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Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

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Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#51

Post by YZF »

amorphid wrote: post #29
cracell wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been my experience as well. Etsy in just a few years has gone from a artisan marketplace to a bunch of mass produced junk. From the articles I've read they've done this to increase the number of sales (cheaper items = more conversions) but I think it's been slowly costing them their customer base. Hopefully they realize this and start banning mass produced items and listening to their artisan stores feedback…

I wonder if they can police the reselling of mass produced junk. I'm imagining initial efforts, making a notable dent in the problem, and then kicking off a "Made By Me" social media campaign. If resellers stopped seeing Etsy as a easy way to sell dollar store items at artisan prices, made that'd curb the problem a bit more.

Sure. Require a refundable deposit of $1000 (replace by some magic number) which is forfeited if you're caught selling mass produced junk. Other after-the-fact punitive measures can be in the contract you have to sign to get on the site.

Something along these lines must exist where legitimate sellers can live with it while the cost to the spammers must be unacceptable.

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#52

Post by [deleted] »

contingencies wrote: post #46
eliudnir wrote: post #36

I ordered a rustic pipe desk from Etsy a while back and the seller was not able to deliver the item on time. He/she communicated the issue so it wasn't that big of a deal for me. I had a prearranged vacation coming up while waiting for the item to be finished and sent, so things took a little bit longer then expected on both ends. When I finally got back home and put the desk together, I noticed that there were items…

This is why centralized marketplaces in general are, in my opinion, on the way out. In the future people with something to offer will be able to offer it without being routed through one-size-fits-all platforms who want to control your options for communication, payment, reputation, shipping, etc. in a "my way or the highway" attitude. If one takes this perspective, then Ebay, Taobao, and Etsy are all anachronisms, t…

[deleted]

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#53

Post by 0xADADA »

I looked into this, because a bracelet I bought for my wife looked great on Etsy, but when it arrived, it was obviously shitty chinese-knock-off quality

Here is the bracelet I bought as a gift, $52

https://www.etsy.com/transaction/1238204808

Here is the same fucking thing, on AliExpress for $6.52 a piece, or you can buy them in lots of 6 for $20.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/24k-Gold-Electroplated-Edge-...

fucking fuck.

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#54

Post by a3camero »

throwaway61891 wrote: post #33
badosu wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A scenario where a new 'top dog' enters and proposes the solution to all problems™ : let's measure our conversions, optimize this and that and make more sales. By the way, all this time you're developing open source you're not helping the company so let's stop that, it costs us developer time and money. It's not unfeasible. It would be a scenario that could explain both portfolio degradation and community leave, and…

> By the way, all this time you're developing open source you're not helping the company so let's stop that, it costs us developer time and money. that was not my experience at all. officially, open source was encouraged because it raised etsy's stock in the tech community, which was beneficial for hiring. unofficially, middle managers discouraged it because it detracted from shipping quickly (which made them look go…

The (former) CEO seemed like a tech guy at heart and I think he was the CTO before being promoted. I met him a couple times at hackathons around 2009 and he was definitely not a suit guy. I doubt it was just lip service.

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#55

Post by danso »

mustacheemperor wrote: post #2

The conversion problem on mobile does seem like an issue, but speaking as a former customer of Etsy what drove me away was the selection. Not that it's too small - rather, Etsy is now flooded with thousands of storefronts selling "artisan" pieces that are actually bought on AliExpress or similar and marked up. If they're trying to apply ML to managing customer recommendations, they should figure out how to identify w…

I had forgotten that Etsy changed its policy on allowing mass manufacturing several years ago: https://www.wired.com/2015/09/etsy-embraces-mass-manufacturi...

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/etsy-ceo-ipo-mass-production-...

Alibaba-resells has had a detrimental effect on Kickstarter and Indiegogo-type platforms too. Many of the things submitted to r/shittykickstarters seem to be resells. Indiegogo doesn't mind them, and Kickstarter only stops them when the negative publicity about a campaign gets high enough:

https://www.reddit.com/r/shittykickstarters/comments/3gm8xj/...

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#56

Post by ryanwaggoner »

0xADADA wrote: post #53

I looked into this, because a bracelet I bought for my wife looked great on Etsy, but when it arrived, it was obviously shitty chinese-knock-off quality Here is the bracelet I bought as a gift, $52 https://www.etsy.com/transaction/1238204808 Here is the same fucking thing, on AliExpress for $6.52 a piece, or you can buy them in lots of 6 for $20. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/24k-Gold-Electroplated-Edge-... fucking…

Your etsy link doesn't work for me

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#57

Post by mcguire »

tqkxzugoaupvwqr wrote: post #8
mustacheemperor wrote: post #2

The conversion problem on mobile does seem like an issue, but speaking as a former customer of Etsy what drove me away was the selection. Not that it's too small - rather, Etsy is now flooded with thousands of storefronts selling "artisan" pieces that are actually bought on AliExpress or similar and marked up. If they're trying to apply ML to managing customer recommendations, they should figure out how to identify w…

It sounds like this problem of fake self-made art could be prevented if etsy introduced a clause that prohibits sellers to sell items they haven't made themselves and fine any seller in violation. The fine could be a multiple of the last n months of revenue on etsy.

Theoretically, Etsy already has that: https://www.etsy.com/legal/sellers/#allowed

The downside, I guess, is how to enforce it.

I was on the verge of setting up an Etsy shop (I have a bad habit of going to local auctions and buying china tableware for offensively low prices), but with this sort of thing going on, I'm conflicted.

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#58

Post by greglindahl »

swalsh wrote: post #42
ryandrake wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be some natural law of Internet shopping that ensures that every "Specialized marketplace for X," will, once it becomes popular, inevitably devolve into a flood of thousands of sellers all reselling identical cheap junk from AliExpress for $0.99 + free shipping--to the point where it's impossible to find anything genuine or non-counterfeit.

On the plus side, it should be exceptionally easy to identify since they probably don't have custom photos.

That works on day 1 of the crackdown, but not on day 15.

Re: Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

#59

Post by look_lookatme »

throwaway61891 wrote: post #27
ahmeni wrote: post #16

It's bizarre to see how Etsy went from producing a significant amount of technical software and community engagement a few years ago and then suddenly stopped. Their GitHub is a testament to this sudden dropoff. Was there anything ever mentioned about why they went from super public about things like dashboarding to nothing?

former etsy employee here: lots of reasons, but around that time etsy invested heavily in infrastructure and tools like statsd resulted from it. the last few years the focus has been mostly on product, and product teams usually don't produce the kind of significant technology contributions you're talking about (huge generalization there obviously). this is more of a personal opinion, but my experience was that the la…

I just assumed everyone booked it after the IPO.
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