u/Darksails-Studio

Lost my job, turned my 15-year leather hobby into a business, 6 months in, no traffic, losing hope

Lost my job, turned my 15-year leather hobby into a business, 6 months in, no traffic, losing hope

Link : darksails.fr

Background: I've been hand-stitching leather goods for 15 years as a hobby and ran a leathercraft pattern shop on Etsy which converts well. I also used to sell my physical leather goods on Etsy and it worked. When I lost my job, I decided to go all in and migrated everything to my own Shopify store thinking it was the right move.

Full-grain vegetable-tanned leather, everything saddle-stitched by hand in my workshop in Bordeaux, France. I do everything solo, product design, fabrication, website, photography, SEO, marketing. No budget to hire anyone.

The issue: since moving to Shopify, sales and trafic have basically dried up. I've got a few good reviews from previous customers, I'm running Google Ads, but nowhere near enough sales to make this viable.

Roast me if needed, the store, the products, the copy, the pricing, anything. I genuinely don't know what's wrong.

Any honest feedback appreciated.

u/Darksails-Studio — 11 days ago

Finally finished this little guy

Full-grain vegetable-tanned leather, hand stitched. Designed the pattern myself took a few attempts to get the crest right without it collapsing. About 8 hours of work total to build.

u/Darksails-Studio — 12 days ago
▲ 34 r/EDC

New additions to my EDC

Darksails - Black multitool leather sheath
Leatherman- Surge Black edition
Streamlight - Macrostream light
Böker Plus - Tactical KID cal .50 black ballpoint pen
Extrema Ratio - BF2 Classic Tanto

The sheath is something I made by hand, full-grain veg tan leather, saddle stitched. Happy to answer any questions about the build.

u/Darksails-Studio — 12 days ago