I've really liked the work that Etsy's devops team has done, with stuff like statsd, even though I never liked the company.
I hope they can survive the turmoil. Maybe they can move as a group to another company.
How Etsy Alienated Its Crafters and Lost Its Soul
11–20 of 33 posts
Re: How Etsy Alienated Its Crafters and Lost Its Soul
#12Is there an Image comics to Etsy's Marvel/DC? Curious if there's a place that re-captures the soul of indie crafts? Or if the successful crafters simply open up their own store and etsy remains the primary place for people to become successful crafters.
I wonder if Pinterest could jump in here? I would imagine they have quite a similar audience demographic, and I'm sure people would quite like being able to buy nice stuff they see pinned.
Re: How Etsy Alienated Its Crafters and Lost Its Soul
#13While aspects like 3rd party manufactures is disturbing, I'm surprised by the notion that successful companies move beyond Etsy. Etsy seems like a small business incubator. It provides, at a reasonable fee, a working environment conducive to growth. You have forums and other communication mechanism to train with others. You get the ability to have the e-commerce headache serviced. You get a known location that custom…
I agree completely. I helped a store migrate from Etsy to a custom CMS because they had outgrown Etsy, and they did so in about a year. Etsy would do well to pivot their marketing from Handmade/Craft to Small Business Incubator. Or maybe they have and that's what all the butt hurt is about.
That is, in fact, Etsy's goal. But the DIY & handmade is a movement on its own with its own set of virtues, probably an heir to the Arts & Crafts movement as a reaction against mass production:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_and_Crafts_movement#Social...
So a whiff of mass production is seen as taint.
Re: How Etsy Alienated Its Crafters and Lost Its Soul
#14While aspects like 3rd party manufactures is disturbing, I'm surprised by the notion that successful companies move beyond Etsy. Etsy seems like a small business incubator. It provides, at a reasonable fee, a working environment conducive to growth. You have forums and other communication mechanism to train with others. You get the ability to have the e-commerce headache serviced. You get a known location that custom…
I agree completely. I helped a store migrate from Etsy to a custom CMS because they had outgrown Etsy, and they did so in about a year. Etsy would do well to pivot their marketing from Handmade/Craft to Small Business Incubator. Or maybe they have and that's what all the butt hurt is about.
Etsy could — however — as Kickstarter has done, particularly w/r/t to hardware products — limit itself to a more narrow and carefully regulated set of goods. Even as the crowdfunding world has grown, Kickstarter has maintained it's reputation and growth by sticking closely to a set of arts-oriented values. It leaves the drivel to platforms like IndieGoGo — and doesn't stray too far from it's creative core, by banning charitable projects.
I suppose you could say that that limits their growth — but it also keeps em' awesome.
Re: How Etsy Alienated Its Crafters and Lost Its Soul
#15I've seen this story before. Ten years ago.
"How eBay alienated its sellers and lost its soul"
Was it true? Perhaps, and it has nothing to do with whether eBay was able to build an auction platform business that spits off two billion dollars per year in profit.
Etsy will be just fine, despite the scare headlines. There's nothing else quite like it, and no replacement for it of scale. They already won, and that's why they can afford to alienate people now.
Re: How Etsy Alienated Its Crafters and Lost Its Soul
#16I think that's the fundamental flaw with Etsy. By it's very nature, you earnings are time limited. So once you get well known enough and successful, suddenly Etsy does not look attractive any more. Etsy's move into allowing designed items to be sold is a recognition that to cash out on Etsy you need to have other people make your products for you (as you are time limited) or attempt to price yourself high while tryin…
Another approach is to diversify: have a second product that is targetted at larger businesses, with a nice seamless transition from Etsy to this new platform.
Re: How Etsy Alienated Its Crafters and Lost Its Soul
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree completely. I helped a store migrate from Etsy to a custom CMS because they had outgrown Etsy, and they did so in about a year. Etsy would do well to pivot their marketing from Handmade/Craft to Small Business Incubator. Or maybe they have and that's what all the butt hurt is about.
That is, in fact, Etsy's goal. But the DIY & handmade is a movement on its own with its own set of virtues, probably an heir to the Arts & Crafts movement as a reaction against mass production: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_and_Crafts_movement#Social... So a whiff of mass production is seen as taint.
The question is how Etsy wants to position itself relative to Ebay.
Now, there's nothing wrong with being ebay! It's a fine way to find traders selling mass-produced items. But I was under the impression Etsy wasn't trying to compete with them directly.
Re: How Etsy Alienated Its Crafters and Lost Its Soul
#18I think that's the fundamental flaw with Etsy. By it's very nature, you earnings are time limited. So once you get well known enough and successful, suddenly Etsy does not look attractive any more. Etsy's move into allowing designed items to be sold is a recognition that to cash out on Etsy you need to have other people make your products for you (as you are time limited) or attempt to price yourself high while tryin…
You are right but it's deeper than that. The entire philosophy is nonsensical. Notably Etsy didn't restrict their own scalability. It's not like each order was hand fulfilled or something. Etsy is very happy to utilise their capital to scale their business while they restricted their sellers from doing the same. It's funny that this article positions Etsy as selling out, where as what they had before was a manifestly…
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 trinket sellers, but also visibility. Because manufacturers have many more products, small sellers don't show up in search results any more.
Re: How Etsy Alienated Its Crafters and Lost Its Soul
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are right but it's deeper than that. The entire philosophy is nonsensical. Notably Etsy didn't restrict their own scalability. It's not like each order was hand fulfilled or something. Etsy is very happy to utilise their capital to scale their business while they restricted their sellers from doing the same. It's funny that this article positions Etsy as selling out, where as what they had before was a manifestly…
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 full of people creating beautiful goods in small workshops. Under these rules they couldn't have a US representative sell their goods.
The only way I could interpret Etsy's rules was as an elaborate code for "people like us" -- affluent, middle class, first world residents.
Re: How Etsy Alienated Its Crafters and Lost Its Soul
#20eBay again.