Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sarah-Jane May. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Sarah-Jane, thanks for joining us today. Can you share a customer success story with us?
One of my favorite customer stories was a customer on Instagram who tagged me in their queer joy involving a greeting card I sell. One of my best sellers is my Uhaul Lesbian greeting card; an inside joke within the queer community about moving in with your partner and often “uhauling” to move. A customer tagged me with an image of my card in front of their Uhaul with the beautiful story of how they had just moved in with their girlfriend and the story of their journey in life as a lesbian. This experience almost made me cry and I was so happy to have been able to share in their queer joy and such a special moment with my artwork. It has most definitely stuck with me as I continue to embrace my queerness in my designs and business.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
May’s Monsters has had a lot of evolutions over the past few years as I’ve grown into my brand and myself as a person. I began at first by creating handcrafted floral crowns and also turning my digital illustrations into stickers. I started my business in 2019 selling at local festivals and art markets. When the pandemic hit in 2020 I realized my business needed to pivot as there were no longer any in-person markets or festivals. It was at this time that I was spending a lot of time at home and shifting from creating physical 3D sculpture pieces to learning how to illustrate and design merchandise, expanding into creating whatever merchandise I could get my hands on. While working for another small business who sold stationery, I realized how many creative ideas I had for making and designing greeting cards and stationery of my own. It was also after purchasing my own photo printer in 2021 that things really began to take off in terms of what I could create, as I now started turning my illustrations and designs into art prints. Having access to making my own stickers and art prints fueled my creations as I could design for my stickers, but then also apply the designs to other fun merchandise such as lanyards, greeting cards, iron on patches, and more.
One major thing that has stuck consistently with my brand has been my love for slugs. It’s been so fun to find my community of people who love my slug artwork and the new and repeat customers who find joy in my stationery and items that embrace slugs and other weird and whimsical bug friends. I love being able to have a cohesive theme to tie in my one of a kind handmade sculptures (often of wall mounted slugs) as well as my designs.
We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process./
When I first got started with designing stickers, it was actually from a street art class in college in which we had to design our own stickers and order them from a company. Once I discovered the different services and companies that were out there, it was easy to find more.
During the pandemic I started doing research on artist alleys at conventions and discovered there are groups of artists who run Group Orders; essentially one person handles talking to manufacturers and organizing invoices for payments and collection of artwork files. Instead of having to find reliable manufacturers who may require large minimum quantities, Group Orders allow a large group of people ordering at the same time together to bring the quantity minimums down to affordable quantities and prices. It has been a game changer for the types of items I’ve been able to order. I’ve been able to order washi tape, iron-on patches, lanyards, sticker sheets, face masks, and many other wonderful things available in my store.
While I still join in on Group Orders, purchasing my own photo printer (a Canon G6020 for anyone curious) has definitely made printing my own art prints and stickers from home a lot easier.
Additionally, I’ve been able to order smaller quantities of my greeting cards to see what designs will do well via Vistaprint. Unboxing the new greeting cards and assembling them is always an exciting event for me.
I also love how inclusive and helpful the artist and small business community is at helping eachother find information and learn how to grow, whether that be on Discord, Facebook Groups, or artists who post their vlogs to YouTube, something I hope I can also do someday.
How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.
I definitely use Etsy for my shop platform. While Etsy has many issues that they’ve been very publicly called out for recently, ultimately it has been the most cost effective strategy for growing my business. I did try to transition to my own website in late 2020, however it did not financially work out for me to draw customers the way that Etsy’s own website is able to draw customers to find my shop and products. I instead put in the effort to do the best I could at improving my SEO within Etsy to draw viewers to my products.
The Pros of Etsy as I mentioned are that when you put in the adequate work in making sure you’re optimizing search results, the amount of customers who can find your products can be great. I’ve had many really fantastic repeat customers find me through the platform that I wouldn’t have gained otherwise, especially with the confusing times we find ourselves in with many social media platforms impacting small businesses. Etsy removes a lot of the burden that comes with running your own website such as running their own advertisements for you that you can pay a little extra for (something I do to help bring views to my shop), bringing traffic to your shop with being a popularly known platform, inventory management within your shop, among other small things that you don’t realize can be a lot of work to take on yourself,
The Cons of Etsy unfortunately are also pretty lengthy. Etsy recently raised their fees for sellers despite the CEO having large earnings in the past year, something many sellers including myself were upset about. You also have to be very careful in what you tag your items as, as many items you don’t think about being copyright are. I recently received a strike against one of my listings, and because of this not only did they remove my listing but also put a Payment Reserve on my account that will hold 75% of my earnings until the items are shipped. Additionally Etsy has created a Star Seller system that has been a huge burden to many sellers, myself included. It often feels that the system, which prioritizes fast shipping, 24 hour message response, and consistently perfect 5 star ratings, encourages unhealthy work ethics that treat us as machines instead of the often one-person businesses that we are. For a while it gave me anxiety to get the notification that I had received a new shop rating as I didn’t know if a perfectly normal 4 star rating would tank my 5 star statistics, where before I’d always gotten excitement at seeing what someone was going to say about my artwork. There are also often times that I question how I’m even making a profit when Etsy is taking so much of mine in fees and costs.
Someday I would love to be able to have a large enough following that I could step back from the Etsy platform and run my own website, but until that day I am satisfied enough with using their platform and having a space my customers can find my work in.
Contact Info:
- Website: maysmonsters.com
- Instagram: MaysMonsters
- Facebook: MaysMonsters
- Twitter: MaysMonsters
- Other: Etsy.com/shop/MaysMonsters