In the basement of her Pennsylvania home, Laura Bergman built a factory for her Amazon Handmade following. A hot kiln takes center stage next to a box of broken glass, plastic bags and branded cards. She’s in the heart of Amish country and doing what she loves.
“There’s a guy outside my window pulling his plow with horses and I’m in my basement, where I can reach millions of customers,” said Bergman. “This does not exist anywhere else.”
Bergman had the inspiration for Bottled Up Designs 17 years ago while exploring old glass and bottle dumps commonly found in the rural Pennsylvania countryside. It’s what farmers and homesteaders did with old glass for more than a century, she said. “You can stop anywhere, bend down and dig and you’ll find glass.”
Collecting old glass was just hobby, until one day the sun hit the small shards of blue, green and red laid out on the dining room table.
“Oprah calls it the light bulb moment. I said, ‘I wonder if I can make jewelry out of that.’”
She could and she did.
In the beginning, Bergman’s jewelry was primitive, but she quickly learned the trade and how to set herself apart from others. By 2014, she was looking at expanding out of craft fairs to e-commerce and joined Amazon and Etsy.
“It just kind of clicked with me,” she said. As the offerings from Amazon grew, Bergman said she took advantage. She joined the Amazon Handmade community, marketing herself among other artisans, was badged as a certified small business and signed up for Fulfillment by Amazon to reduce her backend work. It didn’t take long, she said, for customers to find her “corner of Amazon” and start buying.
“It makes you up your scale. It made me make the product better. It made me make the packaging better,” she said. “It pushes you.”
Using Amazon’s seller tools, Bergman is able to see the people who are buying her product. With Amazon reviews, she’s able to hear directly from them.
“People are very faithful to Amazon and I have a lot of loyal customers that contact me,” she said. “I hear from my people. I hear from them on Amazon. I don’t really get that kind of feedback elsewhere.”
Every site has different costs to sellers and rules on what you can list, said Bergman. Unlike other sites, Amazon does not charge small businesses to individually list their products; however, like others, they do charge a referral fee if products are sold. Berman said she took Amazon Seller University courses to learn more about making smart pricing decisions and optimizing her processes, something she recommends to other artisans before joining Amazon Handmade.
“You have to know the rules,” she said. “If you have a retail store and you’re selling a lot and you’re not making money, then obviously you’re not pricing correctly. Why is it any different for online? It’s the same answer.”
For a pair of $29.00 Bottled Up Design earrings, the cost to sell for Berman is a couple dollars—the same for both Etsy and Amazon. What’s different, she said, is that Amazon gives her the tools, access to her customer feedback and the ongoing free education to learn how to structure her costs and optimize her own time and investments to continue to grow her small business.
“Selling on Amazon has been life-changing for me.”