Vintage Feature: BackToTheVintage & GIVEAWAY!

This week I'm featuring an awesome vintage shop I found on Etsy, called backtothevintage. Shop owner, Kate is a freelance graphic designer by day and she also designs and sells jewelry on Etsy. She worked in her Mom's antique store when she was attending college and ever since she's been hooked on Vintage! Some of them items in her shop were shipped in from Michigan, so there's a nice variety to peruse.

How did the idea for your business come about and how did you decide on the name for your shop? I opened my vintage Etsy shop as a way to make extra money doing something I love. The name is funny, I am really not good at coming up with names so I asked my boyfriend for some help. Back to the Future had been on tv recently and so he said, "what about Back to the Vintage?" And there you have it! [that's what I thought, i LOVE those movies!]

What inspires you and what keeps you motivated? I personally love mixing old with new. Especially jewelry. Wearing something new and modern and pairing it with an old piece of jewelry is my favorite. So when i am out looking, I am always drawn to the jewelry section. My house is the same way, I have new modern furniture and housewares with a lot of vintage thrown in there. I like to mix it up. Keeping things funky like that is inspiring and I have friends who have a similar style. I also find a lot of inspiration on blogs I follow. What keeps my motivated is a big mix of things. Fun is one of them, this is just fun for me. I even enjoy photographing the items I put in my shop. I'm motivated by a drive to make money as well. I also have a twitter account (http://twitter.com/kelderkin) where i follow other vintage etsiers and see how often they are listing things and that is also a big push to keep up the pace!

To what do you attribute your success? I started in Feb. of this year. I think I have done pretty well so far. I think vintage is easy to sell on etsy. But I think it's a love for what I am doing that helps. I take time to present myself and my shop well.

Three pieces of advice you can share with fellow Etsians aspiring for success in our marketplace? Research. I am still learning a lot but I just keep looking into things and trying to figure out what works. You may sell things if you just put some product up there, but there is much more that goes into it. Look into the forums on etsy and look at other vintage sites to see what sells. There are collectibles. There are a lot of trends right now that are vintage and/or vintage inspired. Things go in and out of style constantly and it's good to keep up on that. Come up with some sort of consistent look. My look is very simple but I think it helps your shop to have a feel or an aesthetic that is consistent and clean. Also, try to list things as often as you can, that way you are always in the top of the list for searches. I have also heard that if you are selling clothes or jewelry to model it and show your face in the pics because people like to see the face they are buying from. Makes it more personal. I tend to agree as a buyer.

How do you go about marketing your business? I'm still trying to figure that out. So far I have been doing ads on craftcult.com which is pretty inexpensive and gets a lot of traffic to my site. I'm going to have an ad in N.E.E.T. magazine (http://www.neetmagazine.com/) in September. Also very inexpensive and such a cool magazine. The mag is online and the ads link to your site. For my handmade jewelry shop I have been doing the same as above but also did some advertising on this blog: http://keikolynn.blogspot.com/ she has 700+ followers and I have gotten a lot of traffic from that ad as well. I am also doing a giveaway on her site, because that creates more traffic as well. *sidebar: sign up for google analytics so you know where your traffic is coming from* I also tweet every new item I list. This gets traffic in seconds to your shop. I have a blog for my handmade jewelry.

Kate has graciously agreed to a GIVEAWAY! Win this awesome vintage purse!!!

To ENTER:

1) Follow this blog AND

2) Leave a comment below, telling me what your favorite item is in Kate's shop, backtothevintage.  Please choose something other than the two items displayed in this post for your entry to count.

For EXTRA ENTRIES*:

1 Extra Entry: Follow kelderkin on Twitter

2 Extra Entries: Follow oldbagvintage on Twitter and tweet about the giveaway (leave link below)

2 Extra Entries: Blog about this giveaway (leave a link to the blogpost below)
3 Extra Entries: Wear my blog button on your blog! (leave link to your blog so that I can confirm)

*leave separate comments telling me each thing that you did. For multiple entries, you must post the comment that many times (i.e. leave your blog link in 3 separate comments to get the 3 entries)

The winner will be announced on Monday, September 1st! G o o d L u c k !