Screenshot of Craft.ly
A new take on online group buying opened beta sign ups today. The website, Craft.ly, is a service aimed exclusively at the “handmade goods” market. James Eliason, also of Eliason Media and Uppward, approached cofounder Levi Rosol, also of ScoreYard and a Silicon Prairie News contributor, with the idea after learning of it through his girlfriend, would-be crafter Julie Deeds.
(Eliason left, photo from about.me/jameseliason, and Rosol right, photo from twitter.com/levirosol)
Thanks to our sponsor
“[The] concept was initially thought of by Julie, who wanted to get into making handmade goods,” said Eliason in an email interview yesterday. “After making a test apron over the holiday’s she began to research options online for selling the aprons. She immediately became very cautious of how to jump right in and sell on sites like Etsy where she would be competing against placement on the site and how she would drive interest in her products. Not only that but there should be a better way to incentivize buyers to help spread the word about the particular product or seller, turning into a much more social buying experience.”
“After seeing a few holes in the marketplace, I approached Levi about the project and we formed together. What Levi and I are most excited about is that we both have a great circle of family, friends and other handmade goods creators that we can lean on for insight and testing as we build Craft.ly.”
Rosol described the product in the email interview: “[It’s] a mix between Kickstarter, some concepts of Groupon and finally a dash of Etsy. It is where handmade goods meet group buying. Our goal for Craft.ly is to make selling handmade goods in a group buy format incredibly easy for sellers.”
(Left, screenshot of the Sellers page on Craft.ly.)
In addition to global players Groupon and LivingSocial, group-buying sites based in the Silicon Prairie have been springing up over the last several weeks, such as Deal Garden, which focuses on college towns (see: Silicon Prairie News article), and DSM Daily, which is exclusive to Des Moines local businesses (see: Silicon Prairie News article). This begs the question: Is there a market for group buying in craft goods?
“While doing our initial research,” said Rosol, “we have found a fairly large market for handmade goods mostly proven by Etsy’s growth (an average of 7.85 sales at $19.08 per seller, nearly 1 billion page views in December 2010).
“We have found that many sellers are still seeking the perfect online community that gives them cost efficient tools to grow their business and we feel that Craft.ly can be that place.”
According to James’ research, smaller sites in the market are growing, too. Etsy-competitor ArtFire.com has grown 97% year over year.
“In our opinion this space is really at its infancy for innovative plays between buyers and sellers. Not only business-to-business transactions but also business-to-consumer. We think that with some of our pricing strategies, marketing initiatives and potential partnerships Craft.ly has tremendous upside for our users.”
To learn more about Craft.ly or sign up for the beta list visit craft.ly.
