This week's installment of our Etsy Success Story series features Mikey and Mona of Tinymeat!  In less than 2 years selling on the site, Tinymeat has taken Etsy by storm and has made an incredible and inspiring 4,500 sales and counting...that's a lot of meat!  We had the pleasure of meeting this duo back in March when they came to visit the Etsy Labs and they couldn't have been more fun and enthusiastic about their success on the site, it really showed.   Rumor has it Mikey and Mona actually met each other right here on Etsy, fell in love, and lived happily ever after...sure seems like a fairytale:

How did you first hear about Etsy, and what made you decide to open a shop on the site?
Mikey: I first heard about Etsy from my online friend Cari Carter who has an Etsy shop called Motokitty. She said that it would be a great place for me to reach a wider audience than on just my website. At first, I was skeptical, but 6 months later, I finally decided to give it a whirl. 2 days after I listed my first item I sold a wallet to bonspielcreations. For that, her shop will always have a special place in my heart.

Mona: I first heard about Etsy from Leah Kramer of Craftster fame. She said it was brand new but to try it and I'm so glad I did! I signed up a few days after Etsy was launched with my other shop, mamadelic. I sold items just a day or so after signing up. Since then, my sales have been slow but steady :)

What do you think your key to success for selling on Etsy has been?
Mikey: Our key to success on Etsy has been to focus on one type of product and execute it to perfection. We offer our customers dynamic design, superior quality and exceptional value. This often results in multiple item purchases.

How do you promote your shop?
Mikey: We do little if anything to promote our shop. We rely mainly on word mouth, and releasing new products on a regular basis. Because we collaborate with artists, they often times will promote their work and direct their fans to our shop. They are also part of various social networks which in turn attracts more of their peers to express interest in becoming part of our ongoing artist series. What started with featuring the work of one artist, Guy Burwell, has snowballed into us now having dozens of artists from all over the world.

How do you handle such a large volume of sales in your shop? What systems have you created to manage the orders?
Mona: Keeping up with our current orders has been a challenge. One of the biggest obstacles we have is keeping shipping addresses straight. In one transaction, there can be 3 separate addresses. And I have to determine which address is the correct one. As the sole shipping agent at tinymeat industries, I feel like pulling my hair out strand by strand on a regular basis. I do my best to keep things straight, but inevitably mistakes are made. I tend to visit the post office on a daily basis. They all know me by name. Luckily, there never seem to be long lines. But shipping as much as we do creates a huge bottleneck. There are days when I will sit at the computer and do nothing but pack orders and print shipping labels and it's still not enough. After an 8 hour day, there is still a huge stack of orders that need to go out. It seems like every 5th customer has a special request or wants their order shipped someone other than their confirmed paypal address and keeping it all straight is not fun! Because of this, I have far less time to focus on production.

Are your orders mostly from repeat buyers or new buyers...what do you do to gain repeat buyers?
Mona: Most of our buyers are new, but we do have many happy repeat customers. We love when people come back to visit us. Makes us feel like what we do maters. We're not really sure how customers find us, but we love it when they do.

How do you stay motivated? Does it come naturally?
Mikey: We stay motivated because this is both of our fill time jobs. Motivation is not really something that we have the luxury of having or not having. Our family depends on us to make this work. We spend all day everyday working on tiny and we feed off of each other's energy. That helps the days and weeks just fly by. Sometimes it's hard to believe that tinymeat has been around for nearly 5 years.

Do you "Etsy" full time or do you have another job too?
We do work on Etsy full time — more than full time. We also participle in local indie markets and sell our merch to stores around the world. We are in nearly 400 stores worldwide. This keeps up busy, so busy. Wholesale is a huge part of our business. We are in the process of creating a showroom here in Portland where local stores will be able to drop by to pick up their orders.

If you "Etsy" full time, were you able to quit your day job due to your success selling on Etsy?
Mikey: I was able to quit my full time job in sales but this was before I starting selling on Etsy. At that point I was selling at a weekly market in Boston and on my own website.

If you "Etsy" full time, were you able to quit your day job due to your success selling on Etsy?
Mona: I hadn't worked full time in many years, not since before having kids. I went from being a full time student to a full time mom. Initially Etsy was just a way for me to supplement my income. But for the past year, this has been it! And I've worked harder on this than on anything I've ever done.

What is your favorite current Etsy Feature?
There are a lot of things we love about Etsy. Its simple design and layout are easy on the eyes. Listing products is very simple. Most things here are user friendly. We love the sense of community that we feel here and how many friends we've made. We've met hundreds of Etsy sellers around the country and they have all been wonderful to us. Since we relocated our business to Portland, the Etsy community has become like an extended family for us.

What goals do you have for your Etsy shop 1 year from now?
Our goals for the coming year are pretty lofty! We'd love to be able to move our office into a bigger space, hire some employees, and really take our business to the next level. We are at a point now where we really cannot afford to grow any more without outside investment and I guess we are kind of waiting for that to happen. As it stands now, we do nothing but work and we'd love to be able to sell more and work less. We need to get out and see more of Oregon! Perhaps Etsy could create tools for businesses like ours that have grown to capacity and need to find ways to move up. We are completely opposed to outsourcing, so no matter what happens, we want to be certain that we are the ones with our hands on the merch. I'd love to see better seller tools, like address verification. I think a simple check box that asks if the address is the same as on PayPal would be a good start.  It would be nice if Etsy could create a system in which brick and mortar stores could be directed to merchants who are set up for wholesale. How about a small business advancement team on staff at Etsy who is there to give advice to sellers who've outgrown their current capacity? I can think of several sellers who could benefit from that service and I know we'd be the first to sign up :)

Anything else you want to add?
We really are thankful for Etsy and what it's meant in our lives. And we love that Etsy is filled with so much cool stuff.

Check out Tinymeat's top picks on Etsy in the gallery below: