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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

#161

Post by Ensorceled »

contingencies wrote: post #158
ReverseCold wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Centralized is never on the way out. It just makes everything so easy. I don't like it, but saying that anything centralized is on the way out is just wishful thinking.

You forget the successes of decentralization. In the same way that bureaucracy was surpassed with the web, torrents, and Bitcoin, so too will it be surpassed eventually in the field of business and consumer supply chains. It may not be today or tomorrow, but it will happen.

Bureaucracy has been surpassed? This is yet more wishful thinking ...

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

#162

Post by mseidl »

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…

Just out of curiosity how much did you pay for the necklace from etsy?

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

#163

Post by lmm »

pembrook wrote: post #122
anigbrowl wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scale isn't everything. first if you're a good marketplace you attract more and more diverse vendors, each of whom does low volume. Besides, when the point of the site was unique handcrafted items, selling manufactured stuff undercuts the one thing that makes you different from your competitors. I can't understand the argument you're trying to make. It's like saying that fine art doesn't scale because painters are so…

I agree, re-selling mass produced Chinese crap goes directly against the entire concept of Etsy and everything they supposedly stand for. However they've sold a classic Silicon Valley "high growth" story to investors that they're now beholden to as a publicly traded company. That growth story can't be delivered on grandma's handicrafts. Hence the site being slowly transformed into yet another generic online marketpla…

> they've sold a classic Silicon Valley "high growth" story to investors that they're now beholden to as a publicly traded company.

Less so than most - they're a B corp (is that the term?) with higher priorities than shareholder value.

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

#164

Post by vincnetas »

robattila128 wrote: post #49

I've put basically no work in marketing and no money in advertising yet I've got a lot of sales already in the last few years. I really hope they stick around a long time! eventually I want to take my shop seriously.

What are you selling?

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

#165

Post by lmm »

contingencies wrote: post #158
ReverseCold wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Centralized is never on the way out. It just makes everything so easy. I don't like it, but saying that anything centralized is on the way out is just wishful thinking.

You forget the successes of decentralization. In the same way that bureaucracy was surpassed with the web, torrents, and Bitcoin, so too will it be surpassed eventually in the field of business and consumer supply chains. It may not be today or tomorrow, but it will happen.

The web is increasingly centralized; torrents both centralized themselves and were displaced by centralized services.

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

#166

Post by lmm »

badloginagain wrote: post #19

What's the deal with the "Activist investor" that is forcing these changes? Is this a common thing in the investment world? Does anyone have deeper insight into this?

It's a common thing. Simplifying you have passive investors who will try to invest in companies that are well managed and leave them to it and activist investors who will look for companies that are badly managed (and thus cheaper than they "should" be) and then pressure them to make changes.

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

#167

Post by leadingthenet »

beaconstudios wrote: post #156
blhack wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>what makes them better or different from any other storefront? Brand, or...genre? I'm having a difficult time finding the word for it, but there is definitely a type of thing I go to etsy to look for. For instance, this: https://www.etsy.com/listing/159631469/aztec-death-whistle-t... (which is such a cool piece with such a cool story!). I have no idea where else to go to even look for something like that. When I wan…

I tend to think of Etsy as being the place to go for cultural, rather than mass-produced consumerist, goods.

The problem is that most products only pretend not be mass-produced, when in reality, they are.

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

#168

Post by paganel »

blhack wrote: post #98
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 is tougher than it seems on the surface. A few years ago, I was involved in planning and running a maker "fest". We invited makers, and artists to the festival to show off their projects, and some of them wanted to sell things. A not-insignificant number of participants who wanted to sell things were just reselling things you could buy at Michaels, or buy online (in bulk) for cheap. Sometimes with just a little…

> The problem is that you basically have to examine every single item, and then personally decide if it qualifies as art or not.

This reminded me of Walter Benjamin's essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", which was written ~80 years ago. Not sure there's any "solution" to what you or the OP are describing.

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

#169

Post by TorKlingberg »

DanBlake wrote: post #28

I can only add my experience with etsy on the affiliate side. TheHunt.com previously sent them significant traffic (as in, hundreds of thousands of visitors) via their affiliate program. We then got a email that they were going to change our rates to be something like 5x less than our current rates because we were high volume. Needless to say we removed every etsy product on our site and replaced them with amazon/far…

Affiliate marketing involves so much scams and tricks that I can understand they are limiting it.

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

#170

Post by rdslw »

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…

Estsy is doomed because of this reason you stated. I call it '(downard) inflation of expectations'.

And there is a VERY GOOD information what happens with all this great 'do not eveil', do not harm, only for the consumer' startups the moment they have investors:

“The company’s historical pattern of ill-advised spending has completely obfuscated the extremely attractive underlying marketplace business model,” said by external activist investor in addition to: “We are fully prepared to take any actions we believe are necessary to protect the best interests of all Etsy shareholders.”

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