Morgan

Hard to add to what’s been said but ya apples and oranges. i personally have both. I prefer Shopify but it is totally on you to drive traffic there, seo, marketing etc. Etsy does this for you (rather poorly)…but as Neil points out it is beyond saturated. If you don’t have tons of sales and tons of reviews it’s almost impossible. I did spend a good chunk on Etsy ads to get a small amount of sales and reviews (think like 300 sales and well over a 100 5 star reviews) so now I just let it ride if something sells on there, great, but I don’t care as my focus is on Shopify site. if you do try Etsy spend a ton of time on seo (look at competitors), have great pics, a lot of listings if you can, focus on good titles, tags etc. But again, Etsy is hard now but doable still if your willing to do it well, have a good product and so forth. In the end if I could have done it all over again I would have probably just focused on good content via social media/instagram/fb and invested time and money on meta ads, google ads and just drove traffic to my Shopify store alone and never bothered with Etsy. The vast chunk of my sales are from direct in person markets so that helps me not care so much about online sales…but ya if I never had to do another market I would probably die happy.

This is roughly the schedule I use (temps changed to get heat work where I want on my kiln) https://digitalfire.com/schedule/plc6ds then if you want you can use the same schedule with a controlled cool down if that’s your thing, for my glazes I prefer crash cool.

He claims to not contact him on Facebook but he was non responsive on email after payment (over a year ago) so I sent him just a couple of DMs on Facebook and oddly he replied. He sounds fine and is obviously working. Maybe something happened before but I do not want to speculate. What I can say is a few big social following potters dropped his name almost daily which certainly probably overwhelmed him with orders. Time will tell and I am going to be optimistic I get my replacement tools but when is anyone’s guess.

Whoa! I cannot believe it is that much mainland where you are, just wow!

Also mark I’m living in HI and paying over 40 cents/kwh, it’s crazy.

I kind of got burned by not specifically stating 325 on an order one time (lesson learned) so of coarse they sent the much cheaper 200. For some glazes I could not tell but others were super apparent and 325 gave a superior finish/melt.

Outside of having to test it, wouldn’t it be easier to simply color with oxides/stains etc, your go to porcelain the exact color you are aiming for instead of having to deal with that? Food for thought.

Minor update to anyone else in my boat. I pinged him on Facebook again and actually got the most detailed message out of him I have. “Good news Morgan, I have your order printed out and I see your PayPal payment”…then radio silence again ha! Maybe I actually get these sometime in the coming years…who knows.

Bumping this on more info the mine has plans to reopen even though it closed for financial reasons, or is this just speculation?

Way too many

Bill that’s correct. I get a fairly perfect cone 6 bend with that schedule. Every kiln is different obviously and the drop down and hold is for clearing up and healing. Here is the post on Tony’s site that gives further info: https://digitalfire.com/schedule/plc6ds

Wait, the mine is set to reopen? I have not heard that yet but good news if true.

I can only speak for my glazes and results but after I started doing a small hold at top for 10m (~2190-2200 depending on kiln load), a drop down to 2085 for 30m all of my glaze issues for the most part are good. I seem to get a nicer finish on both matte and glossy with the hold vs just going to peak temp. This is the digital fire drop and soak (no slow cool) schedule and I have never looked back.

This looks great will try it out thanks!

Well, he has not passed away per numerous account on IG, Reddit, Facebook and my own personal response from him noted just recently. Unless someone is impersonating him which is pretty absurd. While I don’t want to speculate I think he just took on way too much and as a man his age (Florian really blew him up exposure wise) got overwhelmed and is not great about communicating as it is digitally. He could have had health issues on top of all that but again that is just speculation. That doesn’t excuse all the issues but let’s not make statements like it is safe to assume he has passed, as we know that is simply not true.