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A selection of Christmas themed items from some of our Supplies sellers.
Hello, we’re back with another round-up of Folksy news and stats. This month we have some important news about additions to Categories and changes to the information about What you can’t sell on Folksy.
November statistics
- November saw a 46% increase in sales compared to October
- The most viewed categories are Jewellery, Homeware and Accessories.
- Folksy had visits from 287,351 different people in November, this is 31% up on October and a 114% increase on November 2009.
- The largest number of visitors come came from the following UK cities; London, Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham and Edinburgh (Sheffield sneaks in at no’ 6)
Service update
We’ve seen record levels of visitors to folksy in the last week, which has been wonderful, however we’ve also experienced slowdowns to the service as a result of this. We’ve been working on removing the bottlenecks for the last week and we’ll be continuing to improve the site responsiveness over the course of the next week.
Changes to Knowledge Base
We’ve made some changes to the What can’t I sell on Folksy? information on the knowledge base to make it a little clearer. There are also important ammendments to the Soaps and Oils policy, these items must abide by The Cosmetic Products Safety Regulations. We understand that this will affect a number of our sellers so if you have items listed that are subject to these regulations then we will be giving you time to get your items tested and update your listing (until January 2011). If you have any concerns then please contact Support.
Categories review
One of the first jobs for our new manager Sarah has been a category review, this is something we’d like to assess on a regular basis. The additions below are now live on the site so please adjust your listings accordingly. We also have a new category, Books and Zines which has it’s own sub categories of Books, Zines and Comics.
Books and Zines
- Books
- Zines
- Comics
Accessories
- Belt
- Tie
Toys and dolls
- Doll accessories
- Knitted
- Plushies
- Sock animals
Gadgets and geekery
- Laptop accessories
- Mobile phone accessories
- ipod accessories
In this category we have removed laptop covers and mobilephone covers as these are also listed in the Cases, purses and wallets section.
Furniture
- Shelf
- Bookcase
Clothing
- Socks
- Slippers
Cases, purses, wallets and bags
- laptop sleeve instead of laptop covers
- ipad sleeve
- mobile phone case instead of phone covers
- ipod case instead of ipodcase and ipodcover
Soaps and Oils
- Balm
- Cream
Homeware
- Kitchen
Lightshade and placemat have been removed as these are very close to other sub categories in this section.
Art and photography
- Stained glass
- Woodturning
Zines have been removed from this category as we have a new category especially for Books and Zines.
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A selection of Snow themed items available at www.folksy.com.
How are we doing?
We’d like to know if this sort of update is useful, so do give us your feedback on how we could improve. See you next month!
:) The Folksy Team – James, Rob, Sarah, Doug, Andrew, Toni and Hilary.
17 Responses to What’s happening at Folksy – December 2010
useful indeed – though I really really would like to see this sort of information going out to sellers by email. Not everybody checks the blog.
Not looking forward to editing all my meerkats though :-(
Fab :) x
Nice little update – this past ŵeek has been my best on folksy :)
Great to see Glasgow up there for supporting Folksy.
Excellent info, will this be a regular monthly update from you? x
Great, thanks for the update!
Thanks for the feedback Heather, emails directly to sellers is something we would like to introduce, in the meantime we’re trying to direct as many people as possible to the blog.
We hope that everyone will be happy with the new category additions, a lot have been asked for before so they should help sellers when listing.
Hi Claire, yes I’ll be writing the monthly update on the 1st of every month!
Thanks
sounds great, but…still no ‘collectables’ in the toys and dolls section? It would be great to have somewhere to put my decorative, NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN vintage style animals and dolls, rather than having to place them all in ‘homewares’. Oh well,
Sarah x
Thanks for the suggestion Sarah, categories will be reviewed on a more regular basis now based on the sections we think people would browse. Toys and dolls not suitable for children is a tricky area and possibly best kept away from that particular section which I’m sure you’ll understand. For your particular items, because they are decorative, would you feel they fitted more in homeware or in another section such as art & photography, How do you feel about the phrase art doll?
Great to see so many people dropping by Folksy, long may it continue!
Love the update and stats, keep them coming! Would like to see Jewellery Sets in the Jewellery category please :)
Carole x
http://www.createdbycarole.folksy.com
Thanks Sarah@Folksy – my meerkats are also not intended for children. I would never have thought of putting them in homeware as NorthfieldPrimitives suggests, though I agree that putting them in “toys” is misleading. Collectables would be good! I don’t personally like “art doll” because to me that is a very specific scary looking type of doll as seen in many etsy shops!
I’m glad to see you’ve removed Lightshade and Placemat from the Homeware sub-categories – there are quite enough sub-categories without the duplication! Perhaps the main Homeware category can be split in the future?
Thanks Folksy! Can I suggest a ‘pets’ category? At the moment this is hidden away under ‘homeware’ & I’m never sure whether it only applies to homeware that is suitable for pets/pet-themed or all pet related listings…
Thanks for the update.
I would like to see this going out by email too. I didn’t know it was here, I only stumbled upon it in the Shopkeeper Support forum just now.
I am also voting for a collectables category. As has been said, art dolls are completely different to Nifty’s meerkats and nothing like the plushies I’m working on at the moment. They aren’t suitable for children so can’t be ‘toys’….They are plushies but I can’t put them in that category because it comes under toys?? I wouldn’t call them homewares or art & photography either. Tricky. ‘Collectables’ as a category would solve this problem I’m sure.
Thank-you for your comment Sarah@Folksy in response to my post. I agree with Nifty and Top Floor that a stand-alone ‘Collectables’ category would be great. Most of my creations are vintage looking animals, only rarely do I make something that I would describe as an ‘artist doll’ which would fit into an ‘art doll’ category – and I probably wouldn’t think of looking under art & photography for artist bears, dolls and other decorative only ‘toys’.
To clarify, I currently use the ‘decorative items’ category in homewares, but this is not ideal!
I will look forward to seeng how this thread develops, Sarah x
Great info. Any chance of a “knitting” category. I’m never quite sure where I should put my hand dyed yarns. Thanks. Eleanor x
Thank you for the feedback on categories everyone, that’s really helpful!
Sorry Eleanor but at the moment there aren’t any specific categories for supplies, we do have some ideas in the pipeline for supplies though so we’ll keep you updated.
Thanks