Finding time to actually sit down and sew, then photograph, edit and post new bags to my Etsy shop can be kinda difficult! However, I am so happy I made some new bags last week, and got them all ready to post today. It's been a long time since I have made new Mirella bags - and I hope to sell them all very soon. Mirella is one of my "trademark" designs. I developed the pattern back in - after playing with a cool vintage napkin and pleating techniques.
The coolest part is that Mirella is reversible! Check out two of my latest creations, and don't forget that I post new items in my Etsy shop every Tuesday and Thursday! Eager to spread the handmade movement across the Metroplex, ED leaders organize two local craft shows, the Spring Bash and Jingle Bash, that have garnered city-wide support and national credibility.
Etsy Dallas has transformed itself over the years into a tight-knit collaborative group that supports each other's handmade endeavors through friendship and camaraderie.
Blog: etsydallas. Have something nice to say about Etsy Dallas? Write a testimonial. Etsy Dallas Follow. I was introduced to a number of young women at work silk-screening Etsy promotional materials onto bandannas, and also to the company lawyer.
Kalin is 27 and seems even younger, with boyish features and reddish hair. Serious in a way that could be read as either earnest or deadpan, he told me the stories behind a stuffed animal and an interesting metal sculpture on his desk, both from Etsy sellers. He then handed me a piece of crocheted bacon. In order to explain his company, he offered me a seat and reached for a book. He pulled his chair closer and read aloud.
The upshot was that a whole bunch of little fish gang up and begin swimming in a formation that resembles one huge fish, thus warding off predators.
In their formation, the fish named Swimmy assumes the position where the eye would be. Kalin closed the book. He informed me, for instance, that young people today are different, having grown up with the Web and all. He had sought guidance from his grandfather about making Etsy a reality but ignored the tedious advice about writing a business plan, figuring the site itself would serve that function. A founder of del. All of which is a familiar-enough Internet-start-up story line.
Nor could its reputation simply be for business acumen. If all Etsy did was channel D. There was a cultural dimension, too. Kalin clearly understood all this.
The company does not, for instance, demand exclusivity. Indeed it seems to want its sellers to market themselves aggressively on their own sites, in stores, at fairs. In addition, Kalin has hired about a half-dozen of the best Etsy sellers to work directly for the company, in jobs meant to spread their skills to as many sellers as possible. On some level the Etsy idea is not really techno-progressive at all.
Kalin seems flabbergasted that anyone would shop at Wal-Mart to save 12 cents on a peach instead of supporting a local farmer. He brushed that aside, noting that Etsy sells clothes, which everyone needs. His real point, it seemed to me, was not about Wal-Mart or any other particular retailer. It was far more expansive.
If the marketplace today has become alienating and disconnected, then buying something handmade, from another individual, rolls back the clock to an era before factory labor and mass production. Really, Kalin has a problem with the entire modern marketplace. Kalin is nothing if not grandiose about what he thinks Etsy can accomplish.
For example, he knows that individual crafters face a problem of scale: there is only so much one person can produce. Hence the Industrial Revolution. In 25 years, he said, Etsy would be both worldwide and personal, a global-local marketplace, a Web version of the Athenian agora. The business proposition behind this extravagant vision is rather more straightforward. Etsy charges 20 cents per listing and 3.
The company makes money from successful crafters, but it also makes money from wishful thinkers who never get beyond the hobby stage. The entrepreneur who makes something by hand might face a scale problem. The quasi-libertarian certainty of the Web entrepreneur and the equally confident ex-philosophy-student discourse about the alienating nature of mass society seem contradictory.
But to Kalin, they are intertwined. T his past March, I went to Pittsburgh to attend the first-ever Craft Congress, which was made up of about 60 of the best-known and most established figures on the D. I had heard the agenda would include a discussion of how their movement ought to be defined and thought about by participants. I wondered if the discussion would be translated into some sort of manifesto.
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