(Originally published January 12, 2026)
Our struggle, as artisans, building and operating an artisan business is a daily challenge, and whether or not it's something we can sustain is a question we have been asking ourselves lately. We have been creating one of a kind artisan jewelry pieces for over a decade, selling mainly on Etsy, almost entirely to be honest since our stand alone website has existed in a sort of black hole with so few views and even fewer sales over the years that it's hardly worth mentioning. For the first few years our business grew from very humble beginnings, using home made tools and rather rudimentary techniques (not much has changed......some humor here) to a business that was very modest but we were optimistic, even hopeful the ascendance would persist at least to a sustainable level, but that hasn't manifested. Sadly our struggle as artists/creators has only increased in the last few years, partly because of personal family matters that pulled us away from our business but also something systemic, something that we had little control over, something that may in fact be bigger than Etsy. Granted we have never been very studious about crafting an engaging and lively social media presence, partly because it was never natural to us as rather private people and because dividing our time between managing a social media persona and being full time artisans and creators running a handmade business was untenable....even now. There have been downturns in years past, but things eventually rebounded and the old motto about bootstrapping seemed to hold sway, the more work we put into our enterprise the results seemed to follow. Sadly, something terrible has happened, our work is no longer paying off, our presence on Etsy is just not there, almost as if we are in the dark and no one can find us any longer. This is something others on Etsy have mentioned as well, long standing artisan businesses that relied on Etsy are no longer thriving, and it seems there is more to the story than just SEO, bootstrapping, and working ones rear off on social media.....its a structural change; a change that seems to be in perfect alignment with the broader market trends promoting mass production, high volume low cost items that make the corporation (Etsy) the most money. Artisan businesses like ours, are a strange animal because unlike the traditional business model of endless scalability and growth, an artisan business is by definition about the artistry and craft of the work, not endless reproducibility, scale and low cost. What was once our greatest strength seems to be our demise, our pride in craftsmanship and artistry. The very fact the our own hands bring each and every piece of jewelry into existence and we refuse to outsource designs to be cheaply mass produced is why we are terrible business people but deeply committed artisans.
We would be honored to have you visit our website:
and our Etsy shop: