JellyFiz – Alternative Handmade Marketplace

With all the recent buzz HandmadeMarketing.org has been hearing about JellyFiz.com, we were excited to interview with the team behind the new handmade-focused website.

What makes JellyFiz different than Etsy, ArtFire, 1000 Markets, and the other growing selling platforms for handmade sellers?

“JellyFiz is a buy and sell market place for “alternative” handmade fashion and accessories,” said Meg Ginimav, from JellyFiz.  “What I mean by “alternative” is you’ll find handmade creations influenced by Goth, Punk, Emo, Rockabilly, Retro, Glam, Streetwear and a whole lot of other funky fashion trends. We want to be different to other handmade market places by focusing on pop culture inspired fashion and accessories.”

The JellyFiz team tells us that there is huge demand from shoppers who are looking to buy something unique online from handmade sellers.  They tell us these items cannot be found in retail chains like Hot Topic or Urban Outfitters.

“JellyFiz is unique to other handmade marketplaces as we focus on “alternative” handmade fashion and accessories. It’s also different from other selling venues as it is totally free to start selling. There are no listing fees, no sales fees and no membership fees. Later we might add premium paid features,” JellyFiz told HandmadeMarketing.org

“We see a growing number of handmade sellers who are catering for the “alternative” market. These sellers are creating anything from hand screen printed streetwear t-shirts and hoodies to Goth and Kawaii jewelry,” Meg said.  “Overall our goal is to create a thriving community for “alternative” handmade fashion and accessories.”

HandmadeMarketing.org wondered how JellyFiz first began. “JellyFiz got started as a project out of MBA school,” Meg told HandmadeMarketing.org.  “We were told to create a basic e-commerce site but one thing led to another and the project got out of control.”

The story behind the creation of JellyFiz is just as unique as the benefits the handmade community may see from this vibrant site.  “JellyFiz was created out of the need to exercise our creativity and entrepreneurial spirit. It seemed like a fun thing to do, so we just went along and created JellyFiz,” Meg told HandmadeMarketing.org.

“After many iterations,” she continued, “we ended up with a marketplace for alternative handmade fashion and accessories. We still have many ideas that we want to explore with JellyFiz, but we are taking it one step at a time.”

The JellyFiz team says the site offers a dedicated selling channel for handmade sellers to reach their target audience.

“The target audience being people looking for alternative edgy pop culture inspired fashion and accessories,” she said. “Another very important point is that we do not charge listing fees, sales fees or any memberships fees. It is totally free to sell on JellyFiz. Later on we might add premium paid features for sellers so that they get better exposure for their creations.”

The site also offers benefits to those who buy handmade online.  “For buyers, we offer a visually vibrant and exciting experience for shoppers by ensuring items that are listed fit with our overall site theme. There is also a great search tool that helps you discover new items by occasion, trends, graphics, colors, location and even your mood.”

The team told HandmadeMarketing.org a bit about the long hours behind the website.  “If we knew how much work was involved we would have seriously thought twice,” Meg told us.  “We have a global team with Graphic Designers in Turkey, Coders in India, UI designers in San Francisco and Systems Admin in Ukraine. It can’t get more dispersed than that.”

The handmade community is a focus for JellyFiz.  Because of the struggles many sellers face, our editors asked the JellyFiz team to share any advice they have for sellers.

“There are so many on-line resources, tools and sites that handmade sellers can use nowadays and finding what works amongst all the noise is very tricky especially as each one requires investment in your time before you see any results,” the team tells us.  “The main advice to online handmade sellers would be to select just a few of the good free tools out there such as Twitter and Facebook and to work hard at building your own identity on them. Having a niche for your items is also very important especially when there is so much competition.”

“The biggest challenge for handmade sellers are to get exposure for their creations and to build a following of fan who can spread the word about their talent to other like minded individuals. To take steps to solve these problems JellyFiz has implemented a better search tool so shoppers can discover items by fashion trends or occasion or even graphics and patterns. We are also building features so that shoppers can join the seller’s own street team to help promote their store.”

Looking ahead, where does JellyFiz hope to be at the end of 2009?

“We aim to have a thriving community of sellers and buyers on the site by year end,” Meg said.  “We are still a very new site so things will take time to get the word of mouth out there. But with the help of sites such as yours we can expect things to pick up pretty soon. We have also created a screen printing service that we are currently launching. This will enable any indie apparel designers and bands to print their t-shirts and hoodies with JellyFiz. We will offer them the same tools as we offer our handmade sellers so that they can market their merch on JellyFiz. This will add to the overall pop culture theme of the site.”

Interested in learning if JellyFiz is a marketplace that appeals to you?  Visit JellyFiz online to learn more!

Do you sell niche items online?  How do you market your craft?  What do you think of JellyFiz and their services?

Share your tips for selling online with HandmadeMarketing.org!  Our site thrives on your ideas for selling handmade items.  If our editors publish your thoughts, we’ll link to you shop, site, or blog!