Shapeways Launches Etsy E-commerce Integration

Thanks, Leon. I'll check it out.

Orders of 50 pendants of 100 euro is a nice problem!

I had hoped this would happen one day, and currently the Shapeways quality is quite good...But I worry as there have been periods where I've rejected 1/3 of each batch sent to me! One of the reasons I push my etsy store and not my Shapeways store is I've felt the need for a second quality control check before it goes to the customer...sad but true.

I will check out the "ship to me" option, but it's not sounding much different from what I'm doing right now i.e. just placing the order through your website. Placing through your website also allows me to combine shipments and save on postage...will that be an option with the Etsy integration?

fuzzbumdesigns.etsy.com

I think this is a good question.

For example, what if a customer orders something and then wants to cancel? If you cancel the order on Etsy, does the order get cancelled on Shapeways?

Ninety percent of the time transactions on Etsy are pretty smooth but that 10% can get sort of gnarly at times. Speaking from experience as Ive sold quite a bit through etsy.

How do I know if this is working or not? I've clicked the integration button, I was asked for card details but it didn't accept. Once integrated, is there anything I should do in the settings in Shapeways or Etsy shop, some kind of tutorial would be good?

HI Shapeways Support,

I just tried the integration with Etsy and my Etsy store is set to AU dollars , when I run the import and brought 1 product to Etsy , I found two issues ,
1: in shapeways the products are listed in USA $ , in Etsy the US price was used has AU prices, ie. a Pendant listed on shapeways was US$20 became AU$20 when imported into my Etsy Store.
2: Materials turned off in Shapeways become are turned on in Etsy , with prices set to the build cost.
If you not careful someone will order a product at build cost , Once Etsy fees are taken out you will be out of pocket , add the US to AU conversion , I will loose over 30% .

Does Shapeways send a message of an order that has been received with a Shapeways order No?
Regards
Vijay

I appreciate that Shapeways is trying to make it easier for our products to be seen, and in general I think the Etsy integration is a good thing. Etsy has a large, built-in customer base that isn't likely to find Shapeways or be comfortable using it (my experience with my customers). I just don't think it's going to work well for me personally to add another layer of complication to order fulfillment...all of the products are going to have to come to me first anyway (quality control, branded packaging, adding hooks to earrings, etc.) and I need to be in charge of when I place orders and which orders are combined without sending an extra email.

For sellers who don't do any post-processing, i.e. miniature sellers, and don't have special packaging, this could work very well, though. I am interested to see how it all develops in the next few months.

In the meantime the two systems work together quit correctly and fast (compared to the first days). Shipping costs are shown correctly.
Just no sales yet

Just a quick clarification, is it possible to set some of my Etsy listings for direct fulfillment by Shapeways and the others not? I can see how this might be useful for certain products, i.e. plastic or sandstone models that I don't necessarily want to package and ship myself.

I wish that this would be made more clear in the settings. They state that "You can batch multiple Etsy orders into a single Shapeways order if you are shipping to yourself", so I assumed that after getting many models linked to my shop, there would be a way to select multiple orders and then place one order for all of them at once. Seeing no button for this, I just naively figured that clicking "place order" must bring up a secondary page where you can then batch the orders, but that button instead just instantaneously places the order. Given that I choose to pay for the fastest shipping setting, as that cost is usually spread out over about 20-30 orders on my end, I am sad to have now placed a single order where the shipping costs are more than the item itself.

From what you describe, to do what I want with the integration to batch 20 orders with next day shipping, I would need to pay an extra $300 up front, send a message where I copy and paste the 20 order numbers into a list, wait for a refund of $300, and then do this on a weekly basis. This is clunky and I'd rather just place those 20 orders manually like I normally do. Have been excited for the Etsy integration for a while, but I'm not quite ready to jump on board until there is an easy way to batch my orders to save on shipping.

What type of information does the customer receive via email? Do they get process and shipment tracking from Etsy, Shapeways, or is that up to the Seller to track and relay per order?

I've decided to stay clear of this integration for now. A fair few people are showing it as buggy and troublesome, and it feels like a LOT more work than it is worth. Maybe as the kinks are worked out...but not now.

As someone who sells only around 20 ish pieces a month on etsy, I think this would just make things more complicated than they need to be. I don't want to bug about with emails with combined shipping like others have said.
And I still like having the extra step of quality control...given how often in the past I've had things that were just terribly printed, to then be remade and be just as bad! Yes, the quality has been better recently...but all the issues before have left me twitchy on quality.

@numarul7 Hey Florin! Wasssss up!!! James here!

So, I set up my first integration product with my new shop and I think I found a workaround for the problem you identified. What we can do it just set the quantity under the inventory and pricing section of the Etsy listing set up. Like for example, let's say the card one was going to use had a thousand dollars of credit available on it and one had 10 products selling for a 99 dollars each, well then one would simply set the inventory to 1 for each of the 10 products. That way, if customers purchased all 10 products one would still have 10 dollars credit left on the card and there would be no way to overcharge the card. The way it works on Etsy is when the inventory number is used up Etsy no longer automatically renews the listing and the listing doesn't show in the store.

It's annoying though because it would mean one would need to keep going into their Etsy listing and manually renewing their listings relative to the available credit on hand. I think Shapeways should just do away with the credit card method altogether and simply bill shop owners for services rendered. Yes, there will be instances where shop owners don't pay but it won't happen very often so Shapeways would still come out ahead in the long run.