The Most Profitable Leathergoods to Make and Sell
I get asked these questions a lot:
“What are the most profitable leathergoods to make and sell?”
“What leathergoods sell the best at markets?”
“What leathergoods sell the best on Etsy?”
Have you ever wondered this?
These are good questions but the problem with these questions is, they suggest that there is one type of person who likes one type of leathergood.
Now obviously that is not true.
There are countless niche markets and audience groups that are all going to have their own different best sellers.
The answers to these questions is going to be different for each individual business. It really all depends on you, your brand and most importantly, your customer base.
While I would love to tell you, make this specific leathergood and you WILL sell out. Sadly, thats not how it works.
What might sell out for you, might be a really hard sell for me and my audience!
For example, someone could sell leather tooled feather earrings and do really well at an inperson market, but if I tried selling these leather feather earrings to my audience, they would be like,
“What? No thanks!”
What determines a profitable leathergood is not so much about the item itself, but it’s more about your brand, your marketing and what your customer wants.
So asking “What kind of leathergoods are the most profitable to make a sell” is the wrong question.
The question you should be asking is…
What is the best leathergood for my audience? What do they want?
Or if you don’t have an audience yet,
What audience group can I serve with my leathergoods? What group of people really need what I make?
If you don’t have an audience OR a leather product yet, then simply ask yourself,
What group of people can I help with what problem? What can I make that would help them?
That being said, if you’re a beginner, just getting your business going and you’re looking for a way to structure a business and create a product with the highest chances of selling, you’re in the right place.
Here are my 3 tips to choose the most profitable leathergoods to make and sell.
1 | Solve a Problem
The most profitable leathergoods that you can make, hands-down are going to be the ones that solve a problem or make someones life easier for a group of people. This problem doesn’t have to be a big problem. It can be some simple but the key is to make it specific.
If you’re not helping someone, then you have no business, period.
People don’t buy just to buy.
They need a reason, and it’s your job to know what that reason is before you even get close to posting an etsy listing.
Your entire business hinges on this point.
If you start with the problem or need then you can develop a solution. And if you know the problem then you know who your audience is. It’s the people who are suffering from the problem right? And if you know who your audience is, then you you know how to market your product to them in a way that resonates.
2 | Keep the Leathergoods Simple
At least in the beginning, keep the leathergoods simple.
The easier to cut, stitch and assemble your leathergood the cheaper the costs, right? Especially if you’re just one person and don’t have an assistant or a team to help you, you want your leathergoods to be easy and inexpensive as possible to reproduce.
Often times when we start out we want to create these big and elaborate projects and really push our skill set. This is great and I am totally all for pushing our skillset but if your main goal is to make a leathergoods that a lot of people will buy, choose something that you can create easily.
Forego the complex design that will take you hours and hours of labor and create some that is simple and easy to make but is also helpful and beautiful.
If it seems like a tricky balance to strike, that’s because it is. Think long a hard about this one.
3 | Consider the Scalability
Always be looking ahead.
When you’re trying to create a profitable business out of the gate, you want to consider the scalability of your leather products. Doing so will help you in the future when you start to see an increase of your sales.
“To scale” in business speak is shorthand for “scale up” which means to grow or expand the profits proportionally. So if you make a leather wallet, that only you can make and it takes you 5 hours to make one, this is not a scalable model. But if you make a wallet and design it so that anyone after training can make it, and they can make 5 in one hour, that is a scalable product.
This is what you need if you want to build a business that can grow.
If the leathergood was really hard to make the first time around and was a pain in your ass, and you hated every second of making it, even if it is selling are you really going to want to make another 50 or a hundred?
No, probably not, right?
With my leathergoods i’m constantly trying to make adjustments to the design that doesn’t affect the quality or design but does weed out any unnecessary steps and excess materials. This way I keep my labor and materials cost to a minimum.
So am I against complex leathergoods that take hours and hours to make? No. I personally make and sell these kinds of items sometimes, but I know how time consuming and complex the marketing of these products can be and how un-scalable they can be as a one woman business.
So if you were to come to me and ask, what is the most profitable leathergoods to make as a beginner/soloentrprenuer, I would tell you that it depends more on your brand, marketing and audience instead of the item itself. What might be profitable for me might not be profitable for you and your audience.
But for a low barrier to entry and the simplest and fastest way to create a profitable leather business follow my 3 tips:
Solve a problem
Keep it simple and
Consider the scalability of the item.
What is the best leathergood for your audience? What do they want?
What audience group can you serve with your leathergoods? What group of people really need what you make?
What group of people can you help with what problem?
