We here at Etsy have been impressed by the activity of Teams—those pro-active groups of sellers who get together to brainstorm and act on marketing ideas for their shops. This week we're digging EtsyRain, Seattle's Etsy Team.  With over 380 members, EtsyRAIN is going strong and just turned one year old!  They keep a great blog, hold creative challenges, participate in projects like TheSampler and do offline events to promote and work with charities. They are so busy—just look at their calendar!

Can you tell us a bit about your Etsy Team (what's the glue that holds your team together — location, craft, etc.)?

EtsyRAIN is the Seattle Metropolitan Etsy street team. We came together as a team one year ago – in fact, we just celebrated our first birthday on August 1st! (Happy Birthday EtsyRAIN!) We have grown a lot over the past year and now have over 380 artists and craft makers in a very wide variety of disciplines and mediums.

Building a creative community here in Seattle has been a very important part of our group. You see, the Pacific NW is a little different than some other places in the US because we have to work extra hard to connect with each other. Having a common interest like Etsy has been the foundation that all else has been built upon. So, as corny as it may sound, the main thing that holds us together is our love of all things Etsy!

 
What does your Team do to help each other?
Oh, so much! As a team, we organize all kinds of events, from members-only craft shows to craft supply swaps to workshops to help our members sell their work, develop their lines and take photos to make their Etsy shops shine! Whenever any one of our members has a need, they know that they can always post to our message boards in our Meetup group and ask for help! We have an incredibly supportive group of compassionate people, and as far as I know, there has never been a time when a member couldn’t find the help they needed.

Creative business education is my personal passion and I am grateful to be able to help so many of our members grow their Etsy businesses. We’ve got more workshops planned for the near future including: how to open and grow an Etsy shop, selling work at craft shows, improving photography for an Etsy shop, approaching wholesale buyers and lots more! 

 
How does your Team promote Etsy and each other's shops?
We’re always thinking up new and exciting ideas for promoting Etsy, EtsyRAIN and our own individual shops. We have a team blog, EtsyRAIN.com, which we use to feature our member’s shops on their birthdays and write about our team events. Birthday features have been a wonderfully impartial way for us to promote our membership’s Etsy shops, since everyone has a birthday!

There are regular creative challenges that help our team rev up their creative juices. We participate in other marketing opportunities like collaborative booths in larger craft shows, swag bags for local craft shows, ads in CROQzine, team submissions to The Sampler and soon to be team ads in other local publications as well.

 
What's your favorite part of the Team program?
The Etsy Team Grant program is fantastic! What a wonderfully generous way for Etsy to show support for their street teams that work so hard to promote Etsy. We’re working on some big ideas for our own application for the team grant and hope to be able to share them with Etsy very soon!

Does your team have an exciting promotion, event or announcement to share?
We are organizing a big EtsyRAIN craft show at St. Edward State Park in Kenmore, WA on October 12, 2008, with both craft booths and a bake sale from which the proceeds will benefit VSA Arts of Washington, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing arts opportunities by, for, and with persons with disabilities throughout the state of Washington.

We’re also very excited about our plans for an EtsyRAIN Zine, which will feature articles, tutorials and other great stuff directly from our members. When it’s ready, it will go up for sale in our new team shop, EtsyRain, along with the results of our new Monthly EtsyRain Team Shop Creative Challenges.

These are exciting times for EtsyRAIN…and this is just the beginning! Go EtsyRAIN, go!