Posted on 05/26/2021 3:14:58 PM PDT by conservative98
A recent easing of mask-wearing guidelines from the US government was a welcome change for many Americans. That wasn't entirely the case for mask seller Gabriela Henriquez.
"I immediately called and texted my friends who were working for me making masks through the pandemic and said this wasn't good news for us," said Henriquez, who sells face masks on Etsy.
LittleLadyAHomemade for her handmade masks plunged more than 70% the day after the US Centers for Disease Control & Prevention announcement on May 13. The agency said that people fully vaccinated against Covid-19 do not need to wear masks or practice social distancing indoors or outdoors, except under certain circumstances.
"The market just dropped," she said. "I had a phenomenal last year in sales. Now what? Where do we go from here?"
Etsy seller Gabriela Henriquez. Etsy seller Gabriela Henriquez. Last year, the pandemic turned face masks into a wardrobe staple. Sellers big and small benefited from the trend. Etsy said cloth masks had erupted into the hottest new product category on its platform last summer. In August, the company said 110,000 sellers on its marketplace had sold as many as 29 million face masks, totaling $346 million.
The boom may be coming to an end. In early May, Etsy said in an annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the face mask market was poised to soften, noting that it had seen "demand for certain items, like handmade masks, diminish significantly with the rollout of the vaccine."
Now, sellers like Henriquez, who spent the past year investing more than $150,000 in her mask business, are trying to figure out how to successfully pivot.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Get another job honey selling framed photos of fear porn star Anthony Fauchi.
You made your money.
Don’t complain.
Lengthen the straps and sell them as sexy skimpy underwear. /smirk.
Perfect!!
Come up with something equally as simple and cheap to make and do it. It wasn’t going to last forever.
And there will likely be a winter spike with COVID-19 and a new variant. And new booster vax. And new worries by those prone to worry. All that to say that there will probably be an increase in mask sales again when that happens. Nothing like last year, but hey, maybe enough to get through the existing inventory.
Out of fashion? When was that nonsense fashionable?
Going through dialysis the whole mask time from last year, I get a new one dispensed by the charge nurse with every visit. The contract center has given some cloth ones out, still in the plastic. Since the center is the only joint I leave my house for, and since I am the only person in my home, why wear one in the house?
$150 K??????? Is she serious??????
I sew a lot and have a hard time imagining how someone could drop that kind of money into making masks.
I see a boom market in clothing with a MYOB motif.
Sell them as “scrotum pouches” or remake into mono-kinins.
Oh no! That means she (and other mask makers) will have to get a regular JOB now. How awful!
Remove the masks!
Plus size bathing suits perhaps?
Why would anyone see this as a permanent career?
She knows how to assemble, support and run a business.
Maybe she could try what is working for a few others:
Chicken Aprons!
The Chicken Apron is really just a small patch of cloth lying on the back of a Hen. Lightly fastened with a string.
This piece of cloth helps to protect the Hen from having the feathers on her back plucked out by Roosters trying to get her attention.
Who didn’t see this coming? Sell something else. Fidget spinners, maybe?
There’s always dial-a-porn. She could be a foot model. Maybe.
Too stinking bad. Go back to making whatever you were making before the hysteria.
Make something that is in demand.
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