Marketing 
Your Clothespins

Making your own artisan clothespins is a long, tedious process. If it was easy, more people would do it. That’s why I don’t expect there to ever be too many artisan clothespin makers. And therein lies a lot of opportunity.

If you have the skills, the tools, initiative, and dogged persistence to make high-quality clothespins, you should be able to sell them without a lot of trouble. In fact, handcrafted clothespins will, to some degree, sell themselves. But you need to get the word out about your product, and this essay will give you some ideas how to do exactly that.

First, you need some sort of internet presence, which would be a Facebook page or a web site, or both. My web alone site has been sufficient to sell all the clothespins I can make. 

I have several different web sites and with most of them I don’t pay anything. Not one penny. They are all free blogs in the Blogger.com format that I have set up to be web sites. I’ve done this for years with no problems. I can go in myself to add or change information at any time. There is a self-learning curve to using a blog as a marketing web site, but it is time well spent to learn it if you want to create a cheap and effective web site. I'm sure there are other cheap (or possibly free) web site formats, but I am not familiar with them. 

Your web site needs order buttons. you can get a PayPal account and get online ordering buttons from PayPal to add to your web site. Again, there is the learning curve to surmount, but if I can do it, you can too. There is no cost at all to add PayPal ordering buttons to your web site. The cost comes when someone orders something using the button. PayPal will automatically take a small part of the payment. The rest gets deposited into your PayPal account. I've used PayPal to process online sales for over 20 years. 

Almost all the income I make from my Planet Whizbang business comes through people making PayPal payments on my blog/web sites. 

Make your web site simple, but provide enough information to make an informed buying decision. The most important thing you want to do is tell people your story. Everyone has a story, and your customers want to know about you. Who are you? Where do you live. What have you done in your life? Why are you making and selling clothespins? How do you make clothespins? What makes your clothespins so special? 

You needn’t tell your whole life story in endless detail, but let people know something about you so they can connect with a real person. If you simply list clothespins for sale and do not tell a story (your story), you are not going to make  many sales, no matter how nice your clothespins may be. There needs to be a human connection between you and your buyers.

With the human connection in mind, you absolutely must put a picture of yourself on your web site. If you fail to show yourself to people, if you remain anonymous, you will fail to make the important human connection you need to make to earn the trust and goodwill of your customers. And if you have a family, put them on there too. Nuff said about that.

Once you have your clothespins in stock and your web site up and running, you need to generate some traffic to your web site. This is where Facebook might come in real handy. If you are familiar with Facebook, use that medium to get “likes” and “friends.” Social media, right? It works.

In my case, my social media has come primarily from my blog, The Deliberate Agrarian. I started the blog in 2005 and have built up a readership over the years. The blog is not about clothespins, but many of my readers have been my biggest customers, and they have spread the word in their own internet social circles.

Another internet approach you might want to use is YouTube. if you put a YouTube video online telling about your story and your handcrafted clothespins, you may be amazed at the results.

I put my first YouTube video up in July of 2014. It is titled Four-Day Carrots. The quality is really poor, but that video has over a million views and it has helped me sell a LOT of my Whizbang Gardening Idea Books. I plan to make more YouTube videos to promote my products. You should do the same.

To generate a local buzz about your clothespin business, there is no better (and easier) way than to send a couple sample clothespins to the Features Editor of your local newspaper. Write a short personal little letter of introduction and direct the editor to your web site, where she can access your whole story, with pictures of you and your product. If there are regional publications (magazines, etc.), be sure to send a letter, clothespin samples, and web site information to them too. 

I have not yet contacted my local newspaper about my clothespin business, but I have done this sort of thing with books I’ve written in the past, and the results have always been positive. Those publications are looking for local enterprising craftspeople with unique and useful products. Just let them know you are there and provide them with the information they need (on your web site).

If you are not an introvert (like me), and you are geared for selling at a craft show (or even a farmer’s market), go for it. Hang up a clothesline with your clothespins. That will get a lot of attention. Direct a fan onto the hanging clothes to generate motion (more visual interest). Tell your story. Make a display showing the steps involved in making the clothespins. Show the junky imported clothespins next to yours (or maybe scatter a bunch of broken imported clothespins on the ground under the clothesline). Put your clothespins in pre-packaged gift boxes. Presentation is a huge part of selling your product at a craft show. Provide business cards. Hang a clothespin off your ear lobe for the duration of the show (more visual interest). This sort of thing could be a lot of fun, not to mention rewarding.

There is so much dissatisfaction with cheap, imported clothespins (among those in our population who use clothespins) that your high-quality, handcrafted clothespins can’t help but be noticed and get sold. If my experience is any indication, you will not be able to make enough clothespins to satisfy the demand. At least, not as a part-time, home-based business.

I wish you the very best!


P.S. I welcome your marketing ideas and comments below.