farm property in Tennessee, adding dairy cows and beekeeping to their scope. True to their Old World approach, their initial sales channel was also a throwback. The Polders packaged their honey and handmade goods into gift baskets, and sold them door to-door. “You only don’t see people bringing this type of product to your door lately,” says Loran.

The Polders found surprising success with the approach, however it was time consuming and unsustainable. That’s when a neighbor suggested an Etsy store. But on the time, the family didn’t even own a house computer. “We were going to the local library to ascertain emails,” Loran says.

“We knew nothing about marketing,” says Loran. “It just appeared to us, sheltered as we were, that you just put up a web site and folks got to it someway.” The principal advantage of a marketplace, nonetheless, is that high-intent buyers are in-built. And three days after launching, they made their first sale. “That was hugely encouraging to us,” says Loran.

Constructing a brand on their very own terms

It was when a pop-up opportunity landed on their plate that the Polder family began investing of their brand’s image, honing in on a message and vision for the corporate as an entire.

The trouble to construct a brand led to more success—until the family hit peak production capability. That’s once they asked themselves: How will we scale?

The family considered investing in a CNC machine to create one other line of picket spoons at a lower cost point. The move, nonetheless, would contradict the brand’s by-hand ethos. The choice? Increase their prices. “I feel that quite a lot of crafters have this concept that you have got to be the poor struggling artist,” says Loran, “like there’s something improper with determining the best way to make what you are promoting profitable.”

Their customers are joyful to pay the upper prices for products moderately than buy from other producers selling comparable products at a fraction of the price. That’s since the family behind Old World Kitchen isn’t selling only a spoon. They’re selling a lifestyle, their story, and an experience.

As their brand grew, and their prices became more aligned with a luxury brand, the Polders found Etsy could now not meet the needs of their growing business. Loran felt the standard Etsy shopper—younger and more budget conscious—was now not their target market.

The Polders began to grow their social channels in an effort to construct a customer base outside of Etsy. Within the meantime, they upgraded their camera and editing skills to enhance their product photography.

Once they were able to move away from Etsy, they tried alternative marketplaces and platforms before deciding to construct a store with Shopify.

The brand new Old World Kitchen

Moving from Etsy to a brand new store on Shopify was a game changer. “We were just absolutely blown away, because our conversion rate went up a lot,” says Loran.

While the family needed to learn marketing on the fly, the efforts meant their visitors were high-intent. “There’s an enormous amount of distraction on Etsy,” Loran says. “It’s more like strolling through a crafts fair moderately than intentionally driving as much as a brick-and-mortar store.”

Old World Kitchen held firm with the brand new pricing strategy and continued to grow its following. The pricing model allowed the business to scale while staying true to its craft origins. Annually, as they hit production capability, the family regroups to determine how they’ll proceed to grow while maintaining brand integrity.

One in every of those strategies was partnering with other brands as resellers—an avenue of growth that was impossible with Etsy. Now, complementary products like forged iron cookware and tea towels can be found in the shop.

When (and why) to maneuver from Etsy to Shopify

Loran credits Etsy for getting the family’s business off the bottom. The platform was a great place to experiment with ecommerce, find out about online customer support, and produce their product to an existing audience.

But they quickly outgrew it. In contrast to Etsy’s marketplace structure, the liberty and adaptability of running a business on Shopify let the Polder family scale their business and automate Old World Kitchen’s commerce processes—so that they could concentrate on what they do best: making.

The suitable time to migrate from Etsy to Shopify and construct your individual ecommerce store will depend on your goals, growth rate, and the features what you are promoting needs.

As a store owner, you may be able to move your handmade business and open a brand new Shopify store if:

• Brand is integral to what you make. In case your brand story or visual design are necessary to you, it’s tougher to center these on Etsy. Port your products to a platform, like Shopify, that means that you can own your brand and customize the experience to your customer.
• You would like to scale by converting your handmade production to a manufacturer. While Etsy now allows some mass-produced goods, the audience remains to be predominantly those searching for handmade or vintage goods. If you make this move, you will have outgrown the Etsy customer.
• Your target market exists outside of the Etsy community. This would be the case in case your brand decides to focus on a more luxury-focused customer. Organising an internet store enables you to optimize for the search terms which can be relevant to you.
• You’re concerned with expanding your brand beyond products you make yourself. Etsy prohibits reselling, except within the case of vintage items. In the event you’re seeking to partner with other brands to curate products, your individual Shopify store offers you more flexibility to achieve this.
• You would like to have control over your individual marketing and customer lists. If you construct on platforms like Etsy or some social channels, you regularly don’t own your audience or customer lists. Owning a store on Shopify enables you to collect customer emails and market what you are promoting your way. Communicate on to your loyal customers to make sure repeat business.
• You have got surpassed a certain variety of sales per thirty days. Etsy’s pricing model relies on per-listing and per-transaction fees. This is good for brand new businesses, but the prices will not be price it for large-volume stores. When you’ve crested a certain sales threshold, Shopify’s monthly plans and lower transaction fees could also be more attractive.

It’s also possible to maintain a presence on Etsy and Shopify at the identical time. It’s a tactic the Polder family employs, using their Etsy store as a secondary sales channel.

A business for generations to return

Today, Loran handles the entire tasks involved with keeping the web store running, including every little thing from social media to email marketing. Her younger sister manages the shipping and achievement, while a lot of the family makes up the production team, with Trevor on the helm. Matriarch Angela Polder heads up quality control. “If anybody’s slacking, she makes sure they realize it,” says Loran.

Old World Kitchen is a business designed to support generations to return, with room to include future spouses and kids into the combination.

The Polder family’s own story is one and the identical with the brand. Having the ability to tell it on every page of their very own site is critical to the success of their business and the preservation of their legacy.

Photos courtesy of Old World Kitchen