ETSY MONTHLY MERCHANDISING TIPS

• 

  Etsy says...Stay Engaged in February

  Our central merchandising topics this month will center around an early emphasis on Valentine's Day followed up by fashion highlights and references to the approaching spring season. Below you'll find the extended list of topics we plan to reference this month. While emphasis will be placed upon the seasonality of the Northern Hemisphere, it's important to remember the Southern Hemisphere is in the middle of summer. Maintaining seasonally appropriate options year-round is good practice for boosting international and overall sales.

  
• Valentine's Day: Early emphasis on gift ideas, personalization, decor, and the many themes of love. Remember to keep your shipping locations and expedited offerings updated for those last minute shoppers looking for quick shipments in time to gift.
• Superbowl Sunday: Football, team pride, parties, party food, half time, and those favorite game day commercials.

• Fashion: With a February 10th jump start to New York City's Fashion Week, all eyes will be on designers' Fall/Winter seasonal lines debut. Take advantage of this key time to launch a new line, collection, or limited series of work emphasizing the benefits of being an independent designer. Think avant-garde, emerging designs, and new interpretations of classic staples. Specialize in vintage fashion? Now is a great time to call out your designer labels by name, brand, season and era. As February comes to a close, look for hints of spring fashion on the horizon.
• Home Updates: Offer functional decor solutions that produce a big impact, hands on, DIY projects, large vintage finds repurposed into statement storage solutions, writable surfaces, and depict space versatility via your product photos.
• Weddings and Celebrations: February tends to be the season of engagements. Think in terms of newly engaged couples planning ahead for spring and summer weddings. Try expanding your line of wedding offerings by taking into consideration the process from ring shopping all the way through the honeymoon — how can your unique point of view be threaded throughout an entire affair?
• International Vacations and Resort Wear: Winter months are the season for destination vacations in exotic settings. Think travel gear and packing essentials, luggage, carryalls, photography, preservation of memories, foreign languages and seasonal style. For a fashion forward escape, think in terms of casually elegant, yet comfortable, swimwear, cover-ups, formal dinner fashions and accessories.
• Amethyst is February's birthstone, and February's astrological signs are Aquarius and Pisces (Aquarius: January 21 - February 19, Pisces: February 20 - March 20: Pisces). 
• We also celebrate the Chinese (Lunar) New Year in February, which is the year of the rabbit in 2011.

February Trends:

• Valentine's Day and the season of love: Colors, decor, hearts (classic and anatomical), love, text, gag gifts, anti-valentines, paper goods, lingerie, engagement rings
• World in sports: Superbowl Sunday
• Year of the rabbit (honey bees, honeycomb, and hives are trending too)
• Award shows: Fashion, emerging trends, get the look
• Spring and fall fashion: New York Fashion Week
• Safari: Animal prints, expedition gear, exotic colors tempered with neutral canvas
• Nautical: Anchors, sea creatures, mermaids, fairytales, voyage, ships, sailing, ropes, canvas, stripes, classic colors and lines
• Food trends: Year of the homemade pie, whoopie pie, and macaroon
• Writable surfaces: Chalkboard, whiteboard, fingerprints
• Gardening: Accessories, planters, indoor options, organic growing, vintage buckets, tools, watering solutions
• Personalization: Monograms, initials, text, numbers, zodiacs, constellations, portraits, custom labels, stamps, fingerprints and family trees
• Lockets, secret hiding places, vintage letterpress blocks, and skeleton keys, feathers, arrows, diamonds, geometric shapes and patterns, paper cuts, silhouettes, fortune cookies, wishbones, fortune tellers
• Farmhouse references, vintage industrial decor, vintage cameras, letterpress drawers, typewriters, brass and cast iron animals
• Natural history and woodland forest themes and animals, namely birds, owls, squirrels, hedgehogs, chipmunks, bunnies, butterflies, feathers, nests, eggs, acorns, leaves, trees, branches, woodgrain, and natural colors.
• Colors: Bright pops of color in pinks, turquoise, yellows, avocado, peach, and oranges. Earth tones and neutral palettes remain strong with the incorporation of rusts, deep greens, and brown.

If you'd like to stay engaged and involved with the approaching merchandising themes, use them in your own artistic voice as you add to your shop. They can be translated in your listings, photos, shop announcements, descriptions, tags, titles, sales promotions, and more.
If you make items that would fit well with the themes outlined, try stocking up and listing them in advance to take advantage of potential shipping deadlines and site features. Do you already have items in your shop that meld well? That's great! Now it's time to revisit those items to make sure your tags, titles, and descriptions reflect keywords that shoppers might be looking for this time of year. This is also a great opportunity to revamp your item photography with a new look if you think it needs some work. Check out some great how-to's for item photography to get started.
For those of your who enjoy making Treasuries, we'll be looking to highlight lists that interpret these themes in a creative and cohesive way throughout the site. Please tag your Treasuries accordingly.

Upcoming Dates to Remember

• February is known as Black History Month and American Heart Month
  
• Feb 2: Groundhog Day
• Feb 3: Chinese/Lunar New Year: Rabbit
• Feb 6: Superbowl Sunday
• Feb 6: Waitangi Day (New Zealand) 
• Feb 10 - 17: NYC Fashion Week
• February 13: 53rd Grammy Awards Show
• Feb 14: Valentine's Day
• Feb 15: Mawlid
• Feb 21: President's Day
• Feb 27: The Oscars

After February: