The Joy of Handcrafted Goods: Why did we leave Etsy?
Making cards—by hand—in our studio in Easthampton, Massachusetts
Small Victories believes—deeply—in handcrafted goods. Our illustrator and co-founder Vincent Frano draws inspiration from our natural surroundings in his beautiful art; we adore selecting handcrafted seed paper to sprout beautiful plants in your spaces. Most of the items we sell are made by hand, like the seed cards we carefully print, score and fold in-house in Easthampton, MA.
Handcrafting encourages us to slow down to a livable pace—both as consumers, and as workers and business owners. We believe in handmade goods. And when we joined Etsy, back in 2011, they believed in handmade goods as well.
But these days, a shopper is more likely to log on to Etsy and see mass-produced, low-quality goods with images stolen from the original artist. So we have chosen to leave the marketplace.
Like Abby Glassenberg of While She Naps and the president of Craft Industry Alliance said in 2021:
The shipping area in our Easthampton, MA studio.
We don’t have the marketing power and billions of dollars as the now-behemoth marketplace we’re leaving behind. But we do have the passion, and the dedication, to a handmade intentionally crafted life. And we hope our shared passions encourage you to support our store.