We were lucky to catch up with Deede Petz recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Deede thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

I’ve always had a passion for vintage travel trailers. After many years of indecision I finally decided to take the plunge and start a small business creating and selling my interpretation of trailers from days gone by. The early versions of travel trailers in the fledgling industry were often of aluminum and often referred to as tin cans. I liked that – it’s realistic and hits home as I have a vintage aluminum trailer. So I was looking for a way to incorporate the “tin can” into the name of my business.
Initially when I started out I was focused on ornaments and I remembered from my youth the use of shiny tinsel strands on our Christmas tree that really stood out. It seemed like a fun twist to incorporate the “tin can” and “tinsel” in my name hence Tin Can Tinsel was born.

Deede, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My vintage trailer journey began in 2004 when I bought a 1954 Lintzcraft Sports King travel trailer. I had always wanted a vintage travel trailer and finally decided to purchase one. In casual conversation with one of our friends he mentioned there was one about 5 miles down the road from me and long story short, it followed me home! Inspired by my trailer and the unique shapes and features of these older trailers, I finally decided to start a small business creating and selling a series of original whimsical wooden trailers in magnet and ornament form. Each is hand cut and hand painted using poplar wood or reclaimed wood from local 120+ year old farms in my area. To add interest, I have more recently added some wall art, magnets and ornaments with texture or 3-D and fun earrings to the mix.

I offer my items through some consignment in art establishments and/or businesses in resort areas, have a small site on Etsy, attend a few art fairs and sell by word of mouth within the vintage travel trailer world. I love it when I hear people say my designs bring back fond memories of camping with their families when they were young. Those comments are often followed by many wonderful stories that bring happiness. Or as someone is purchasing one of my designs for a friend or family member who enjoys camping and informs me it is just the right gift! I especially enjoy it when a fellow vintage travel trailer owner buys one of my items as it looks similar to what they own and later I see it displayed in their trailer.

I am based in Western Michigan where I live on a small farm with my husband. We enjoy and collect vehicles from days gone by including tractors, snowmobiles, trucks and, of course vintage travel trailers.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Everything I create are my own original designs cut from wood using a scroll saw. And I am proud to say that they are all truly handmade and I leverage that in my communications and in person sales to help further drive value for my items. However, when I decided to create earrings that posed a challenge as the trailers are so small I was having a tough time cutting them without potentially cutting myself or worse. Hence I needed to consider a laser cutter for those items. I am very happy with the output: however, I cannot truly say those are 100% handmade. So for the earrings they are still hand painted so I have to pivot away from 100% handmade to handmade (as there is still the element of adding crystals and putting the hoops and hooks together as well as creating the packaging) and focus on 100% hand painted. It may seem minor but it was a wonderful point of differentiation.

The second pivot I’ve had to make also came about with the addition of earrings into my overall portfolio. I started creating my designs utilizing swarovski crystals. About the time I had designs ready to sell, Swarovski changed their strategy and pulled their crystals from retailers and made the decision to no longer support the handmade market. This meant I was not allowed to use “Swarovski” or “crystals from Austria” in my listings. It was communicated that they were actively prosecuting and sites like Etsy where I had planned to list were enforcing Swarovski’s new policy. This was devasting as I had purchased a large quantity of various colors of crystals and now I was not allowed to tout that they were indeed Swarovski crystals. Rather than list on Etsy using vague language for these crystals, I opted to sell at art fairs or in person sales where I could convey Swarovski without fear of prosecution

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I am not tech savvy and in this day and time you need to be. I am a work in progress here. I started out designing because I wanted to without an idea of where I would sell my work. I initially consigned my art in a local art gallery and in a few resort area shops and within my vintage travel trailer world. I then decided I should try to sell on Etsy and I naively thought all I needed to do was take a design make a bunch of them, put them on the site and I would sell like hotcakes. Not the case. I had not learned to test the market with what people may be interested in first before I made more than a few and I did not understand the whole universe of key words so people could find you and how important the visuals are. So as a result I have not had many sales. For quite awhile I just used Etsy as a place to showcase my items for those wanting to see more than what I was showcasing in art galleries, resort shops or in person selling like art fairs. This past Fall I finally decided I needed to relook at how to make the site work better for me. I recently invested in understanding key words for searches and am currently working to update the artwork as well as determining best approach to advertising to push to the Etsy site. And I have not listed some of my better selling items such as earrings on the site which my family and those that like my work have been yammering for me to do.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.TinCanTinsel.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/TinCanTinsel
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/TinCanTinsel

Image Credits
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