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After the dental office where she worked (temporarily) closed its doors at the onset of Covid, Maria Juarez turned to selling face masks on Etsy. Business boomed, and today she runs CottonBoutique full time. Now, Juarez is eyeing another pandemic-driven product: vaccine card holders.
“I figured masks are not going to be the only thing. There's going to have to be other stuff out there that has to do with the pandemic that people are going to want and need,” Juarez told Retail Brew.
CottonBoutique started selling vaccine card holders in June, priced between $2.99 and $6.99.
- Orders quickly totaled about 100 a day, though traffic then tapered off to around 50–75.
- But as of the week ending July 31, Juarez said she’s selling 800 card holders a week—and expects that pace to continue as requiring proof of vaccination could become commonplace.
“Every time the president talks—whatever he says is increasing [business],” Juarez told us. “It's something you have to carry now in addition to your daily belongings.”
Show your cards: Last week, New York City became the first jurisdiction to mandate that customers of restaurants, gyms, and other indoor facilities show proof of vaccination.
- Los Angeles is considering requiring proof of vaccination at malls, restaurants, gyms, and indoor sporting events.
Carry on
Kim Keim, owner of Etsy shop ThreadandPurls, also got in on the ground floor of card holder production. She started selling them for $8 in April; that’s when searches for “vaccine card holders” hit their record high, per Google Trends.
- Business peaked in May, at ~200 purchases a day, then slowed in June. But Keim told us sales are now picking back up.
Rewind: Keimbegan to make masks after Etsy sent an email telling sellers in the sewing community to drop everything for face coverings. She stopped after a month and a half, once major retailers got in the game. Will that happen again? Well...
“I think for them it just takes so long to have something get into production,” Keim told us.
“Once they get into it, we won’t need [card holders], maybe, or everybody who wants them will have them. By the time the bigger retailers got into [masks], everybody was kind of set.”
Emily Gegg, marketing coordinator for Eric Scott Leathers, isn’t concerned either. “A lot of our face mask customers have also been vaccination passport holder customers,” she said.
- Available on Etsy and Amazon, the company’s card holders also carry credit cards and actual passports.
- Since its rollout less than three months ago, the company has sold almost 10,000 units.
Fast track: Etsy sellers can often respond more nimbly than larger brands—and that gives them an edge when it comes to new trends, Inna Kuznetsova, CEO of 1010data, told us.
- “Things that help express individuality and require a fast reaction and may not be that expensive in production, like masks or wallet cards, may get a good exposure.”—KM