If you think gloves and mittens are only purchased as Christmas presents, think again.

Winter’s icy grip knows no holiday. In the realm of Etsy, these snug accessories form a season-round story of warmth, style, and market allure.

Below, we uncover the secrets of how gloves and mittens are more than just festive must-haves. They continue to dazzle and perform on Etsy throughout the chilly months.

From handmade wonders to trendy designs, the winter wonderland of Etsy has much more to offer than meets the eye.

Are gloves and mittens an Etsy winter trend?

Etsy is a haven for artisans and crafters who bring a distinctive touch to an extensive range of handmade creations.

Naturally, the platform attracts shoppers allured by designs showcasing skill, care, and attention to detail.

Handmade gloves and mittens undoubtedly fall under this category, making them attractive on the marketplace. And while some assume their popularity only shines during the Christmas season, it turns out that they’re an all-season leader.

A quick search on Etsy displays 175,675 listings for the keyword “gloves” and 93,195 listings for “mittens”. This level of competition indicates a well-developed, profitable market.

Although we discovered a range of different niches, like bridal gloves, boxing gloves, and oven mitts, we’ll only focus our research on winter must-haves, like cozy, warm knitted gloves.

Let’s dive into the details and see how gloves and mittens perform during the winter.

A deep dive into the glove category on Etsy

To understand how gloves are performing on Etsy during the winter season, we used Sale Samurai’s features and capabilities.

We concentrated our research on several key metrics:

• Search volume
• Competition level
• Popular keywords
• Tags
• Prices

Here are the most essential insights.

Search volume

Using Sale Samurai’s Product search module, we identified that over 60 thousand shoppers browse for “gloves” monthly during the winter.

This significant demand proves that demand remains high even after Christmas. For sellers, this is a lucrative opportunity to satisfy a large target audience and generate lucrative sales volumes.

Competition level

Earlier, we noted that there are hundreds of thousands of available glove listings on Etsy. This suggests a high competition level that was confirmed throughout our research.

According to Sale Samurai, the competition level of the keyword “gloves” is 182,936.

This number is slightly higher than the search volume. Although it’s usually recommended to enter niches where the demand exceeds the competition level, the gloves market remains attractive.

However, keep in mind that to outperform others, you’ll need a sound sales strategy.

Popular keywords

One way to optimize your listings for success is to include niche keywords with a high search volume in your titles and descriptions.

In the gloves segment, the most popular keywords are:

• fingerless gloves – 353,057
• alpaca gloves – 123,226
• black gloves – 121,728
• fashion gloves – 118,397
• elbow gloves – 114,784
• gloves red – 114,733
• gloves men – 109,876
• gloves women – 72,381
• coraline gloves – 71,154

This data is valuable as it offers creative ideas that you can profit from as a seller.

For example, more than 350,000 consumers search for “fingerless gloves” monthly. Black gloves generate 121,728 monthly searches, while “gloves women” accumulate 72,381 searches.

Imagine that you take advantage of this information and create black fingerless gloves for women. You can satisfy a combined demand of more than 544,000 monthly searches and sell your items like hot cakes.

Tags

Similarly to keywords, tags serve the purpose of boosting your product’s rankings. However, as opposed to being featured in titles and descriptions, they live in the back end of your listing.

Sale Samurai uncovered the following top-used tags in the glove space:

• Fingerless gloves
• Gift
• Winter gloves
• Long gloves
• Gloves women
• Gift for her
• Wrist warmers
• Warm gloves
• Knit gloves

As you can see, fingerless gloves dominate again, proving the potential of this niche.

The list also confirms that gloves are often purchased as gifts. However, this isn’t limited to the festive season. They can be bought for other winter-based events, like birthdays, Valentine’s Day, or Mother’s Day.

Market prices

We’ve now reached the most interesting part of our glove research – prices.

The price of a product can give away a lot about its profitability.

Keep in mind that a precise revenue calculation is impossible without having access to a seller’s production, storage, and shipping expenses. However, in most cases, the higher the price – the higher the profit.

In the case of gloves, the minimum, maximum, and average prices are the following:

• $0.20
• $399.99
• $32.92

For new entrants, we recommend pricing around the average (or $32.92 in this case). This will allow you to position your items competitively and quickly win more traffic.

As you gain more positive reviews and grow your popularity, you can gradually increase the price. In this segment, you can go as high as $400 per item.

A top-performing glove shop: Analysis

When browsing through Etsy’s glove listings, we came across the “New Womens Premium High Quality Genuine Soft Leather Gloves Fully Lined Warm” product sold by TheGloveHut.

As one of the bestsellers in the domain, this item sells for $27.16 (a price below the average in the market). The product has a total of 127 item reviews, while the entire shop has above 3,000.

TheGloveHut has landed more than 16,000 sales for a portfolio of 196 items, 28 of which are gloves.

What makes this specific listing a success story is the powerful optimization. The title features keywords like “womens”, “premium”, “leather gloves”, “lined”, and “warm”. Although some of these words don’t appear in our earlier insights, they also land high search volumes.

Together with a reasonable price, this helps the creator attract shoppers and secure sales.

Exploring how mittens perform on Etsy during the winter

Let’s not forget that there is another side to this market – mittens.

Although gloves and mittens are often perceived as identical items, they share their individual features and characteristics.

Similarly to gloves, mittens are frequently browsed for on Etsy, with more than 94,000 monthly searches. The competition is also high, reaching 144,148.

What’s interesting to note is that in this segment, the competition is much higher than the search volume. From this perspective, it appears that the glove market is easier to compete in.

The top niche-related keywords that users search for include:

• bernie sanders mittens – 48,558
• lingonberry mittens – 47,568
• shearling mittens – 46,401
• matilda mittens – 44,385
• woollen mittens – 42,640
• lined mittens – 41,797
• repurposed sweater mittens – 33,935
• fingerless mittens – 32,616
• sheepskin mittens – 31,180
• handknit mittens – 31,040

This list reveals a range of different mitten styles and patterns. It also shows that “fingerless” dominates in this domain too, just like in the gloves market.

Overall, the search volumes of mitten-based keywords are much lower than that of glove-related phrases. This supports our earlier assumption that sellers are likely to perform better with glove-optimized listings.

The most successful mittens on Etsy are optimized for the following trending tags:

• Gift
• Newborn
• Fingerless gloves
• Crochet pattern
• Baby
• Winter mittens
• Winter
• Warm

Right off the bat, it becomes clear that mittens and gloves are two niches that are often intertwined.

It’s also apparent that this product type is frequently purchased for newborns as a gift. For instance, it makes the perfect present for a winter baby shower according to the tags “gift”, “newborn”, and “baby”.

From a price perspective, mittens are sold at the following minimum, maximum, and average rates:

• $0.96
• $54.35
• $12.12

Again, these numbers indicate that gloves perform much better from a revenue perspective than mittens. Both the average and maximum prices are much lower, suggesting smaller margins.

A look into one of the bestsellers reveals interesting discoveries. “Namche Hand Knit Convertible Mitten, winter gloves with Fleece Lining, Comfy and Warm” by Fortlandic is priced at $33.59 (much higher than the mittens’ average price but close to the gloves’ average price).

Fortlandic is a 5-star-rated Etsy shop that sells mittens and gloves, hand warmers, sweaters, and more.

This item alone has 1,082 customer reviews, while the shop enjoys a total of 12,850 reviews for a portfolio of 55 products.

The title unearths that the seller intelligently targets both sub-niches – gloves and mittens. The listing features keywords like “knit”, “mitten”, “winter gloves”, “fleece lining”, and “warm”. All of these words are trending in the domain and contribute to high rankings.

In this case, the shop strives to get the best of both worlds. By positioning the listing in the two categories simultaneously, the artisan can afford to choose the better average price without compromising sales.

While we don’t have access to product expense data, we can assume that revenue will be more fruitful when pricing the item at $33 as opposed to $14 (the market average for mittens).

In a nutshell

In conclusion, the potential of gloves and mittens goes beyond festive gift-giving.

These items are popular among shoppers throughout the winter season, creating money-making opportunities for artisans on Etsy.

To get the most out of this cozy market, make sure to make strategic decisions based on real-time insights.

At just $9.99 a month, Sale Samurai can help you turn your Etsy side gig into a profitable venture.