Etsy With Faa Fullfilment

then you order it here and ship it to them. easy peasy. make sure you figure in the right shipping and handling.

i wonder how returns would work with that.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Depends on the shop policies you have, which are up to you. If you were to use FAA to fulfill, I'd shorten the window for returns so it could still be within the 30 days allowed on FAA.

As far as I know this isnt allowed on etsy....You have to have the physical product and you as the artist have to send it out. You cannot have a pod site do it for you.

New policies allow outside fufillment.

https://www.etsy.com/new-guidelines

I would want to do the shipping and returns myself though, keep enough stock to cover your sales, seems to have worked fine that way for other people who have sold prints so far.

Anyway you are supposed to be honest with your customers so why not send them to FAA in the first place?

On Etsy, you need to apply and be approved to have Outside Manufacturing for the product that you design/create but need some outside manufacturing for. I sell prints on Esty, but I print them at a local fine art printers. I had to go through the approval process to allow for this. I chose Not to print on a home computer, which you would not need that approval for.
Jocelyn

Every Etsy artist I know who has applied to be allowed to drop-ship has been approved. A far cry from when I was there, several years ago, and they talked about not allowing prints at all, unless they were home-printed. Now, it seems they allow everything -- even mass-produced stuff from factories.

If I ever reopen my Etsy store, I'll definitely go the drop-ship route.

I wish FAA could work out a real partner deal with Etsy; I'd love to get into that market. But I'm not going to get involved in fulfillment, order processing, shipping, myself.

@John Groves,

I am no expert on Etsy, not used it, but the idea of Etsy is a larger market with a different search engine. Conquering the
Etsy search engine is why.

Dave

OOpa wrong thread! I was thinking ebay not Etsy!

I have had an Etsy shop for over a year. I have dropped shipped some pillows and a print from here. It's good for me to have both. Etsy approved my outside manufacturing pretty fast.

Keep in mind nothing is automatic. You still have to promote to be seen among the zillions of sellers here, there or anywhere (sounds like a Dr. Suess).

And there you get the "privilege" of paying every single time you list any item. Every few months you get to do it again.

If you use Paypal as payment I think a buyer can request a refund up to 60 days after they paid for a item. So no matter what your policies state you have to go by what Paypal's policies are. Etsy does have Direct Checkout and I 'm not sure about their refund policies because usually I only use Direct Checkout if a customer wants to pay with that method in which case I turn DC for them.

Here's the link for your application to sell your photographs on Etsy with FFA as the manufacturer that will be drop shipping your prints.
https://www.etsy.com/help/article/4644

It's quick and easy just add the Fine Art America information to your application, I think they want the address ect.. They pretty much just want to make sure you are the original photographer and you are having your prints done by an outside photo lab.

I filled out the outside manufacturing form with the best knowledge I have but it seems that I don't know much about FAA printing. I have a few metal prints from FAA and they are of a great quality and they are printed in the UK, I think. So all I know is that FAA prints in the US and UK.

Etsy sent me a email and wants to know more about the FAA printing business and to be honest I can't give them more details. Shows how little I know about FAA.
Does anyone know more than I know:
__________________________________________
As part of the application for outside manufacturing assistance, we want to know that sellers are invested and knowledgeable about how their handmade items are made. With this in mind:

Can you describe in more detail how your manufacturer turns your designs into finished goods?

What do you know about the facility?

Do you know if your partner is printing your items at the location you listed in your application? If not, can you tell us where they are being printed?

Finally, can you tell me a bit more about why you chose this particular partner? Please describe the standards you considered, and any research you did to confirm that your manufacturing partner met those standards.
_____________________________________

We have no control over where FAA gets prints, and they can change vendors at any time. So I don't think we can answer those questions. If Etsy is serious about asking them, it seems like they wouldn't approve FAA fulfillment for prints.

There is a different audience on etsy. I started on etsy just under a year ago, and have had a few sales there. Interestingly my most popular image sold there is different to my most popular image sold here (bothe from Madison though). I need to get set up to drop ship from FAA - but that can wait a little while.

I think the etsy fees should just be considered as a type of paid advertising for FAA images in these cases. I have seen other post before that they successfully use etsy but I am still hesitant to do it because of the return issue. It sounds like it could be a mess to depend on the customer to get it back to me, and then me get it back to FAA in time to meet a 30 day deadline. I have a dormant etsy shop, and I used to print my own and sell there. I only had 1 return, and it was kind of a mess, even when I was handling it directly, and I ended up eating the shipping costs.

I produce my own prints & cards for my Etsy account. I actually have had quite a few sales through Etsy, not much here, so it has more than paid for itself 50x over.

I am considering adding the canvas, acrylic, metal prints also the pillows & totes option though so am interested in this conversation about the drop shipping from FAA.

I believe that you would need to allow for processing time - some artists on etsy don't make the prints until they are ordered, and since you can't use the third party mailer on etsy, you'd have to get the item from FAA then mail it to them, which means extra shipping expense.

Besides, the whole appeal of FAA for me is that I don't have to touch the prints.

I've drop shipped orders from FAA through my Etsy account in the past without problems, but the process is not very clean. I've quit listing prints there and only sell originals. If FAA could work out a better method that streamlined the process, I might start offering prints there again. I consistently sell originals on Etsy. It has been a good venue for me.

I have dropped shipped from FAA for ETSY purchases regularly. I have never had a return, but if I did I would either add the print to my inventory or just return it to FAA.

It works really well.
Dacve

So, did anyone doing "drop shipping" at Etsy fill in the "Outside manufacturing form"? Or did you just drop ship without the Outside manufacturing thing?
I am a little stuck in what to tell about the FAA printing facility.

I just drop ship, been doing it for years without filling out any special form. Have no intention of getting their special permission.

Thanks Heather, that's what I wanted to hear. I'll go the same path, too much of a hassle this outside manufacturing.

How does the pricing work; if a buyer purchases from Etsy and FAA prints and ships it?

I have an Etsy shop for my original watercolor paintings. I do many more sales there than here. For print requests, I provide the link to my FAA website.
Playing the middle man of drop shipping sounds like more work than I care to do.

Fulfilling orders you get from Etsy is a piece of cake. IMO it's much easier to sell there too because their search engine limits how many spots one artist can take up per page so it spreads the wealth around - it's quite possible for a new artist to get going on their site search alone with no advertising (which is exactly what I did). I sell a few prints a week on Etsy and that number has been consistently growing. Here I've had 3 sales in just over a year. But, I've been with Etsy a year longer.

But, in the long run I want FAA to be my primary seller so I keep plowing towards that goal.

Lot of money being left on the table. You are selling on one retail site and filling orders by buying from another retail site.

You can probably double your profit and sell for less by developing you own wholesale printing and fulfillment resources.

But if you are going to do it, read what Heather said.

I am looking at etsy as I have a pro lab I use for regular print orders of portrait clients and their print prices are quite affordable and drop shipping is a flat rate. What are the cost for listing on etsy?

Alicia,

It is .20 a listing for four months and 3.5% when you sell.

That is quite affordable. I guess I need to decide what prints I want to sell there.