Read:
> Guys, I used Etsy before it was cool. Now it's like, super mainstream, and it's not cool anymore. Totes.
How Etsy Alienated Its Crafters and Lost Its Soul
21–30 of 33 posts
Re: How Etsy Alienated Its Crafters and Lost Its Soul
#22Read: > Guys, I used Etsy before it was cool. Now it's like, super mainstream, and it's not cool anymore. Totes.
Ah, the tried and true debate tactic of repeating someone's words in a high voice to make them sound funny.
Re: How Etsy Alienated Its Crafters and Lost Its Soul
#23Seems like this happens to everything that starts small and then experiences exponential growth. This is the inevitable change to anything that gets significantly popular.
* Facebook started with colleges only, and lots of people lamented when they opened up signups for all
* Twitter used to be a close-knit community for tech people, and tons of people whined, saying all the new people joining Twitter were ruining it.
Pinterest could have a similar story too.
Once a website/app/tool gets large enough to be useful, brands move in with money and fundamentally change the platform.
Re: How Etsy Alienated Its Crafters and Lost Its Soul
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, sellers that refer to themselves as crafters are actually saying exactly the opposite. This business model that allows manufacturing is unfair to them because they can't compete, essentially. The same way crafters can't compete with manufacturing on any other marketplace. And they are disappointed because Etsy has originally promised to be different. And their problem is not only price competition from chinese tr…
The point I'm trying to make is that the crafter philosophy, on which Etsy is built, is non-sensical. Etsy's old rules keep crafters poor, because they can't harness economies of scale. The new rules put new entrants at a disadvantage. At some point Etsy's policy what that you could outsource work if you worked in the same location (IIRC) which biases the market against third world artisans. Morocco, for instance, is…
I don't follow you. How is keeping things hand made and priced appropriately nonsensical? What economies of scale even exist when it comes to hand crafting?
Also, how is it anti third world artisan to require they make their own page and get the full first world price themselves?
Re: How Etsy Alienated Its Crafters and Lost Its Soul
#25I can't find too much fault with the author's complaints, being an etsy customer on occasion I have found it hard to wade through the flood of stuff to find the "perfect" trinket - after a while "perfect" and "make it stop, please" become hard to distinguish.
The author seems to wish Etsy would play gatekeeper, er, I mean, "curate" goods, assuming of course the author's goodies make the cut. That seems to go against Etsy's values - not to mention the zeitgeist of the Internet age.
But who knows? Maybe someone will come along and out-etsy etsy.
Re: How Etsy Alienated Its Crafters and Lost Its Soul
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point I'm trying to make is that the crafter philosophy, on which Etsy is built, is non-sensical. Etsy's old rules keep crafters poor, because they can't harness economies of scale. The new rules put new entrants at a disadvantage. At some point Etsy's policy what that you could outsource work if you worked in the same location (IIRC) which biases the market against third world artisans. Morocco, for instance, is…
I don't follow you. How is keeping things hand made and priced appropriately nonsensical? What economies of scale even exist when it comes to hand crafting? Also, how is it anti third world artisan to require they make their own page and get the full first world price themselves?
> how is it anti third world artisan to require they make their own page and get the full first world price themselves?
I'm basing this on my experience in Morocco in 2004. I doubt the artisans I saw could afford Internet access, or would understand how to work a site like Etsy, or had sufficient written English skills to deal with first world customers. The mail system was notoriously prone to losing packages as well. If they could get a middle man they could access the market, but Etsy's rules forbade this.
Re: How Etsy Alienated Its Crafters and Lost Its Soul
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't follow you. How is keeping things hand made and priced appropriately nonsensical? What economies of scale even exist when it comes to hand crafting? Also, how is it anti third world artisan to require they make their own page and get the full first world price themselves?
> how is it anti third world artisan to require they make their own page and get the full first world price themselves? I'm basing this on my experience in Morocco in 2004. I doubt the artisans I saw could afford Internet access, or would understand how to work a site like Etsy, or had sufficient written English skills to deal with first world customers. The mail system was notoriously prone to losing packages as wel…
Etsy didn't exist in 2004. The third world is much more connected now, on mobile phones.
You have the old rules more or less correct, but the spirit of them was exactly the opposite. The intention was for Etsy to serve as a (much lower cost) middleman for third world sellers. It is certainly true that Etsy hasn't lived up to its own aspirations here, as yet.
There is a backlash against the third world, but it comes from some segments of the existing US seller community. Most of the articles you see complain about "resellers," which is a catch-all term that can be basically code for "this person follows the rules, but is Chinese."
Re: How Etsy Alienated Its Crafters and Lost Its Soul
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
> how is it anti third world artisan to require they make their own page and get the full first world price themselves? I'm basing this on my experience in Morocco in 2004. I doubt the artisans I saw could afford Internet access, or would understand how to work a site like Etsy, or had sufficient written English skills to deal with first world customers. The mail system was notoriously prone to losing packages as wel…
Etsy didn't exist in 2004. The third world is much more connected now, on mobile phones. You have the old rules more or less correct, but the spirit of them was exactly the opposite. The intention was for Etsy to serve as a (much lower cost) middleman for third world sellers. It is certainly true that Etsy hasn't lived up to its own aspirations here, as yet. There is a backlash against the third world, but it comes f…
>Most of the articles you see complain about "resellers," which is a catch-all term that can be basically code for "this person follows the rules, but is Chinese."
Are they actually reselling, though? There's a big gap between dog whistle racism and legitimately not wanting people to sell things they didn't make. The current rules of the site are a separate matter.
Re: How Etsy Alienated Its Crafters and Lost Its Soul
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Etsy didn't exist in 2004. The third world is much more connected now, on mobile phones. You have the old rules more or less correct, but the spirit of them was exactly the opposite. The intention was for Etsy to serve as a (much lower cost) middleman for third world sellers. It is certainly true that Etsy hasn't lived up to its own aspirations here, as yet. There is a backlash against the third world, but it comes f…
>Most of the articles you see complain about "resellers," which is a catch-all term that can be basically code for "this person follows the rules, but is Chinese." Are they actually reselling, though? There's a big gap between dog whistle racism and legitimately not wanting people to sell things they didn't make. The current rules of the site are a separate matter.
There are of course people who just put up finished goods without modification, and "reseller" is a descriptive term in those cases. That activity violates the terms, so these people eventually get banned. In my experience this is a tiny sliver of the activity that gets described as "reselling."
In other cases people assemble items from raw materials (e.g. from Alibaba) in ways that may not strike you as particularly creative, but it's kosher when it comes to the site's rules. American sellers do the same thing and have been since the site's inception. Only the Chinese folks who do it wind up in critical news articles with the "reseller" label, though.
If you see sellers described that way and they don't get banned, they have most likely gone through a documentation process whereby they explain their work with dated photos and other materials. Etsy sellers are highly motivated to flag their competition when they think there's a term violation, and real resellers don't last long.
Disclaimer - I don't work for Etsy anymore.
Re: How Etsy Alienated Its Crafters and Lost Its Soul
#30The point about the search feature is extremely accurate; in my opinion it's one of the most fatal flaws in Etsy.
It works poorly, and users can tag an item in endless categories (often conflicting ones, like 'gemstone' and 'rhinestone'), and so frequently give items dozens of tags, that it makes the search irrelevant.
The categorization and organization forces you to "wade through pages of crap" to find anything relevant; that awful feature lost me as a buyer years ago -- agree 100% with the author there.