Yes, especially in 2023!
I’m not going to sugarcoat it. 2022 was a really tough year for selling online. There are exceptions, of course (which we’ll talk about in a moment), but so many artists, makers, and creative business owners I know found themselves struggling to make sales online last year, more so than in years past.
If that was you, know that you weren’t alone.
It could be easy to blame this on the economy, but I don’t think that’s the whole story, because the general consensus was that selling online was much more of a struggle than other revenue streams, like retail shows or wholesale.
There are a few reasons for that. The first is that social media, which, like it or not, many artists and makers do use as a tool for connecting with their audiences, has been, to put it mildly, a dick lately. Only a fraction of your followers even see your posts, let alone engage with them or feel moved enough to make a purchase.
That’s not to say that social media doesn’t or never drives sales. I recently met with a woman who had a Reel go viral (we’re talking 4 million views) and ended up selling out of everything in her shop. And I still know artists with massive social followings who sell most of their work that way. I’ve even been pleasantly surprised at the number of book sales that have come directly from Instagram. But I would say these are the exception, not the rule, and trying to build your business on social media alone is a bit like hoping to win the lottery.
But the bigger reason that I think online sales are sluggish is that we’re still feeling the fall-out of the early part of the pandemic, where everyone was forced to be online, and people are just OVER it. The pandemic didn’t suddenly catapult online sales to drastically higher levels. True, online sales are continuing to grow each year, but the spike during lockdown turned out to be a blip, not a sign of things to come, as companies like Shopify had to grudgingly admit when they laid off workers they had hired during the pandemic.
Online shopping isn’t going away, especially for essentials, but the pandemic made a lot of people realize when it comes to shopping for special things (the kind of stuff we, as artists and makers, make) it’s much more enjoyable to shop in person.
The pandemic also sparked a renewed interest in supporting local businesses and a desire to save the shops and restaurants that make a community interesting. That, and of course, a return to travel. There are a lot of people who would rather go somewhere (and come home with a cool object or two from the trip) than sit at home and shop online.
So what does all of this mean for you and your business?
First, if online sales are working for you, congratulations! You’ve bucked the trend, so keep at it. But also put safeguards in place (like driving people to an email list instead of just relying on social media) and think about ways you could bring some in-person selling into your business in the future. (Because social media is fickle at best.)
But if your online sales have been sluggish, or nonexistent, know that it’s not just you. That’s the good news. But the bad news is you won’t get anywhere by just sitting at your computer and hoping for sales. You’ve got to do things that are working. And what’s working is selling your work IRL. (That’s in real life.)
This generally means two things: retail shows and selling to stores.
If you love, or even remotely like, retail shows, now is a great time to consider getting back into them. And if you’ve never done any, and you’ve just focused on selling your work online, now is a great time to consider them. You’ll get amazing feedback about your products and customers that you won’t get selling any other way.
But I also understand that retail shows aren’t in the cards for everyone. They’re a lot of work. The weather can suck. It’s hard if you have health limitations or lack consistent child care. Frankly, I never liked retail shows and dropped them from my business the moment I had other revenue streams.
This leads us to my favorite other revenue stream: wholesale. (Ie. selling to stores.) Now, before we go further, let me state 100% that you can sell to stores without ever setting foot at a trade show. So don’t let that be your excuse.
There are a lot of reasons to consider wholesale in your business, but the biggest one is that wholesale lets you sell your products where people are already shopping. One of the challenges of social media is that someone might see and like your product, but few people go onto social media thinking “I want to buy something today.” That’s very different from the mindset people have going into a store.
The other reason I love wholesale is that you are in control. Unlike online, where you are just waiting around for customers to find you, with wholesale, you can research and reach out to stores directly. (This is why you can do wholesale without ever having to do a trade show. Because you can do your own marketing and outreach.) In the time it takes you to put together a social post, you could research and reach out to several stores. In just a little more time than that, you could design a postcard mailing that reaches hundreds of stores.
The counter-intuitive thing about growing your wholesale business is that it can also help grow your online sales. Selling to stores gets more of your work out into the world, which means more people are discovering you and wanting to buy more. And since stores typically only carry a small fraction of your products, people who fall in love with your work will turn to your website to buy more.
So if you’ve been frustrated by your growth (or lack thereof) online, consider adding IRL selling, whether through retail shows or wholesale (or both) into the mix for 2023. Because as much as we don’t want to admit it, the hardest way to grow your business is trying to sell entirely online. And I don’t expect that to change any time soon.
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If you’re not sure where to start when it comes to selling wholesale, you’re in luck! My new book is a comprehensive guide to all things selling wholesale, including WAY more detail on the outreach strategies I mentioned in this post. The Artists & Profit Makers Guide to Selling to Stores is available to pre-order now in paperback, digital, and audiobook versions. But you can save $5 on the ultimate bundle (which includes all three versions) when you purchase by the end of the day.
