I’ve contemplated the shipping furniture game for quite some time. It seemed like a really BIG-HARD-SCARY thing for quite awhile! But I knew that the only way to up my game in the furniture painting market was to start shipping!
I already paint pieces and sold them in my local market. Which is great, except for if your local market is:
A different price point than you sell your pieces at.
You paint a different style of pieces than your local market.
You need more places to sell your furniture pieces than Facebook Marketplace and you’re not ready or willing to invest in a booth.
So about a year ago, I FINALLY bit the bullet and put my painted furniture on Etsy. Here’s the top 5 things I learned and that you NEED to know!
It takes awhile to sell your first piece. – Let’s face it, it’s not like we are selling gnomes. We are selling FURNITURE. Most of our pieces are fairly expensive, so it takes a while for our potential customers to trust us. They need to get to know us and our shops. I sold smaller items in my Etsy shop, but it was a whole year before I sold my first piece of furniture.
Always use free shipping – This is SO important! When I first started selling online, I didn’t have the free shipping on my Etsy store. I would get a bite on a piece of furniture and my potential customer would send me their zip code to get a shipping quote. I would then put in an inquiry to my shipping company to receive a shipping quote. It never failed, I would lose the sale because they would find another piece of furniture they could purchase right away OR they would contemplate the amount of shipping and not want to spend that much “extra”. We only have seven seconds to make a sale and waiting on a shipping quote for days, is just too long for our customers!
Be ready to ship your furniture piece at a moments notice – I had put my inquiry into UShip and hadn’t had any bites. We headed out of town for the day and inadvertantly a delivery driver responded to my inquiry. He could pickup THAT DAY! He happened to be in Kansas City making a delivery and checked the roster to see if there was anything that needed picked up and taken south. Since I’m in Des Moines, I fit the bill. The only problem was, I was out of town! Fortunately for me, he could wait until the next morning! But that meant I had to get up early, and prep for shipping, since I hadn’t did it ahead of time.
Pay for the extra shipping insurance – This may be controversial because not everyone is a fan of warranties. But knowing I can make sure my furniture piece is covered if it gets damaged in transit is a no-brainer for me. If this piece is damaged, it effects my bottom line. I’m not wiling to let that happen.
Shipping furniture is WAY easier than I thought – I thought it was going to be super difficult and tedious to ship furniture. It was actually super easy! Adding shipping to your online shop is an amazing way to offer personal service to your customer and make a sale.
Selling painted furniture is something I’m super passionate about! If you would like to snag my book “How To Make Money Painting Furniture in 5 Easy Steps”. You can snag it HERE!
Or if you’re having trouble pricing out your painted furniture, you can snag my free furniture painting pricing guide. It’s my gift to you, to help you grow your furniture painting biz.