Find your Passion- Purses, Bags, and pouches

What's the Passion: Purses, Bags, and pouches

Your Customers:
The greatest thing about selling purses is that most women want to buy more than type or style in their lifetime.
Plus men and kids need bags too! Backpacks, laptop bags, camera bags, leather cool looking fanny packs, suitcase type messenger bags, laptop sleeves, e-reader sleeves, phone bags, water bottle drawstring bags.
There are limitless possibilities.

The springboard-ability is limitless as well. For example you make a cool looking purse, now make two different sized matching zippered pouches, a coin purse, a wallet, a key fob, and maybe a purse organizer they
put into any of their purses. How about a waterproof drawstring or zippered bag to put wet items in. Or a smaller matching purse. Maybe a even a kid-size matching purse for the matching-mommy-daughter look.

There are so many shapes, sizes, and many different types of fabrics and styles.
Also bags, purses, and pouches are being bought all year long. They are not limited by season, depending on style/fabric (obviously a santa shaped purse will only have appeal in one season really).

Price ranges:
Items on Etsy by category on March 6th, 2013

Handmade 435,839
Highest priced purse on Etsy $5,500.00 USD
It's gorgeous, very high quality materials, lots of labor of love went into the piece.
I could totally see a celebrity or a member of the royal family ordering this purse.
Highest priced purse on Etsy is handmade drawstring pouches for a $1.04

Vintage 91,863
Highest= $30
Lowest= coin purse $1.50

Etsy Market:
According to Etsy Market Research, under search for the word "purse" the highest selling is 27% for patterns and supplies. No big surprise there.
The sales percent per price range is pretty like stair steps, as the price goes up, the sale percentage goes down.

$ 0–11 pattern, supplies, pdf {27%}
$ 12–23 pouch, personalize, coin {19%}
$ 24–35 personalize, bag, sleeve {17%}
$ 36–47 bag, bridesmaid, hobo {15%}
$ 48–59 messenger, bag, laptop {10%}
$ 60–71 bag, messenger, leather {4}
$ 72–83 messenger, leather, bridesmaid {2%}
$ 84–95 leather, messenger, bag {1%}
$96–107 leather, bag, slr {1%}

But don't despair. Lets look at a bit of math.
Example: The percentage of 'purse' sold in the $72-83 range is 2%.
Etsy's market research function does not tell us how many purses are sold per what time frame they are analyzing.

So lets do a hypothesis of 100,000 purses per year {I feel this is a fair geuss, probably even an under estimate.)
100,000 * 2% = 2000 purses
price range is $72-83; so lets take the average in this range = $77
So 2000 * 77 = $154,000 per year for 'purse'.

Let's say shop A: sells 20 purses a year in that range.
20 * 77 = $1540 not bad for one price range.

The more different sized purses you sell the better your bottom line.

Promotion Ideas:
Wear your purse out! Word of mouth, and physically touching an item is the best marketing.
Plus you can figure out- does the strap need more padding? Do the hooks hold up well? is there enough stitching? etc

Labels- don't forget to 'sign' your work. Purses that are store-bought or designer made have a label somewhere with the brand logo, materials list, even website.

Ideas:
Don't forget about different strap sizes- best is to make them adjustable. Bigger women need a bigger purse strap, especially for
across-the-body straps! But petite women need a smaller strap so the purse isn't hanging around their knees! So make the adjustable!
Or at least switch-out-able.

Different bags for different items, events, and styles. Lets say the customer is going to run an errand smaller is better they just need essentials.

Follow some of the trends with your items! Make a neon pink purse. Add studs. Try a new material. Most women like purses that can go with all their outfits.
Many love when the lining has a cute or crazy look, something unexpected!

Keep in mind for upcycled purses that those who use hardware {all the silver or gold metal parts} look less "home-made" and more professional.

Check out my Pinterest board for tutorials, examples of shops, and inspiration.
http://pinterest.com/thehandmadebiz/passion-purses-bags-pouches/