Fourteen years ago, and roughly eleven hundred miles from here, I had a custom electric guitar made by a man I found on eBay in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I love guitars. I think about guitars and music all day, every day. I found it fascinating to be able to have a choice in the construction details of my soon to be new guitar. I got to choose the pickups, the tuning keys, neck, control configuration, and finish. All choices I made to create in interesting piece in my budget of choice, which really wasn’t much.
When I finally received the guitar I was so happy. I loved it. It was exactly what I thought it would be. But being a very mechanically apt guy, from a very mechanically apt family, I couldn’t help but say to myself “I can do this.” My family is the type that doesn’t hire anyone to work on our house. We do it all, except natural gas work, ourselves. Work is a serious word where I’m from. My grandfather, a Polish immigrant and WWII survivor, never took a sick day in his entire life and immigrated to this country with a single dollar to his name. Through hard work he did alright.
So after some time, about 6 years, I had acquired some tools we didn’t already have, read some books, and watched a TON of YouTube. I also studied every guitar I laid eyes on with an intense eye on tiny details. After building several prototypes of guitar bodies I began to accumulate a lot of scrap wood that was essentially unusable in what I was doing. The problem is wood costs money, and I really hate to waste things – food, wood, time, whatever. So my girlfriend, a talented ceramic and graphic artist, suggested we make wood jewelry with all the pieces of beautiful exotic wood. We mostly made earrings and neck pendants. Naturally it made sense to try to sell it so we opened a store on Etsy, a web site for all things handmade.
In the first year we made eight sales. We didn’t really care as it was somewhat of a novelty. Overtime we started to talk about what else could be made with the scraps of wood that were piling up in my workspace. So I began making candle holders, cutting boards, and clocks. Sales took off! Suddenly I had something that sold. Sales increased roughly 3000% in year two. Cutting boards were the hot item so we dropped jewelry altogether and just focused on the household products. Sales continued to rise for the next 5 years. I’ve become friends with other sellers, some small, some large.
Over the years I saw Etsy try new ideas, change their search engine, offer new products, and eventually, as far as I’m concerned, sell out. They opened the site up to product manufactured by third parties – meaning I could design something and have a factory in China make me a thousand of them and have them drop ship them directly to the buyer. Not exactly handmade anymore. This has essentially introduced mass quantities of lower priced product into the equation and has put massive price pressure on many sellers to the point of putting many stores out of business. Then they decided that sellers would need to pay to “Promote” your items in search results, after they altered the search algorithm to make your items more difficult to be seen.
So naturally the cherry on top of this horrible Sundae was that they then decided to go Public, which means join Wall Street. Now look, I’m all for success and capitalism – I am a capitalist by any measure. But the reality is that being publicly traded is usually bad for a company who based on a social value. Capital value doesn’t generally occupy the same space as social value. Social values would generally by categorized as “waste and inefficiency” by the bean counters, ya know?
So after losing a job and going full time on Etsy a few years ago I’m beginning to feel like yet another American rug has been pulled out from under me. Oh and did I mention I have a 2 year old son and a mortgage at this point? My sales volume declined so sharply so quickly and is completely unmoved by all attempts to reverse the trend that it is now beginning to feel like a rigged game. It also is beginning to feel more like a burden than a creative outlet. It’s a tough pill to swallow as I tend not to quit anything I’ve set my mind to.
All that being said,
Online selling is awesome.
It allows you to create, to dream, to build something of your own, and make people happy. I have awed so many people in something many cities and countries. I’ve made things that appeared on TV, in magazines, and countless websites. But the reality is it can change in an instant. The key words are ‘search algorithm.’ The algorithm can be your greatest friend or your executioner. Google, Etsy, Facebook, whoever – They all can shut you down with a keystroke.
Before becoming an online seller or entrepreneur think twice. Have a back-up plan and don’t put all your eggs in one basket. All of the talk in recent years about how the Internet is liberating people to communicate and create in ways they never could before doesn’t exactly tell the whole truth. Yes it is true that it does those things, but it doesn’t seem to bring an ounce of security with it. It can change in a second. Whether it’s the Egyptian government shutting down the entire network in Egypt during the Arab Spring, or Etsy tweaking its business model. Either way the effects can be devastating in an era where people have come to rely on these services. Imagine if the entire ATM system became unavailable.
Where would we be then?
Hey, Jon.
We’ve been partnered up for peer review so here I am to review your essay.
Alright, I like it. I feel for you in every word. I feel the excitement in the first paragraph and the disdain all the way down just before the conclusion. It’s very genuine. However, I think that maybe setting up a scene where your guitar arrives and you walk us through your opening it, the smell of the material, the pluck of the strings, the feel of the neck in your hands. Give me detail enough to be there with you when you open it. If I feel your excitement, I will understand why you got into selling, which will lead us up to Etsy screwing you over.
In similar fashion in your second paragraph you could describe a situation where your grandfather put in that extra effort and showcased his pride in his work and tell us how that affected you. If I feel what you feel rather than just hearing your story, I am more apt to get involved.
The same goes for the rest of the essay. In order for me to connect to your story, I need emotions that I can relate to. I’ll admit that that may be an issue just for me, as I tend to be drawn to emotionally charged writing and experiences, but in my experience feelings are a great way to connect people with simple cues.
I feel your message. You were swept up in the American Dream that working hard and being creative will in turn provide security, freedom, and happiness, but the big, shady businesses swept your luck out from under you and left your dream in tatters against to their mass-producing, money-grabbing ways. I do get a sense of bitterness in the end, even with your conclusion. You tried your best and did everything right, but something out of your control stopped you in your tracks and made you rethink everything. But I think that feeling could be better portrayed by including scenes of your workshop gathering dust, or more wood pieces piling up, or inventory stacking up on shelves.
The flow of the essay is great. Nothing out of place. The timeline works very well. I like how you started with receiving a handmade item and how that inspired you to do it yourself. Very cool. I like the background about your Grandfather. It makes you more approachable. I do think that when the tone of the essay changes, right around where Etsy starts taking third party products, it should be more drastic. I want to feel the affect of their decisions and how they affected you. I imagine that the change in your sales wasn’t immediate, but even so I think the slow descent into seller obscurity could be mapped out for the reader to experience.
What’s successful about the essay is your clear voice. Very direct and to the point. Your timeline is very clear. Your language is well placed and your grammar is great, too.
The article on the assignment page titled “An Interplay Between The General And The Specific” has some really great pointers on how to set a scene and “show” rather than “tell”. I think if you utilized some of the information there you might be able to inject more emotion into the essay by slowing things down and letting us experience things as you did.
I hope this helps, Jon.
Thanks!
-Rob
Wow!
Thank you Rob!
Your critique is excellent.
Everything you said is spot on even if on the difficult side for me.
I tend to be a very unemotional person in a alot of ways and sometimes have difficulty in connecting with the expression of that side of life. I can rather easily simplify complex things into language that most will understand but to get them to feel a certain way emotionally is not really my strong suit. I do, however, see that what you’re saying will make for a more complete picture of me and add relevance for some readers that are more in that spectrum. I tend to be a just the facts type of guy, but some people are more concerned with how something made them feel as opposed to what made them feel it.
Thanks again!
I agree that Rob gave you an excellent critique, both the praiseworthy aspects of this (which are considerable) and suggestions for improvement. Your writing is clear, clean, and very readable. This is an interesting topic as well and particularly appropriate for a business theme.
This is a sort of hybrid genre–part personal narrative, but also part argument and part how-to essay. The social vs capitalist values part seems like an interesting approach or part of some kind of argument (maybe for later in course if you’re not bored with topic by then). The memoir generally focuses, as Rob suggests, more on the personal side of things, not necessarily deeply emotional or traumatic though. I’d suggest spending some time thinking about/refining what you want to say *about* this experience–what’s your central message, and how might this interest/engage a reader who may or may not have online selling experience. Is it about technology giving a kind of independence, or more about the obstacles? Or some other lesson?
It seems to me (gross simplification coming!) that you have two options in a short memoir like this–the film clip approach or the snapshot album. In the film clip model, you’d center ona single significant experience, could be representative or a turning-point moment or moment of realization. The snapshot model would capture a series of moments along the way, vividly depicted as mini-scenes. to me, the second approach seems more in keeping with what you’re getting at (I think). In some of my classes I have students write what I call mosaic essays–a series of short scenes, thematically linked but without transitions between them (often they use just blank space). Here’s an example that might give some inspiration and could maybe serve as a model (note how her first para. serves to unify and establish theme/focus): http://behindthelens16.edublogs.org/2014/12/10/tools-memoir/
I’m engaged by the first line–could expand that a bit (though you might also want to think about its relevance–I know it’s given as your introduction to online sales but not sure how much space that warrants?) I’d be interested in hearing more about computer end of things–decisions about how to set up Etsy shop, decide on name, photographing merchandise, etc. Feel free to include some images in post and (if you want) link to your site, or screen shot.