In a previous post, I provided a list of venues for artists, artisans and artisan crafters. This week I’m profiling another of those sites on my blog.
I asked Karen from HyenaCart to tell us a bit more about her venue.
What is the site name and where can artisan sellers find you?
The site name is Hyena Cart: http://hyenacart.com .
Tell us a little about your site’s history. What are its origins?
Hyena Cart was born out of the internet’s thriving cloth diapering community. Members of this community are so obsessed with cloth diapers, that they will literally (ok, figuratively), *stalk* their favorite sellers’ stores, waiting for them to stock their extremely high-demand and hard-to-get items. These shoppers have been known to clean out a store within seconds of its items going live. Before Hyena Cart, the sellers used traditional shopping cart software, but the software allowed oversells and tended to crash under the heavy loads of crazed ‘hyena’ shoppers. So in 2004, I set about learning how to code in PHP, and started Hyena Cart as a way to sell my own items, which were pretty popular in their heyday, and to help other sellers who were having these issues.
Over time, Hyena Cart became the hangout place for a lot of cloth diaper shoppers, and more sellers started to join, just to take advantage of the traffic and the ease-of-setup allowed by the code. At this point, HC has expanded far beyond cloth diapers, although these stores still form the main core of the shops. We now have jewelry, bath and body, fine art, toys, clothing, yarn… but all the stores are tied to the main theme of being earth-friendly, which is a nod to our cloth diapering origins.
Tell us about the site’s staff.
There is myself (Karen), the owner, operator, and code monkey for the site. I am also helped by a dedicated crew of community members (Michelle, Becky, Trista, and Conny) who help answer support tickets, moderate the forums and work through buyer / seller conflicts.
What is your plan for the site? What are your goals?
I would love to see this site continue to grow and reach those who would be most interested in its offerings. However, it is not my goal to turn HC into a massive business. I’d like it to remain privately owned and operated, without outside investors, so that I can always feel free to work in the best interests of the HC buyers and sellers, and not be tied to profit goals.
Who is your target seller audience?
My target seller is the individual who is looking for the chance to sell his / her handmade objects online, to a wider audience than s/he can reach via craft fairs or an independent website. I think the sellers that do the best are the ones that join the community and have the same warm, all-welcoming, open attitude that is the hallmark of our forums. We are also not strictly limited to handmade items — we have resellers of reclaimed clothing, as well as resellers of wholesale items.
Who is your target buyer audience? How will you drive buyers to your venue?
The main target is anyone who is looking to purchase unique, one-of-a-kind, eco-friendly items for themselves and their families, with an emphasis towards those with younger children. However, as we continue to evolve, I think that target will expand beyond parents and children to just anyone who is looking for all-natural, handmade items to replace their mass-made counterparts (for example, cloth “unpaper” towels to replace paper towels, handmade wooden toys to replace plastic ones, handcrafted soaps made of natural herbs and oils rather than synthetic detergents and fragrances). Finally, like any other handmade venue, I think our target buyer is someone who is looking for something that is truly unique and made with care and attention.
Up until now, traffic has been driven to the site purely through word-of-mouth and I’ve found that that has the highest chance of bringing the right people into our stores. However, in 2009, I will begin placing banner ads and possibly some magazine ads to reach more of our target audience who may not have wandered in just yet.
Is this an international, domestic US, Far East or European focused site?
Most sellers on HC are based in the US or Canada, although there are some European sellers as well. The cart code allows for selling in several currencies including US and Canadian dollars, Euros and GBPs.
What differentiates this venue from other online selling venues?Why should artisan sellers consider utilizing this site as a resource instead of other, older sites or their own sites?
Hyena Cart is actually quite different from other selling venues. Each store can customize its graphics/styling to the point that it’s very close to having one’s own site, rather than the ‘cookie cutter’ look most venues force sellers into. So a seller can get that individualized look, while also benefitting from the centralized traffic brought together by having so many stores in one place.
One of the main features of HC, and one that the buyers use multiple times per day, is the stocking calendar: http://hyenacart.com/calendar.php . When a seller lists new products, they appear on this calendar, and buyers use this to check out what’s new for each day. Many stores are also on a regular stocking schedule (for example, every Tuesday night at 8:00), so buyers know when to expect fresh listings.
In addition, the original basis of the site, trying to get high-demand items into buyers hands in a fair way, has led to many unique ways of selling items beyond the traditional, ‘add to cart’ and checkout. For example, sellers can choose to list their item as an auction. Or, if there really are a ton of people clamoring to get that one special item, sellers can list a product as a ‘lottery’, which means that all interested shoppers basically throw their names into a hat, and at the end of the listing time, one person is chosen at random to be the one that gets to make the actual purchase.
Another fun thing that has evolved on HC is the congos (short for conglomerate). These are collections of sellers who band together, forming a store with multiple smaller storefronts, each selling a uniquely different product. A couple of great examples are Universal Mama: http://hyenacart.com/Universalmama and Necessitae: http://hyenacart.com/Necessitae/ . These congos are great for both sellers and shoppers — sellers get to showcase their items among other talented artisans, and shoppers get a feast for the eyes, all on one page.
Also, funny you should mention the word ‘older.’ At four years old, I believe HC is actually one of the oldest selling venues of this nature. We’ve just been small, and growing at our own pace, so we’ve been under the radar.
How have your structured your seller pricing?
Pricing is very simple — it’s a one-time setup fee of $10, then a flat monthly fee of $5 if images are hosted outside of HC, and $7.50 if a seller chooses to upload images directly to HC’s server. There are no listing fees or commissions, and so far, no limits on the number of listings per store. In addition, if a seller takes a break from their store, they do not need to pay the monthly fee — their store will still be active, but they will not be able to add/edit listings until a monthly payment is made. I’ve tried to structure this pricing to be as simple and affordable as possible.
What else should we know?
Gosh, I feel like I’ve gone on and on. I think the thing to remember is that no venue is going to be the magic bullet that propels a seller’s sales into the stratosphere. The name of the game is to have a unique and well-made product, market it spectacularly (including top-notch photography and descriptions), and then bring in the shoppers via advertising, forum posting, etc. The right venue might make this easier, but if a seller has the product, the marketing, and the traffic, then s/he can probably succeed anywhere.
Stay tuned over the next weeks as I will be profiling more artisan handmade selling venues with interviews and giveaways from the site owners. You can find this site’s traffic rank according to Alexa here
Don’t miss a single post.
Follow this blog: Click here
Follow via email: Click here
Want to be notified of subscriber only sales and other special events from ShinyAdornments? Sign up for my newsletter
I love hyenacart, it is my goal this month to fully load my shop there.
[...] Site profile [...]
[...] Site profile here [...]