How to Sell Your Glass: Top Platforms, Shops, and more

Giggle Glass – The Best USA Glass Marketplace

Giggle Glass matches a perfect balance between platforming glass with broad appeal, as well as specific custom pieces that are more tailored for a niche customer base. Giggle Glass is home to a wide assortment of custom glass artists who bring passion and inspiration to their glass crafts. If you’re someone who has a knack for creating either wild customization or streamlined simplicity in your glass, then Giggle Glass is one of the best choices for selling your glass. Using Giggle Glass means you’ll have access to a customer base with a high interest in custom glass pieces; however, since Giggle Glass is exclusively for smoking pieces, if you produce other glasswork you’re interested in selling, then another platform with a broader range of offered products would be ideal.

Artist Websites and Personal Shops

Having a platform built for artists or even a personal site to market your glass gives you a unique chance to let your creative freak flag fly. With a personal site or a site tailored for artists, you can include your wildest crafts for customers looking for creatively inspired custom glass pieces. With an artist website or personal shop, you can also provide any type of glass piece, smoking or ornamental, for purchase. If you have an eclectic taste in what kind of glass you produce, this is a good option.

Other Online Options

Searching for more options to maximize exposure to your glass? Here are some more popular sites that might be well-suited for your glass.

Etsy

Etsy is considered a top marketplace for independent artists, craftsmen, and so on. Its popularity means that you have a good chance of garnering potential customers and generating interest in your glass. Etsy is well known for its offerings of custom works of all kinds, which has the benefit of high interest in custom work, but the potential cost of the split attention amongst consumers who may be interested in other types of custom crafts aside from glass.

GlassPass

GlassPass is the kind of platform that best serves those with a high interest and specificity in custom functional glass. The kind of users/customer base you’d find on here includes dedicated collectors and glass artists. This platform is best suited for glass artist pros looking to sell intricate custom pieces. If you’re more a novice glass artist or enjoy crafting simplistic pieces, then this platform is not the best place to look to sell your glass, but if you have those high-end custom pieces you’re looking to sell to a smaller but fiercely interested customer base, then this is perfect.

Local Head Shops and Smoke Shops

Local head shops and smoke shops are the obvious choice to sell your custom glass, but for good reason. Smokers who come in to browse new paraphernalia might have their eye caught by one of your pieces on display and, with an already keen interest in glass, might be more inclined to buy when they see it in person. The one major downside to selling glass in a smoke shop is that you’re less likely to get the same sheer traffic of attention you would find on an online platform.

Trade Shows, Glass Expos, and Festivals

Like a local smoke shop: trade shows, glass expos, and festivals are great venues to market your glass to an interested customer base who enjoys custom glass. At a trade show or expo, you’ll find a much larger flow of potential customers coming through more consistently than a smoke shop, a whole veritable ecosystem, so to speak! But like a brown bear sat riverside during a great salmon run – you can’t catch them all, you’ve got to put in the work to grab attention and make a sale, which can be exhausting but rewarding.

Craft Fairs, Art Walks, and Local Events

Craft fairs, art walks, and local events are a great way to draw in a new crowd that might be unfamiliar with custom glasswork. Amidst the variety of vendors at a craft fair, you stand a better chance of your glasswork standing out. However, you also have a higher chance of encountering the curious lookers who might find one of your pieces to be real eye candy, but they themselves wouldn’t put it to use, because a craft fair crowd will have other interests besides custom glass. H3: Galleries and Pop-Up Exhibits A gallery or pop-up exhibit draws an eclectic crowd with deep interest and consideration for finely crafted pieces. Like a craft fair or glass expo, you can expect a lot of foot traffic at one time, but you might also be dealing with a crowd that holds their taste in higher regard, eyeing your pieces with utmost scrutiny, which makes a smooth-talking sale harder to pull off. But if you come to the table with some high-quality pieces, you can expect to make a high-quality sale.

Social Media Platforms

Social media outreach on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, or X, can give you a wide reach to customers who will get a personal connection to both you and your work. With social media platforms like these, you can personally interact with large swaths of customers without the worry of the vendor fees you’d encounter on a digital platform or in-person marketplace.

Private Commissions and Custom Orders

Advertising yourself for private commissions and custom orders can help establish connections with a slim but die-hard collection of glass enthusiasts. Your customer base will be smaller when fulfilling custom-made orders, but this can be compensated for by the higher pricing a custom piece would entail.

Local Networking and Word-of-Mouth

Simply putting yourself out there amongst fellow glass appreciators of the buying or crafting variety can greatly help with selling your glass. Even better, any local friend you have who could talk to their friend might bring forward an unexpected surge of customers interested in local glass craft. Being a part of your local glass community and networking with fellow artist might also give insight into the other methods they have used in selling their glass.

Building Relationships with Buyers

Maintaining a community of interested buyers is a sure-fire guarantee of keeping your glass selling. The easiest ways to do so include constant engagement with your buyers through an active role in your vendor community or social media marketing. Any sale you might make should be followed up on, as keeping an interest in your customers after they’ve made a purchase helps create repeat customers.

Pricing and Consistency

Having fair and balanced pricing for your pieces and consistent craft quality is something that is always recognized by the customer. No one enjoys paying prices too outrageous for even the most beautiful pieces. However, if you can stay consistent in your craft quality – you can certainly push the boundary a little bit in how you price your pieces. That being said, if you maintain both craft quality and fair pricing, then it will be that much easier for your customers to fall in love with your glass.

Presentation and Branding

How you present yourself and how you brand your glass go a long way in getting your glass sold. Share your story of what kind of artist you are, why you make these glass pieces, and what it means to you. Of course, your glass should share a story too – that way you have a brand that customers will recognize and over time, come to love and appreciate the personal care you and your glass reflect.

Tracking Sales and Feedback

For pure business numbers, you always have to keep track of whether you’re in the red or the black! If you see that the glass is not selling as well as you hoped, look to find out any comments on them that might illuminate why it just won’t sell. Maybe the market is flush with pieces similar to yours or maybe you need a simple rebrand, either way, you’ll only find this out by tracking sales and feedback.