Jewelry Marketplace Gets A Makeover!

@lensman I hear you. I'm still riled up myself. @pete, I hope you can chime in on this. I like curation. In fact, I was under the impression Shapeways always had curation. There were always the "Shapeways Picks' at the top of browsing pages. There were always wedding collections, holiday collections, etc. And I like the notion and even nicer curation. But this is heavily focused on purely the customer experience. What about the sellers? The people the Shapeways platform has supposedly been created for? This was supposed to be a place for we, the makers, the designers, to sell our designs. Part of the beauty is that some are in the works. It's why Shapeways has automated checks, and then manual checks. People buying are not just getting jewelry, they're getting custom pieces that are made with 3D printing. By definition, that means each is custom. But we can no longer sell a "design" and be curated. We can only sell a "product" that's finished, proven, printed in an expensive material, and photographed. It's contrary to the beauty of manufacturing that is 3D printing. That each and every print is unique. It's not supposed to be a jewelry store.
And maybe there should be a jewelry store. A number of designers here sell on sites like that, such as Stilnest. They curate, pick select designs, and frame their business as a jewelry store. I'd have no issues with Shapeways opening up a sub-site that is their hand-picked jewelry. But Shapeways.com should not be that site.
The other problem with this curation is that it's arbitrary. My best selling cufflinks are not in the group, and I'm lucky enough to have 5 designs chosen. On top of that, Custom Hebrew cufflinks and Helvetica Cufflinks are my biggest revenue makers, and both are absent from the curation. Browsing customers can't find them. Which means I won't sell them.
With the previous layout, curation was at the top, "all the rest" were beneath that, and could be sorted by... popularity! That's right! It's built-in curation!
This feels just wrong. I understand that Shapeways has made many moves into focusing more and more on jewelry. It's likely the broadest appeal of the stuff on the site and creates most revenue. But this latest step alienates tons of us designers, who spent hundreds or thousands of hours building our personal stores, only to have them left in the remote desert of the search bar.

Yep, this was an idea I threw at Shapeways a couple of years ago... never went anywhere.

Thank you. Holding my breath and counting... NOW.

Hi @katkinkead,

I agree with most of the other forum / shop owners members here and the points they make. I am not against change nor development. I love to watch SW grow and get better. However the way that SW handles this has been for years problematic and again the problem is here.

At the case in point, I do think curation is a great idea (Disclaimer: I've a jewellery shop, I think I tick all the boxes and I'm not in there) but this should not be the only way of navigating. I agree with @i8kermit also that I thought 'Shapeways picks' were already doing this. So yes, now it is 'thoughtful and beautiful'. But it is very strange to cut off the thousands of other makers and shop owners. I pass my vote on the big big problem that is caused by cutting off browsing to only have this curation.

I know in my case, it arrives as shock as I have been receiving a stream of emails from SW that did not concern my shop over the last couple of weeks. Yet there was no forewarning nor demand for input to these changes that are very relevant to my SW experience. I guess that is the case for everyone else too. Considering also that I appreciate that a change like this has taken time and development.

Great to hear that SW understands the frustration. However I believe their are ways around this frustration arriving in the first place.

1. A thing that doesn't seem to be clear at SW is that shop owners are also customers and consumers too. Loyal customers, repeat customers, caring customers, customers that know the site. Granted they navigate the site differently to other customers.

2. You mention that SW had done 'considerable consumer research'. How about add a little or some research in there from shop owners too? SW could crowdsource their opinions as opposed to alienating them. Understood not everything could be implemented. But this case in point, it took one day of 'fait accompli' crowdsourcing to find this fault. But now the problem will take who-knows how long to fix.

3. Thank you for the guidelines. But that could have been something SW sent out to jewellery owners and/or everyone well in advance of the going live with the new marketplace.

4. Again SW alludes to 'more changes, wonderful new features and redesigning shops are on the way'. What changes? What new features? How is it to be redesigned? Why the secret? Let shop owners in early enough for them to input, prepare and help out. Please if you are going to 'change the look and feel of the shop pages' how about a heads up or a warning, in advance, so we can implement / prepare for these things before they go live. For it could screw things up for some owners. I am sure they will be 'wonderful', as you say, if they are not just dropped upon us when they go live. I think shop owners too, like other customers, feel 'overwhelmed' by the dropping of new ways to work each time.

5. I do disagree with the idea that curated collections are the only way to 'match interest trends and needs .. ' of customers. I think @lensman outlined many other examples of ways that etsy does it, for example.


@numarul7 Love the idea of overall markup set option.
@lensman those etsy search ideas sound like a necessity as SW grows
@FabMeJewelry I totally agree -'check how users feel' first. Plus PS I love your stuff
@Ontogenie I agree. But it is how SW goes about these changes.

Everyone - we have updated our new jewelry pages to include all jewelry in our marketplace in addition to the curated collections and features. At the bottom of each jewelry section, you will now find a button to “see more” which will take you to the full marketplace for each section.

Thanks for sticking with us while we fixed this. Again, our intention is to liberate the discovery of products designed by you, our community.

I hope you all will use this new "Jewelry & Accessories" forum category as a space to share jewelry tips, ask questions, and most importantly: share your designs. We look forward to continuing to see all of your work!

A significant improvement. Thank you for listening and acting so quickly.

Thanks for the quick reaction time @katkinkead. It's a big improvement.

I was wondering if the same functionality can be added to all the pages though? For instance, the "Click here to see more" button appears at the bottom of the "Men's Accessories" main page, but not at the bottom of the sub-collection pages, like "Off the Cuff" or "Nautical Finds".

Twisted and Wavy Bangle Series:
https://www.shapeways.com/shops/bitartworks?section=Twisted+Bangles&s=0
https://www.shapeways.com/shops/bitartworks?section=Wave+Bangles&s=0

I think I should be there.

Nice work, but unless you have beautiful photographs of your actual printed products you won't be....

http://shpws.me/ITPj
http://shpws.me/LZog
http://shpws.me/KLVu
http://shpws.me/K1Yq
http://shpws.me/LQwu
I have no idea what you're up to now. I'll offer these for curatorial consideration? A little bump up? Inclusion in collections?

Thanks for trying. I'm sure you'll get there.

Nice job holding down the fort Kat! HAHA! You're a real trooper and I would hire you without hesitation.

Yeah, I agree though. I'm going to join the disgruntled mob and say, dumb move. It will ultimately cause Shapeways to lose money. Here's why. The beauty of Shapeways from the beginning was diversity. Shapeways has had this unique character from the beginning and should fight to keep that character. This move would be more appropriate for something like creating and entirely new website with a brand new brand name. I mentioned this to Pete before years ago concerning jewelry.

The way the marketplace was before was great. Yes, it is not a dumb move to have a curated section with an assortment of categories so consumers can look at designs that are deemed worthy of their shopping time, however, to entirely replace what was already great, that's where the dumb move part comes in. What I would do is reactivate the old marketplace while prominently placing the curated categories in plane view on the main pages of such and get the benefits of both worlds and thereby keep Shapeways unique character while having people say, "Hey! Smart move Shapeways!"

A rollback to the old layout followed by addition of the new pages as a separate subcategory of Jewelry (call it "Hall of Fame", "Shapeways Picks" or "Featured Designs" maybe) would get my vote (as an innocent bystander) as well.

I second both UniverseBecoming and mkroeker...

I've been a part of Shapeway building my business since 2013, mostly selling pendants. For some reason, my shop HOLOS Amulets is not getting any attention, and I'm really stumped as to why. I'd love some feedback from the forum. I've just started working on new images and wondering if this is the hangup. So I'm posting two images and would love some feedback from one of my pendants a 1.25" 31mm diameter Polished Silver HOLOS Amulet. Have a look and see what you think would be best to upgrade my images and get featured before the holiday season. Thanks, Brian
Here's the link to my shop and I've put up 4 new images.
https://www.shapeways.com/product/HD7SKVNAB/1-25-quot-holos-amulet?optionId=56714940

Okay, Brian, here goes.... You essentially have ONE product in your shop (at different sizes). Shapeways is unlikely to promote your shop if there is nothing to see. Additionally, from the one pendant I clicked on and looked at prices my guess is your markup is quite high. You're free to charge whatever you wish but even with very low markups on most of my jewellery there are many that have never sold. Sorry, but you did ask...

I personally think the curated collections in the jewelry marketplace are a huge improvement, and now that the "click here to see more" button has been added, I wouldn't change a thing. There are tens of thousands of jewelry designs on Shapeways and prior to this re-vamp, it was mind-boggling to try to navigate through all of the pages. I'm sure this was a deterrent to a lot of customers. I know from my own experience that I would get frustrated and give up. You might find great pieces on page 1, but also on page 21, but who has the patience to drill down through all 21 pages?!

The collections add a more organic, intuitive approach to browsing the jewelry. Find a theme you're interested in, go to that collection, get some ideas, then use the search bar to find related pieces if you're inspired and can't find the piece you want in the collection. From a marketing standpoint, it's important to get the customers to spend as much time browsing as you can possibly engineer. The collections do that, and the longer the potential customer spends browsing without getting frustrated, the more likely they are to stick around, look at pieces in the collections and outside of the collections, and eventually buy. I'm sure that these collections boost SEO as well because they're linking the pieces to new keywords, and building Shapeways SEO is good for everyone.

Also, it's important to note that the collections are not set in stone. The way I understand it is that new pieces will be added to the existing collections, as Kat said, and new collections will also be added to keep up with trends.

Also asked for that. Not everybody is a professional photographer or has the necessary equipment, but that could really increase the number of good photos and could then also be in a common style used in the marketplaces ...

There could also be a gallery on the top showing these(or at instagram, or flickr,...), which then could also be used as marketing feature (imagine how sharing good photos on facebook or anywhere else could push your shops).

Still many people can be attracted by good photos....

http://shpws.me/LAEC
http://shpws.me/LoN3
http://shpws.me/IjDg
http://shpws.me/Lfzo
http://shpws.me/LzBh
http://shpws.me/L7Lz
http://shpws.me/L5Ri

Thank you so much.
I have some issues with photos. I am now working on filling the store.

I just added new images and some new designs in my HOLOS Amulets shop. Please have a look, and let me know what else I can do to get featured. Thanks so much.