That's a real shame. My wife has a store on Etsy and is downstairs right now sewing up another handbag. So it's kinda tough to hear that the reputation she's worked hard for on Etsy with the solid ratings, and with the hard work she's put in, the Etsy brand itself is turning people away. Etsy provides just enough to make it easy and worthwhile to use the system, but I wonder if she's legitimately losing sales this way.

Handbags? Oh my god, why isn't she selling on Facebook?

I know a very wealthy woman in Thailand selling custom $400-600 handbags to New York yuppies and literally her entire business is on Facebook.

I normally don't advocate this sort of thing but their ad platform and social network are basically made for this kind of business. Custom/Handmade luxury goods for upper-middle class women over a certain age? Facebook, every time.

Hrm, never really thought about that. When we started her shop, Etsy was the natural fit. There is a community around that. I'll have to look into this. Thanks for the idea!

NB: I imagine it's hyper-competitive. Instagram might also be the right choice now.

Well, you can always try your luck selling on wechat. According to my wife, she drops a few people a month because they start trying to sell her something.

She isn't marketing that way at all, she's buying Facebook ads and she has a page for her store. Her customers come to her through clicks or through asking their friends where they got their bags.

How does one sell on FB?

The community of glass artists I'm in has sold tons on facebook over the last few years. FB has always let you sell in Groups, and unlike many online venues, has zero problem with art glass pipes. It was the #1 place to sell online 2011-2013, then the community switched to Instagram. Instagram has since been the #1 place where people hold auctions and sell glass since then, and that's from $10 pendants to $500 tubes and up to $10, 20, 30k pieces.

So, to sell on FB, you say hey, i have this piece for $300, here's pics, I take paypal.

FB works with a handful of ecommerce platforms to enable this natively as well. https://www.bigcommerce.com/facebook/