We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tiffany Millen. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tiffany below.

Hi Tiffany, thanks for joining us today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

When my son started Kindergarten, I knew I needed something that would fill my days. I had been a stay at home mother for him since he was born, having my own small business making decorative wooden blanket ladders several years before but it had since been closed due to us moving, but I wanted something for ME again. I started with small handmade projects and listed them on Etsy, where I’d sold my ladders, but something felt much different than when I was operating my business. It was then that I came up with the idea to create Made By Her, and online marketplace for truly talented female artists, not just hobbyists, to sell and showcase their work.

I wanted the site to feel like an outdoor market / craft show / art festival that someone would visit on the weekend and be mesmerized by all the beautiful handmade things. I also wanted it to be a platform for women to feel empowered on and come to truly believe that their art could be their “full time” job, not just something they liked to do when it was convenient while punching the clock somewhere else.

I then had development start on the website and we had artists come to us almost immediately. In two years, amidst a roller coaster of website development, we got up to 150 vendors selling with us but, as the economy started shifting after the big “online shopping due to COVID” wave, I realized I wanted to give them more. It didn’t feel enough for me to simply offer them a place to sell their products, they could do that at any of the other online marketplaces popping up or even at in person events and do just fine; I wanted to offer them business support as well.

Then, a few months ago, the creator of a business resource site for makers, Happening Hands, reached out to me and we decided to partner together. Now, today, Made By Her is not only an online artisan marketplace that features women artists, we are a full resource center as well with courses and monthly coaching to give our makers all the support they need to turn their dream of being a full time artist into reality.

Tiffany, 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?

I started as a maker myself while I was away from “the business world” as a stay at home mom. I had worked ever since I was 16 and got my worker’s permit and, being home with nothing but food prep and diapers on my to do list was a shock I wasn’t ready for; I knew I had more to offer the world. At the time, I made decorative blanket ladders and really enjoyed the process of designing the pieces, staining the wood, and seeing the transformed final product. I also loved the business side of things including getting creative about marketing, product photos, and talking with customers about what they loved most.

It was later, once my son went to Kindergarten, that I decided I wanted to create an online platform so other women artists and makers could see that they could make a living doing what they loved as well AND offer shoppers of artisan-quality things the chance to discover these small businesses; I didn’t feel like any of the major online handmade markets really gave an intimate shopping feel anymore.

Now I am the founder of Made By Her, an online artisan marketplace with over 150 female vendors selling everything from paintings and prints, handmade pottery, artisan jewelry, unique decor pieces, and more! We empower artistic women to live out their dream of being a full time artist and offer them resources and a community to help their business grow. This community sets us apart from other online spaces because it isn’t one of competition or judgement but excitement to see what their fellow artist will make next.

I think the thing I’m most proud of is 1) knowing that I am not the type of person to give up when things get hard or when a new challenge arises and 2) that our makers are so so talented! Every week we get new artists wanting to join our community and it just blows me away every time I see how beautiful their work is. It’s truly an honor to work with such a talented group of women.

How did you build your audience on social media?

One thing I’ve learned about social media over the last two years is this… it’s SOCIAL. I know that sounds incredibly obvious but I feel like I, along with many other small business owners, tried to use it as a place to sell but that’s really not what it’s meant for! Social sites like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok don’t REALLY want their viewers to navigate away from their platforms so, while it’s a great place to get people’s attention, you have to be really strategic about what you’re posting and what your call to action is, otherwise they’ll just view it and move on. If your content is full of “selling” and not personal engagement, viewers will most likely just glaze over it because they’re there to be entertained, not sold to.

Another story with social media: When I first started an Instagram page, I tried to make it both for artists/makers AND shoppers. I would follow really talented female artists and share them with our audience and, in turn, they would follow us back and share what a great platform it was. We got up to about 12,000 followers, by this time our online marketplace had launched, but we weren’t getting a lot of sales despite how much product info I started posting on Instagram. I then realized that I had an unclear message; a third my posts were directed towards artists, a third were directed toward shoppers, and the other third was trying to speak to both… it wasn’t working. I then learned that Instagram will put your page in front of the accounts that are similar to the people you FOLLOW… well the only people we were following were artists; they weren’t looking to buy, they wanted to sell. It was then I realized I had to get REALLY focused on what my message was and just stick to that.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Made By Her was supposed to launch in August/early September of 2020 but, with tech issues still happening with the site plus, within two days, I learned I was pregnant and that my dad had gone into the hospital for serious health reasons (he ended up passing away two months later), I knew it wasn’t a time I could put in my full attention into a launch but I didn’t want to stop altogether either. So Made By Her launched in March of 2021 but by the end of the year, issues with the website started popping up again and, despite my phone calls and emails to my custom developer at the time, things weren’t getting fixed and sellers were getting really frustrated. After not hearing from my web developer for over two weeks, I took my “time off” during the week of Christmas and New years to recreate the whole online marketplace and announced in early January that we were on a new platform. I walked each of our sellers through how to set up new accounts and re-list their items and shut the old one down.

While this might seem like an extreme measure, it’s not acceptable for me to have a platform to disappoint both sellers and shoppers. Shoppers were getting upset because their orders couldn’t be fulfilled and sellers were getting upset that they couldn’t access their accounts. I could have just left it as it was and sort it out once my developer decided to come back from vacation but, I figured, if he wasn’t able to be around during an important time like this, I needed to come up with another way for the better of the company. I didn’t hear from my developer again about the site after the new year despite several emails and calls and I haven’t regretted my decision to build the site myself (I just wish I would have done that in the first place instead of going custom, it would have saved me thousands of dollars.)

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.madebyher.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/madebyher_official & www.instagram.com/madebyher_market
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/madebyhermarketplace
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAG99NCjcMS0GHsbZzztm4A
• Other: https://www.instagram.com/madebyher_shopping https://www.pinterest.com/madebyher

Image Credits
Happening Hands & Artists at MadeByHer.com.