It’s been a long time coming, but The Geek Chic Boutique has finally arrived. For some time I’ve been thinking about dividing my original business, The Costume Wrangler’s Closet, into two shops. The Costume Wrangler’s Closet will continue to focus on custom costumes, cosplay, and apparel. You’ll find corsets, clothes, kilts, and can commission custom cosplay there. The Geek Chic Boutique is where you’ll find all the accessories: bags, headbands, wallets, keychains, and maybe even some jewelry. It’s all the same, awesome, custom, handmade stuff, but now it’s even easier to find the great accessories I love creating.
[Tweet “You’ve got to check out the new Geek Chic Boutique on Zibbet! luvit.me/1FI2jzf #MadeinKC”]
And what’s really exciting is that The Geek Chic Boutique has a brick and mortar location, inside Ugly Glass & Co in the West Bottoms, Kansas City, MO, on the fourth floor of Le Fou Flea. If your’e in the KC area, I hope you’ll stop by! They’re open every Friday and Saturday.
[Tweet “Get a sneak peek at what you’ll find at The Geek Chic Boutique! #MadeinKC”]
You might have noticed that I decided to open the Geek Chic Boutique, not on Etsy, but on Zibbet, and you might be wondering why. Though Etsy is a wonderful platform, and I will continue to use them as a host for The Costume Wrangler’s Closet (at least for now), I’ve been continually disappointed in Etsy’s change in policies, especially with regards to manufacturing.
[Tweet “#Zibbet seems to be what #Etsy used to be, a #handmade marketplace.”]
If you didn’t know, Etsy now allows it’s makers to work with manufacturers. On the surface, this might seem to be a great thing. But it’s opened the floodgates for mass produced items to be sold as handmade, which cheapens what handmade really means. For me, handmade means the item is actually made by hand, not mass produced in a factory. And yes, these are the type of things–mass produced merchandise–getting sold on Etsy under the guise of being “handmade.” This is not to say that there aren’t makers on Etsy using manufacturing in a responsible way to still create handmade pieces. But it seems to me that one of these days customers will realize that Etsy is no longer a handmade marketplace, but Walmart with better fonts. It wouldn’t bother me quite so much, if Etsy wasn’t purporting itself to still be a handmade marketplace, and only a handmade marketplace. It’s simply not.
It’s for these reasons that I decided to try Zibbet, which seems to be what Etsy used to be, that is, a handmade marketplace that also sells supplies and vintage items. Let me know what you think about the new platform, the new shop, and even your thoughts on Etsy’s change in policy.
Keep in mind that if you want to leave a comment (and please do!), if you’re new to the site, your comment will have to be approved first. So be patient if you don’t see your comment right away!
The Geek Chic Boutique Has Arrived! It's been a long time coming, but The Geek Chic Boutique has finally arrived. For some time I've been thinking about dividing my original business, …