Today we turn the spotlight on Rikke Bachmann of Felted By Rikke. I first discovered her in an Etsy team while playing the Favorites Game. If you’ve ever played this game you know that sometimes you get a shop where you spend like 30 mins trying to decide which one is your favorite because you love EVERYTHING! This was one of those times. From figurines to keychains, bookmarks to pencil bags this woman makes felt adorable and functional! Perfect birthday gift and excellent for back-to-school!
About Rikke:
"If someone told me 5 years ago that I some day would design and sell needle felted bookmarks and miniatures I would have asked "what is needle felt? and then just laughed" because until 4½ years ago I hadn´t even heard of that kind of craft. It was pure coincidence that I started to needle felt. One day I saw a needle felting kit in my local supermarket and since I´m curious I thought I would try and I have been needle felting ever since.
(I’d actually never heard of needled felt either until I saw her shop, lol!)
In the beginning I needle felted hearts and other very easy items and used them for decorating at home and gifts for friends and family. I did sell as well but only in different kinds of crafts shows that benefitted families in need etc.
About a year and a half ago a friend I had then told me about Etsy and together with her I opened my Etsy shop - and sold absolutely nothing!! - Some months later I went solo on Etsy and after 4 months I had only sold one item - to a friend *LOL* - but I could see in the teams that patience was very important, even though I´m not at all patient, I chose to give the project 1 year to see if I was really able to sell.
11 months have gone by and I have now sold 56 items, so they were right - patience is a keyword.
(it’s also a virtue! Sorry... it was there, had to do it.)
You need to remember that there are more than 10 million items in 800,000 shops on Etsy, so even though you list 50 items you are not very visible to customers unless you really work for it. I use the teams a lot and take part in every treasury chain game I possibly can, that helps a lot and I try to list new items or renew ever 2-3 days because I know that people only browse 2-3 pages in their search for something, so it´s important to be in the top all the time. Making treasuries etc takes a lot of time, and you can´t create new items at the same time, so it´s important to keep a balance between creating and promoting - a balance that can be very hard to find.
My biggest success is my fox bookmark, so far I have sold 19 of them but even though the fox is very popular he is not my personal favorite. I like the miniature turtles the most, I can´t explain exactly why, maybe it´s because they are so small.
(I agree with her on the turtles! As far as the bookmarks go my favorite is the Panda!)
Right now I have hundreds of ideas for new items I want to create but it will take time, it´s not possible to make a living needle felting - it takes 3-4 hours to make 1 bookmark and if I should price according to the time I spend making them I doubt I would sell any, so it´s a hobby and I don´t think that will ever change"
Hobby or lifestyle, I hope you never stop making items that make us smile! =)
Below is my personal favorite!
I hope you learned as much from this wonderful interview as I did. Finding the balance between creating and promoting and having patience (which I have a hard time with myself) can be difficult but if you keep on trying success can happen!
Be sure to visit Rikke’s shop on Etsy and check out more adorable items like these:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/FeltedByRikke
www.feltedbyrikke.com
www.feltedbyrikke.com
Courtney~*
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