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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

#221

Post by moron4hire »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #189
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the pretending is what people are paying/looking for. I certainly see a lot of that kind of thing when surveying supermarket shelves.

Do you really think so, that people don't want, say, a unique piece of jewellery but just to pretend - through what appears to be a fraud on behalf of the seller - that some over-priced mass-produced jewellery is unique. I couldn't disagree more. In part if I buy something on Etsy I'm considering that most of the money I spend will get re-spent in that person's local community. In part I'm trying to encourage them in…

I mean, there has to be some level of overlooking the obvious going on. There's no way a person could sustain themselves on the prices that these items are going for, if they were actually hand-made.

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

#222

Post by lightedman »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #108
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…

Doing that would decrease their sales and ability to grow drastically. Hand made does not scale.

"Hand made does not scale."

It most certainly can if you have the proper equipment. You can facet two or three stones by hand on flat grinding surfaces, or you can get a rotary lap wheel and spend a day making ten stones, then you can get a mechanical precision arm for the rotary lap and now you can pump out 20-25 high-quality stones per day that sell for good money.

It all depends upon your tooling and experience.

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

#223

Post by lightedman »

greglindahl wrote: post #58
swalsh wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A magic number analysis of the images used in accounts would handle pretty much every duplicate found (which would highly hint at mass-reselling) unless the people got smart enough to figure it out and start jacking with the color palette.

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

#224

Post by crescentfresh »

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 remember the one-and-only time I used Etsy. It was for my wife for mother's day. I found a handmade ring that had holders for 3 tiny stones. I contacted the seller and asked if she could use 3 gem stones for each of our two children and pearl for their mom. It looked like I was gonna knock it out of the park for mother's day, she was gonna love it. I paid. Mother's day came and went, the seller's Etsy store went. After months of back and forth, Etsy issued me a refund. I lost that marriage, I guess it was the beginning of the end lol.

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

#225

Post by moron4hire »

accountyaccount wrote: post #209
vostrocity wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's truly fascinating is all of these innovative products made in Asia which aren't officially marketed in the West (thus allowing people to market it in smalltime ways, like Kickstarter). If you go to the right parts of Asia now you will see a wild array of amazing, futuristic products that you can't find anywhere in the US.

A lot of them are kind of misleading junk though.

Yeah, I see a ton of these stand-alone VR headsets that--on the surface--look amazing. But if you really start to scrutinize the specs, you realize they are two-generation-old Android phone guts slapped inside a cheap plastic box. You're getting a glorified Google Cardboard with probably a janky OS, and not anything up to the standard of even the now-2.5-year-old Samsung Gear VR.

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

#226

Post by lightedman »

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…

I'll make you something next time you're looking.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/DesertFoxMinerals

I actually go out and mine 95% of my material, refine it myself, and make it myself. I teach lapidary classes for California's oldest mineralogical society.

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

#227

Post by jyarbs »

busterarm wrote: post #140
losteverything wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does one sell on FB?

https://developers.facebook.com/industries/ecommerce/

FB works with a handful of ecommerce platforms to enable this natively as well. https://www.bigcommerce.com/facebook/

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

#228

Post by lightedman »

rixrax wrote: post #160
e15ctr0n wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have only half the picture because the three problems you've listed have existed for quite some time. Here are some new problems that are driving more sellers off Etsy: 4) October 2013: Etsy redefines "handcrafted" and allows Etsy sellers to get "help" with making and shipping their items. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/12/opinion/etsys-industrial-r... 5) September 2015: Etsy openly embraces mass manufacturing ht…

And... 8) Artists and craftsmen creating legitimate handcrafted products are under assault of [Chinease] mass manufacturers that appear to monitor items/craftsmen whose items sell fairly well only to offer their el-cheapo counterfeit / knock-off alternative of these same products. (* This at least appears to be the case for a friend that is selling his handcrafted stuff in Etsy. And at least his experience seems to b…

Yup, I've had a lot of stuff I make by hand get copied. Now my store has only a single listing up, and I use the Etsy app to show that item for sale and then de-list it when I make the sale. No sales actually happen online through Etsy. Makes my store stats look bad but I need to protect my designs.

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

#229

Post by gknoy »

moron4hire wrote: post #221
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think so, that people don't want, say, a unique piece of jewellery but just to pretend - through what appears to be a fraud on behalf of the seller - that some over-priced mass-produced jewellery is unique. I couldn't disagree more. In part if I buy something on Etsy I'm considering that most of the money I spend will get re-spent in that person's local community. In part I'm trying to encourage them in…

I mean, there has to be some level of overlooking the obvious going on. There's no way a person could sustain themselves on the prices that these items are going for, if they were actually hand-made.

I know someone who sews cute things; she'll post on Facebook about the progress, pictures of work-in-progress plushes, or purses, or coasters. She'll then go sell them on Etsy, and also post on FB for friends to buy. It's not a lifestyle business, but it's a way to recoup the cost of materials for doing something she enjoys doing. Often they're made from leftover fabric scraps from something she already made, so this is a way to recoup a little bit more from what she already sews.
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