Facts
Who: G.Todorov
What: Art, sculpture, and custom jewelry
Format: Physical product · Bulgaria, English and Bulgarian
Started: Around 2010
Audience: Under 100 – hard to pin down exactly
Payers: about 5 buyers per 1–2 months (varies, not tied to a season)
Promotion budget: $0
Income: Side income
Status: Active but stalled
Channels: Offline & word of mouth, communities & forums, collabs & shoutouts, text social media
The short version
What worked: Instagram Reels boosted his traffic by 60–70% – but actual orders and repeat clients came almost entirely through offline word of mouth
The result: A single wedding ring commission brought a full year of work, purely through recommendations
The catch: He still doesn't consider this the success story he's aiming for – marketing remains his weakest skill
Background
G.Todorov grew up with artist and designer parents, alongside grandparents oriented toward science and mechanics – an influence that shaped both his childhood games and his ambitions. He went on to graduate from the National School for Fine Arts and the National Academy for Fine Arts, specializing in sculpture, and learned metal casting while working with professional casters. During his years at the Academy, he won several awards for coin and medal designs commissioned by the Bulgarian National Bank, and completed his first major monumental work.
At the end of his degree, he and a group of friends and colleagues took on an ambitious project: building Bulgaria's first stop-motion studio. It meant learning an enormous range of new skills, from 3D modeling to mechanical engineering, and combining them with his sculptural training. After six years of hard work, the project collapsed and the team disbanded.
Starting point
His first sales came through Etsy, with custom orders arriving through Facebook and the occasional one through Instagram. From there, referrals started to snowball – friends of friends, recommendations from people who'd already ordered. Today, he estimates about 80% of his smaller item orders come from people who simply heard about him through someone else.
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What worked
After the stop-motion studio collapsed, G.Todorov decided to put all the skills he'd gained into something of his own. He opened an Etsy shop and experimented with different kinds of work, though he's candid that marketing has always been his weakest part of the process. A small number of people found him through those platforms, ordered, and then recommended him to friends. One set of wedding rings alone brought a full year of work through word-of-mouth referrals. During that stretch he also leveled up his jewelry skills – different types of gold, fine engraving – while continuing to work on monumental sculpture commissions around the country, most of them won through competitions. He held his first solo exhibition during this period, and took on other work purely as a fabricator, drawing on his bronze-casting expertise.
Instagram Reels brought a real jump in traffic – up 60 to 70% – but it didn't translate into a meaningful number of orders or sales. The clients and repeat business kept coming from somewhere else entirely: word of mouth, off the web.
What didn't work
His biggest setback remains the dream of building Bulgaria's first stop-motion studio. The team was talented and worked incredibly hard. To stay focused on the project, he put every other kind of professional development on hold, taking only fabricator and casting jobs to get by. When the project collapsed, it hit him hard. He's direct about it: it still hurts to think about, and for a long time it felt like six years lost on a fool's errand.
The turning point
Some time after the studio fell apart, G.Todorov realized he'd come away with an unusual combination of skills that almost no one else had – sculpture, casting, engraving, mechanical and 3D work. He decided to bring them together and use them to grow as a professional artist and craftsman in his own right.
Audience
He doesn't think of himself as having one specific audience. His customers are simply people looking for something genuinely unique – one of a kind, impossible to replicate. They tend to think outside the box and have an eye for quality.
Looking ahead
He's aiming to enter more art competitions, grow his reputation as an artist, and become better known in the art world through galleries and their social media channels.
Practical takeaways
Don't fall into despair, and work smarter, not harder – and take the time to actually learn how to promote yourself.
More traffic and more sales aren't the same thing – a channel can drive visits without driving orders, while word of mouth can convert without much volume at all.
A single well-made piece that turns into a personal recommendation can generate more work than any platform – trust travels through people, not posts.
G.Todorov
Independently developing my sculptural practice for over 20 years, mastering rare and highly specialized skills. A slow, deliberate evolution of craft and a distinctive artistic voice, shaped through bespoke commissions.
Links
Website: gtartist.com
Instagram: g_t_artist
Etsy: FantasyCornerShop
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