Entrepreneurship & ecommerce · January-December 2023

Independent ecommerce business

Commercial experience running an Etsy business, with March-September 2023 trading activity supported by native Shop Stats and a sold-order export.

My role

Product and competitor research, sourcing, pricing, listings, customer service, fulfilment and commercial tracking

Inside this case study 6 sections

The business evidence

I operated an independent Etsy business during 2023, selling a changing range of gift and home products. The headline figures below cover March-September 2023 and come from native Etsy Shop Stats.

£12,163.80Native Etsy Shop Stats revenue

1,408Native Etsy Shop Stats orders

32.6KVisits

4.3%Conversion rate

Native Etsy Shop Stats for March-September 2023 showing revenue, orders, visits and conversion rate — The native platform view supporting the four headline figures. The metric period is shorter than the full operating period.

Keeping the sources distinct

The supporting sold-order export contains 1,404 unique Order IDs and 1,926 units. Native Shop Stats reports 1,408 orders. The difference remains explicit because the platform view and export are separate sources.

Sanitised sold-order spreadsheet showing dates, quantities, destination countries, order values and fee fields, with identifying columns omitted — A selected view of the sold-order export used for commercial tracking. Customer names, addresses, emails and Order IDs are not shown; the visible rows are an extract, not the complete dataset.

My contribution

I ran the business, taking responsibility for product selection, competitor research, supplier sourcing, pricing and listings, alongside customer service, order management and fulfilment.

I also handled listing copy and SEO, product photography and video editing, customer records and sales/finance tracking. Spreadsheet systems and workflows using Zapier and Make supported the operational work.

Commercial decisions

Selecting products and suppliers

I researched products and competitors, screened potential ideas and chose which opportunities to list. The range included gift and home products, with acoustic foam panels becoming an important seller in the later months.

Testing pricing

I researched competitor prices and experimented with penetration pricing. The evidence supplied here does not isolate the effect of a particular price change, so the trading growth is not attributed to pricing alone.

Managing the operating workload

Product selection and pricing had to work alongside fulfilment and customer service. I maintained customer records, commercial tracking and operational workflows to support the day-to-day demands of running the business.

Growth in context

The reconciled export records 1,123 of its 1,404 orders in August and September - approximately 80% of the period’s exported orders. This describes the concentration of trading activity, not a measured causal effect of any one decision.

Customer interaction and reach

Native Etsy Shopper Stats showing item favourites, shop follows, reviews, repeat buyers and cities reached — The native Shopper Stats capture adds customer-interaction and reach context. Its shop-follows panel distinguishes follows in the selected date range from the total follower count.

Read the four-page commercial evidence portfolio (PDF)

Evidence boundaries

Revenue is not profit. The older £9,356.43 net-profit calculation has not been independently reconstructed or verified, so this page makes no verified-profit claim.

Raw order exports, customer details and private account information will remain outside the public portfolio.

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