Beyond Etsy

When Valerya Kanonov began building Valltasy, Etsy gave a small independent designer something difficult to create alone: an audience already searching for handmade jewelry.

“When you're a small independent designer and nobody knows your name yet, Etsy gives you access to people who are already there specifically looking for jewelry and handmade pieces.”

That built-in discovery mattered. Kanonov says Etsy helped Valltasy reach customers she probably would never have reached independently at that stage.

But the marketplace changed. Competition increased, truly handmade one-person businesses became harder to distinguish among enormous numbers of listings, and Valltasy’s dependence on somebody else’s algorithm began to look less like a permanent strategy.

“I don't want Valltasy to depend entirely on a marketplace or its algorithm.”

For Kanonov, building valltasy.com was not simply about opening a second checkout.

It was about creating a place where the photography, collections, stories and overall feeling of Valltasy could exist without competing recommendations from other sellers surrounding every product.

“For me, it was very important to build Valltasy as a brand rather than just have an Etsy shop.”

The tradeoff is straightforward. A marketplace supplies an audience but limits control. An independent website supplies control but does not supply an audience.

“You can build the most beautiful website in the world, but that doesn't mean anyone will find it.”

Kanonov says getting people to Valltasy’s independent site has taken years of audience building, content, social media, Google visibility and relationships with returning customers.

Valltasy’s US Google footprint is modest compared with a large jewelry retailer, but it contains something more important for this story: evidence that people can encounter the site without already knowing the Valltasy name.

Much of the visibility comes from educational content about gemstones and jewelry. That matters because it shows the website functioning as more than a catalog. It is creating entrances into the brand from questions, materials and product categories.

In other words, Kanonov’s description of Google bringing people directly to Valltasy is consistent with the public Search footprint.

Kanonov describes customer discovery today as a mixture of Etsy, Google, Instagram, returning customers and word of mouth.

“Someone might first see Valltasy on Instagram, then Google the name, visit my website several times, follow me for months, and eventually purchase.”

That journey is particularly plausible for jewelry, where consideration can stretch across weeks or months and a purchase may happen far from the first encounter.

It also makes single-channel attribution an incomplete description of how an independent brand grows. The marketplace, social account, Google result, owned website and returning-customer relationship can all participate in the same sale.

Kanonov told Found & Form she could not specifically remember a customer saying they had discovered Valltasy through ChatGPT or another AI tool. She is nevertheless interested in AI’s potential to introduce shoppers to smaller, highly specific brands.

Semrush’s AI data shows an intriguing early version of that transition. In the US snapshot, Valltasy had an AI Visibility score of 14/100, only three brand mentions, 206 citations and 27 cited pages. The brand had zero ChatGPT mentions, zero Google AI Overview mentions, two AI Mode mentions and one Gemini mention.

The information is traveling farther than the brand name.

That distinction became clearer when we tested a product category where Valltasy already has strong Google rankings.

This is one prompt, not a universal measure of AI visibility. It does not mean Valltasy never appears for multi-gemstone jewelry. It shows something narrower: strong Google visibility in a relevant product territory did not transfer into this controlled AI shopping response.

Valltasy’s experience captures a tension facing independent sellers who grow beyond marketplaces.

Etsy can put a piece in front of a shopper before the shopper knows the designer exists. An owned site gives the designer control over brand, storytelling, customer relationship and presentation, but the brand must create its own routes in.

Kanonov’s answer is not to abandon Etsy. She sees the marketplace and the independent site working together while the owned audience grows.

“Think of their website as much more than another place to list the same products. It should give people a reason to remember you.”

That may become even more important as discovery fragments. The job is no longer simply to rank a product page or win a marketplace search. It is to create enough recognizable evidence around a brand that customers can encounter it across many different starting points.