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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

#101

Post by exclusiv »

throwaway61891 wrote: post #95
pcurve wrote: post #26

Based on reading through all the comments, it sounds like Etsy should've never gone public. A lot of people saw this coming a mile away.

eh, etsy should've never gone public because etsy was trying to be a company that put "people above profits", which is extremely difficult to do as a public company. market backlash against that kind of sentiment is severe. see also: american airlines.

I scraped all the Etsy stores about 4 years ago and ~80% of stores had never sold more than 20 items. Ever. In aggregate over several years for many stores.

They started as "people above profits" but in reality it was all resellers because that's what did volume. They turned the other cheek and allowed them to take over. They eventually changed policies and alienated a lot of real artisans. That strategy boosted revenue of course but removed their core differentiator.

It's hard to turn down revenue and growth, even moreso when investors are involved. But like most empires, you eventually fall from overextension.

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

#102

Post by duskwuff »

danso wrote: post #81
accountyaccount wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amazing thing about Kickstarter knockoffs is that there's a huge market for simply stealing an idea and beating it to market. People have made hundreds of thousands of dollars doing this. It's completely absurd, Kickstarter product transparency is, in hindsight, almost ideal to steal products from.

Reminds me of this: "Your brilliant Kickstarter idea could be on sale in China before you’ve even finished funding it" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12724096 That said, there's still vibrant opportunity in the other direction, i.e. finding items off of Alibaba, claiming to not only have made those items but that they are best-in-class/first-of-its-kind, and attracting people who don't bother double-checking on…

That "other direction" is much more significant, at this point.

For every Kickstarter/Indiegogo project that's cloned by a Chinese manufacturer (e.g, Fidget Cube), there's probably at least 10 or 20 "projects" created to resell something that's already available. It's a huge issue for the credibility of both sites.

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

#104

Post by duskwuff »

physcab wrote: post #21
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…

If Etsy wants to moderate this, they can enforce GTIN verification. Google Shopping does this so they know how to rank bids for the same items by multiple department stores. Google Shopping requires that you put in some GTIN value (they verify it) or you make up your own Manufacturer Identifier (either you control manufacturing or you have a virtual item). The downside of using your own identifier is that they penali…

How would that help? Each reseller could just create a unique GTIN for each item they resold. Nothing would force them to pick the same GTIN as other resellers of the same item.

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

#105

Post by joatmon-snoo »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #91
accountyaccount wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amazing thing about Kickstarter knockoffs is that there's a huge market for simply stealing an idea and beating it to market. People have made hundreds of thousands of dollars doing this. It's completely absurd, Kickstarter product transparency is, in hindsight, almost ideal to steal products from.

That's the business model of Zara, and there's nothing wrong with it. You can't "steal" something if it's public domain. If you die off because some Chinese seller "stole" your idea which by the way you came up with first, then you deserve it because it means you didn't execute well enough. I think this kickstarter culture has done more harm than good for makers because it made them chase instant gratification instea…

Formlabs seems to be on its way there. (I'm biased though, since I did once work there.)

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

#106

Post by ransom1538 »

quotemstr wrote: post #20

Welcome to the bursting of the second tech bubble. It's been slow so far, but it'll accelerate soon. Hang on! Why is it that on these threads, nobody seriously considers the possibility of a secular decline? Fundraising, after all, has slowed, real estate in south bay has softened, and interest rates are rising (making tech relatively less attractive). Not to mention the scandals that have erased billions; see Theran…

The only way for a bubble to happen is with liquidity. The pace of selling has to be extremely fast. You can't dump Yik Yak off to the next guy - it's private. You can dump Etsy off on the stock exchange, but, it has been doing poorly for 5 years - so no bubble there - the only sucker is the seller.

I am pretty confident people don't understand how bubbles work.

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

#107

Post by danso »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #91
accountyaccount wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amazing thing about Kickstarter knockoffs is that there's a huge market for simply stealing an idea and beating it to market. People have made hundreds of thousands of dollars doing this. It's completely absurd, Kickstarter product transparency is, in hindsight, almost ideal to steal products from.

That's the business model of Zara, and there's nothing wrong with it. You can't "steal" something if it's public domain. If you die off because some Chinese seller "stole" your idea which by the way you came up with first, then you deserve it because it means you didn't execute well enough. I think this kickstarter culture has done more harm than good for makers because it made them chase instant gratification instea…

> If you die off because some Chinese seller "stole" your idea which by the way you came up with first, then you deserve it because it means you didn't execute well enough.

I won't argue that copying ideas and reimplementing them cheaper/faster doesn't have upsides. But one worry is that the immediate downsides are felt by the original inventors. Sure, cheap copying is nice for the consumer and reseller, but they're dependent on original inventors being incentivized. It's not impossible for inventors to go the slow, substantive route, in which they come up with a business plan and an idea, but that limits the work of creation to those who can manage that kind of timeline.

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

#108

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

cracell wrote: post #4
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…

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…

Doing that would decrease their sales and ability to grow drastically.

Hand made does not scale.

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

#109

Post by busterarm »

jasonlotito wrote: post #90
celticninja wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only started looking at etsy last year when I was looking for a unique gift for an anniversary present, having spent a lot of time on ali express and the like I noticed lots of items being sold as handmade and as a result avoided the site entirely. I wouldn't trust any of the sellers because I don't have the time to check them all and if I have to do that I may as well look elsewhere, I also caution people against…

That's a real shame. My wife has a store on Etsy and is downstairs right now sewing up another handbag. So it's kinda tough to hear that the reputation she's worked hard for on Etsy with the solid ratings, and with the hard work she's put in, the Etsy brand itself is turning people away. Etsy provides just enough to make it easy and worthwhile to use the system, but I wonder if she's legitimately losing sales this wa…

Handbags? Oh my god, why isn't she selling on Facebook?

I know a very wealthy woman in Thailand selling custom $400-600 handbags to New York yuppies and literally her entire business is on Facebook.

I normally don't advocate this sort of thing but their ad platform and social network are basically made for this kind of business. Custom/Handmade luxury goods for upper-middle class women over a certain age? Facebook, every time.

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

#110

Post by toomuchtodo »

jasonlotito wrote: post #87
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…

My wife has a store on etsy selling handbags, and frankly, the traffic has gone done over the past year. She has a great reputation, and she still makes sales, but not because of Etsy. It's simply a store front for her where she can direct people that she finds via other avenues, such as Facebook and referrals. I imagine part of the reason of the decline is the fact that she focuses on higher end handbags, and doesn'…

Why not move to shopify?

Disclaimer: no relation, just a satisfied user.

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