The market place dear to the self-employed closed its doors. Dépitée by this announcement sudden, a small creative clothing reflects that.

Its creators had named an English name, but it is the small handicrafts made in France that the platform Has the Little Market (and then her little sister Was the Little Haberdashery) has released the honor for the past nine years. In 2014, the american giant Etsy has bought the market place, leaving the founders to the bar. On 3 July last, stupor, and tremor among the vendors (100 000 shops). They learn that the adventure stops (the group wants to “focus its investments on its main platform”), and that their stores will be, if they wish, transferred to Etsy.com.

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Those who had bet big on A Little Market, had made a clientele and a reputation, see their business environment collapse. Interview with Anne-Sophie Huart, who was selling her clothes and jewelry on the market place since 2010.

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has there been signs warning of the closure of A Little Market?

Not at all, we have been caught short. In the community of sellers, it was immediately panic. Since the announcement, the team of ALM made a big effort to make the transition as easy as possible for the creators. To overcome conditions of sale are more strict, they negotiate especially put in toll free lines of products and the offers put forward. Remains that Etsy is a huge international platform. There are sellers american, australian, belgian, Polish, etc. How do you take advantage of that, in the long term? The sales are likely to make a big plunge. And then, for the moment, it is not expected that our assessments and customer reviews also migrate. However, they are our reputation.

Precisely, do you already have a general idea of the strategy that you’re going to try to deploy to continue to be visible on Etsy?

I’ll try to work on my texts, to optimize the referencing. If I had the choice, I would prefer to populate my Etsy shop with my products in several times, rather than doing a mass migration of a single shot. I’m also going to put the package on my blog, my pages Facebook. Two months ago, I had done get a quote to try to have my own showcase site. In the light of events, maybe I’ll see how much it would cost me to have my own e-commerce site.

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Fear for your future business?

after three years to devote myself full-time to my activity, I managed to clear 800 euros per month. I am fortunate to have a spouse who earns a good living, I have a bit of money, we just sell off a real estate loan, in short, I have enough to take the time to re-start the machine, even if there will be a period of lean cows. I think of certain people only, including a single mother with her son that I know of. I don’t know how she’s going to do to get by.

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do you Regret having focused your activity on a single market place?

No, because I would not have been able to do otherwise. I was on Etsy before it can be available on ALM and I’ve always had a shop elsewhere. I also tried my luck on DaWanda. At one point, I realized that I was not able to manage these different sales channels effectively. I had the impression of drowning me. I preferred to concentrate my efforts on ALM.

Have you been able to contact your customers to let them know that A Little Market will stop, but your shop, it, to continue?

We do not have access to the email addresses of our customers. I hope that Etsy will be able to be in charge of this mailing. In the meantime, we can only contact them via the e-mail on the site, one by one. I spend three hours a day. I will also send a message to the people who have made my shop a favorite without necessarily having bought. I’m going to be able to do a postal mailing quite easily, however, because I was able to retrieve the addresses from all my purchase orders.

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What will you most regret?

A Little Market, it was a market place user-friendly. There was a cocktail organized workshops. And you could count on a degree of mutual support within the community of sellers. We refilait the right addresses, the right pipes. With a “colleague”, had the habit of organizing our shoot together, to be able to share the costs.

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Could you consider to transfer your shop on Handmade, platform, hand-made Amazon?

It’s not the issue. Amazon is regularly pointed the finger for the way in which are treated the employees, and this is not an image consistent with my values and those conveyed by the hand-made and made in France.