Soap, earrings and totes: the makers who are joining Coop right now

When I started Coop, I pictured bread, eggs and tomatoes. Honestly, a lot of the app still looks like that. But every week I check which kinds of listings are growing the fastest, and lately the answer isn't food at all.

It's soap. And earrings. And tote bags!

What's growing

Here's what the last few weeks of new listings look like. "New" means listed in the last 28 days, compared with the 28 days before that.

Look at the last two weeks inside that window and it's even sharper. Milk soap went from 6 new listings in one week to 22 the next. Totes went from 1 to 14. Dangle earrings went from none to 15 (that one is probably a few sellers listing a whole collection at once, which is exactly how you should do it).

Earrings are the one to read carefully. The 28 day total is flat, but the latest week jumped from 4 new listings to 21. My guess is a few busy makers listing in batches, and maybe some early gift season prep.

Where the makers are

Handmade goods aren't spread evenly. A few places have real shelves already:

• Minneapolis handmade gifts: 49 listings from 15 sellers
• St. Louis handmade gifts: 101 listings from 39 sellers
• Dallas handmade gifts: 80 listings from 32 sellers
• St. Louis clothing and accessories: 68 listings from 27 sellers
• St. Louis soap and skincare and Dallas soap and skincare: 17 listings each, from 8 and 10 sellers

Then there's Minneapolis clothing and accessories, which has 28 listings from just 4 sellers. Four people are carrying that whole shelf. If you make jewelry or accessories in the Twin Cities, you wouldn't be joining a crowd.

The part that surprised me

Here's the honest catch. In a week where buyers ran about 1,400 searches in the app, "soap" was typed 4 times. Earrings and totes didn't make the list of top searches at all.

Food gets searched. Eggs, meat, sourdough, honey, people type those words in. Handmade goods mostly get found a different way. Someone is scrolling their neighborhood, sees a pretty bar of soap with a good photo, and buys it as a gift. Nobody woke up thinking "I need a tote bag from a neighbor today."

So if you make things, the work looks different from a baker's work:

1. The photo does the searching for you. Nobody is typing your name in, so the first picture has to stop the scroll. Natural light, one clean background, and show the scale (a hand holding the earring, the tote on a shoulder).
2. Say plainly what it is. "Goat Milk Soap: Champagne" tells a buyer more than "Bar 3". Use the plain name first and save the fun name for the description.
3. List a few at once. A seller with one pair of earrings is a listing. A seller with eight is a little shop. Our lesson on listing several items at once makes this quick.
4. Aim at a date. Gift buying has a calendar. Thanksgiving is about five weeks out and Christmas is about nine. Soap and ornaments both show up in the seasonal listings already, which tells me makers are getting ahead of it. You can too.
5. Offer a weekly pickup. Repeat buyers like knowing when. Set a weekly pickup once and stop negotiating times in chat.

A word on rules

On our side, the state guides we've written are about cottage food, so I can't hand you a tidy rules table for soap and skincare the way I can for a loaf of bread. Body care products can have their own labeling and safety rules, and they're different from food rules. Check with your state and the FDA before you sell, and keep the ingredient list handy either way.

This is general information, not legal advice. Rules vary by state and product, so check with your state agency before you sell.

If you make things

You don't need a long catalog to start. Pick your three best items, take good photos, and open a storefront on Coop. If you'd rather shop than sell, browse handmade gifts near you and start your holiday list with someone down the road.

Cole Coleman, founder of Coop