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The Fall of the House of Etsy

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Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#41

Post by marcinzm »

irq-1 wrote: post #26
sbierwagen wrote: post #7

This isn't new. The Regretsy blog extensively complained about dropshippers in 2010. The problem is that operating a two sided marketplace connecting small makers to customers just really sucks as a business. Tons of churn, intractable problems with quality and fulfillment, having to pay for a lot of customer service agents who fundamentally can't solve any problems, since they don't actually work for the person who…

Etsy should charge the sellers fees per sale, and make them post an expensive bond. Then Etsy can ban drop shipping, give instant refunds, pay return postage, and generally hold the creators to high standards. Etsy should also mandate the inclusion of a scan code in the package, which the customer can use to show they received the shipment but it wasn't as advertised. This would catch people lying about the contents,…

Fun thing about a two sided marketplace. It needs two sides. If you make life hard for sellers then they won't join and then you, by definition, don't have a marketplace.

Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#42

Post by DrewADesign »

derefr wrote: post #25
sbierwagen wrote: post #7

This isn't new. The Regretsy blog extensively complained about dropshippers in 2010. The problem is that operating a two sided marketplace connecting small makers to customers just really sucks as a business. Tons of churn, intractable problems with quality and fulfillment, having to pay for a lot of customer service agents who fundamentally can't solve any problems, since they don't actually work for the person who…

> intractable problems with quality and fulfillment • Re: fulfillment — why not ask Etsy sellers to pre-stock everything that's not made-to-order into fulfillment centers like Amazon's? And, in fact, to send anything that is made-to-order to a fulfillment center first , where it'll be inspected, re-wrapped and re-shipped by the fulfillment center — with the buyer's card only having a hold, not a charge, on it until t…

Amazon only works because they're centralized and full of uniform, neatly packaged groups of fungible units. Imagine having a super high turnover warehouse full of unique one-off items of different shapes, different sizes (from the size of your fingernail to the size of a large appliance, different materials with most of them being fragile, nothing being uniform enough to be stackable, different risk levels for everything from flammability to pest control...

And even then, many people on Etsy sold antiques and vintage clothes. Maybe they even designed them and had them manufactured in small batches?

Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#43

Post by derefr »

DrewADesign wrote: post #42
derefr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> intractable problems with quality and fulfillment • Re: fulfillment — why not ask Etsy sellers to pre-stock everything that's not made-to-order into fulfillment centers like Amazon's? And, in fact, to send anything that is made-to-order to a fulfillment center first , where it'll be inspected, re-wrapped and re-shipped by the fulfillment center — with the buyer's card only having a hold, not a charge, on it until t…

Amazon only works because they're centralized and full of uniform, neatly packaged groups of fungible units. Imagine having a super high turnover warehouse full of unique one-off items of different shapes, different sizes (from the size of your fingernail to the size of a large appliance, different materials with most of them being fragile, nothing being uniform enough to be stackable, different risk levels for every…

> Imagine having a super high turnover warehouse full of unique one-off items...

Auction houses manage it somehow.

Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#44

Post by marcinzm »

readyman wrote: post #30
UberFly wrote: post #24

The best version of Etsy is long gone. Hand crafted items from their original source just won't satiate IPO investors. There REALLY needs to spring up a (good) Etsy alternative that's content to be what it is and not an exponential growth machine that poisons the roots they originally built on.

> not an exponential growth machine This is increasingly impossible under capitalism for fundamental reasons, which are illustrated most clearly in modern financialized capitalism by shareholder interests. Your desires (and mine) will require a reorganization of society as we know it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_prof... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_accumulation

> Your desires (and mine) will require a reorganization of society as we know it.

So far every attempt to do this has done the exact opposite.

Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#45

Post by actionfromafar »

tensor wrote: post #33
sbierwagen wrote: post #7

This isn't new. The Regretsy blog extensively complained about dropshippers in 2010. The problem is that operating a two sided marketplace connecting small makers to customers just really sucks as a business. Tons of churn, intractable problems with quality and fulfillment, having to pay for a lot of customer service agents who fundamentally can't solve any problems, since they don't actually work for the person who…

Shopify did very well connecting small makers/vendors to customers. Granted, to your point they are now trying to go for big vendors, thinking they can somehow unseat amazon. Probably won't work out well for them either.

If Shopify can avoid beating themselves up against the behemoth that is Amazon in a full-frontal assault, while also stay less crappy than Amazon, I think Shopify is on to something.

Amazon can't un-crappify themselves, it's not in their DNA.

Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#46

Post by marcinzm »

derefr wrote: post #43
DrewADesign wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon only works because they're centralized and full of uniform, neatly packaged groups of fungible units. Imagine having a super high turnover warehouse full of unique one-off items of different shapes, different sizes (from the size of your fingernail to the size of a large appliance, different materials with most of them being fragile, nothing being uniform enough to be stackable, different risk levels for every…

> Imagine having a super high turnover warehouse full of unique one-off items... Auction houses manage it somehow.

That's like saying people can fly by flapping their arms because birds can.

Auction houses store items for a limited period of time before liquidating them. The time in storage is fixed and the fees are fairly high. It's a fundamentally different approach to an online retailer.

An auction house that has to store items for years, charge no more than a 10% fee and only charge it if an item sold would go bankrupt.

Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#47

Post by mintplant »

stavros wrote: post #22
resolutebat wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Etsy fits Cory's original definition to a tee though.

Maybe, I'm not too familiar with their story. Who were the business users on Etsy?

The sellers. Doctorow's original article uses Amazon as an example; you could fit Etsy into the same framing.

Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#48

Post by readyman »

marcinzm wrote: post #44
readyman wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not an exponential growth machine This is increasingly impossible under capitalism for fundamental reasons, which are illustrated most clearly in modern financialized capitalism by shareholder interests. Your desires (and mine) will require a reorganization of society as we know it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_prof... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_accumulation

> Your desires (and mine) will require a reorganization of society as we know it. So far every attempt to do this has done the exact opposite.

Nonsense. Capitalism was a great success compared with feudalism. It is outright defeatist, senslessly conservative, and frankly anti-scientific to insist there is nothing more to be done merely because it has yet to be realized.

Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#50

Post by JumpCrisscross »

UberFly wrote: post #24

The best version of Etsy is long gone. Hand crafted items from their original source just won't satiate IPO investors. There REALLY needs to spring up a (good) Etsy alternative that's content to be what it is and not an exponential growth machine that poisons the roots they originally built on.

> Hand crafted items from their original source just won't satiate IPO investors

Plenty of public companies promise low growth but decent returns. (Some promise wind-downs amidst payouts.)

They also pay low multiples. If you want a high multiple, you have to grow. Etsy’s saga isn’t a problem of public markets, it’s one of a company choosing a particular cohort of investors.

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