It’s time for a little transition.
I started an Etsy site called Clandestinearts in 2007 before I fully knew how it would work out. After a couple of years, I settled on it as the primary means for selling my chocolates. Things started slowly, but over the time I’ve been on Etsy, I’ve had 4,313 sales and a 5 star review rating consistently. Not bad!
What does that mean in terms of chocolates? Well, I can only download order summaries a year at a time and I didn’t feel like going through all the years. But, from 2015 through 2024, you collectively bought 5,077 boxes of my chocolates on Etsy. Each box has 12 chocolates, so that’s 60,924 individual bonbons, all of them dipped by hand until I got my enrober last year.
I shouldn’t total things like that up—makes me tired just to think about it!
So Etsy has been good to me. It’s been easy to use, at least on my end, and I appreciate the platform’s mission.
But, it’s time. Probably a little past time.
Partly, Etsy’s transaction fees have increased quite a bit since I started, and I think those funds could be put to better use. Also, an Etsy shop is a bit limiting in terms of how I can show and talk about my chocolates. Even the name "Clandestine Chocolates" has one too many characters to fit as an Etsy shop name.
So, I recently launched this website, clandestinechocolates.com, which will be the primary platform through which you will be able to preorder and order my chocolates.
Give me any suggestions or comments. You can use the contact page on the website or email me at jonathan@clandestinechocolates.com.
Come fall, I’ll be posting preorder information for the first collection of the season and I’ll let you know in the usual way, through this newsletter. Hopefully, all will go smoothly!
I may continue to make preordering available through Etsy for a short time, just in case of problems. But, ultimately, I suspect I will transition away from that.
That's all for now. I'm off to Australia for a bit to do some birding!
Thanks for reading.
Jonathan Doherty
Owner & Chocolatier