Where to sell your ceramics, your jewellery, your textiles: a guide by craft

There is no single right channel: what decides where you sell is the piece, not the craft. The short answer: light pieces with a high value hold up online, from the shelf on your profile or from a marketplace; heavy, fragile ones do better face to face, above all at the end of a workshop. A pair of earrings fits in a padded envelope; a ceramic bowl weighs a kilo and chips.

Since 18 September 2026, selling products on Handsome is open to every Maker with a verified Italian VAT number and a connected Stripe account: five published pieces on the free plan, unlimited drafts, no commission kept by the platform. The money is yours and starts life on your own Stripe account. The mechanism is in selling your handmade products online with no commission.

Three questions to answer before you publish a piece

Answer these three before you open the product form: they apply to ceramics and to paper alike.

1. How heavy is it and how easily does it break? Weight and fragility decide the packing, and the packing decides the margin.
2. What price does this piece hold? Not what you wish for, but what someone pays without seeing it in person.
3. Does the piece stand on its own, or does it need you next to it? Some objects explain themselves in a photo, others only after they have watched you work.

Do not improvise on the second question. The price of a handmade piece is built from materials, hours and tool wear. If you have never done that calculation, start with how to really price handmade work.

Ceramics: heavy, breakable, and best kept next to a workshop

Ceramics is the awkward case. A plate is heavy, takes up volume and chips: between bubble wrap, a double box and the courier you spend a sum that is enormous next to a 25-euro mug. Online it holds up when the value is high compared to the volume, far less when the piece is small and ordinary.

• Usually holds up: display vases, signed limited runs, collectible mugs, custom commissions.
• Usually struggles: sets of glasses, everyday plates, anything under 25 euros.
• The band that normally carries the postage: above 60-70 euros.
• Workshop pairing: strong. Someone who spent three hours at the wheel with you looks at that vase differently.

The product shelf lives inside your public profile, alongside your workshop pages. One address: you send it in a chat, you print it on a card to slip into the parcel, and people arriving from a workshop find the pieces already there, with prices on them. Same mechanism in workshops and products together.

Jewellery: the craft where shipping weighs least

With jewellery the logistics barely exist. It weighs grams, does not break, travels in a padded envelope for a couple of euros and holds a high price for its size.

• Usually holds up: earrings between 35 and 60 euros, silver rings and bracelets between 60 and 120, one-off stone pieces above 150.
• Usually struggles: costume pieces under 20 euros, where your hours never come back.
• Worth the care: macro photos on a neutral background, and sizing. The wrong size is one of the most common reasons for a return.
• Workshop pairing: medium. Jewellery explains itself well enough on its own.

For photos you need window light, a neutral background and one extra shot with an everyday object beside the piece, so the size reads at a glance: the steps are in how to photograph your workshop.

Textiles, leather and wood: the price has to carry the weight

The variable is what a kilo of your work is worth. Light textiles travel beautifully: scarves, hand-dyed squares, cotton and hemp bags, usually between 40 and 90 euros, go anywhere for a few euros of postage. Curtains, rugs and large linens do not: they are heavy, and the price the market accepts does not cover the transport.

Leather copes well because the price is high by definition: a hand-stitched bag sits between 150 and 300 euros, a wallet between 60 and 90. The real risk is colour: photograph the hide in natural light and write that every skin has its own grain.

Wood splits in two. Table pieces — boards, bowls, spoons, usually between 40 and 150 euros — ship without trouble, and that is the band that holds up best online. Furniture and large pieces stay a face-to-face or commissioned sale.

Soap, candles and paper: small things people buy again

Soaps, soy wax candles, room scents, hand-bound notebooks, prints and cards all carry a low unit price, often between 8 and 25 euros, and a single piece never pays for its own postage. Here the rule is the set: three soaps in a box, a candle with its diffuser, four prints in a tube. Above 30-40 euros an order, the maths works.

It is also the family where people come back most easily: the soap runs out, the candle burns down, the notebook fills up. Set a sensible free-shipping threshold and they build the order themselves.

Candles and paper are simpler on the regulatory side, but online they all look alike: what sets you apart is the story of the material and your face next to the product.

When pairing a workshop with a piece makes sense

Blunt rule: the harder a piece is to ship, the more sense it makes to offer it to someone who has already watched you work. Ceramics and large woodwork at the top of the list, leather in the middle, jewellery and paper at the bottom.

On group workshops the customer pays a 10-euro deposit per seat and cancels at no cost until 3 days before; on private sessions the deposit is 25 euros and the window stretches to 7 days. In both cases Handsome keeps no commission: the payment starts life on your own Stripe account, and you collect the balance in the studio. The requirements for selling pieces are in VAT number, Stripe and five pieces to start.

One last word on costs: on a global marketplace you pay in layers. Etsy, for instance, charges around 0.20 dollars per listing — even if nothing sells — plus around 6.5% transaction fee on the order total, shipping included (price lists change: check the official page). On Handsome those lines do not exist: what remains is Stripe's standard fee on the payment. The line-by-line comparison is in what it really costs to sell a 40-euro piece.