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The Fall of the House of Etsy
61–70 of 107 posts
Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy
#62Etsy is just an alternative storefront for Aliexpress at this point. I rarely find something on there that I can't also find on Aliexpress. It's cheaper to drop ship it myself.
I get that many/most non-customized items are also available on Aliexpress. But all of the handmade is bespoke, and many of the customized items aren't available elsewhere.
Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy
#63The prevalence of drop shipping is what killed Etsy for me as a buyer. I guess I was too trusting originally, but I was very disappointed when I found out that several items I had bought from them, all marketed as handmade, were just cheaply made pieces of garbage from places like Ali Express, then marked up 10x.
Where do people actually handmaking stuff sell now?
I still buy handmade stuff on Etsy. We've gotten coasters with our family name etched in them, vases made-to-order, and other handmade or customized items on Etsy in recent years.
Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy
#64Earlier 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?
This provides a good overview https://spy.com/articles/lifestyle/gifts/etsy-downfall-12030...
Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy
#65Earlier 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.
Sure. So don't antique shops, but your customers do discovery and retrieval on their own, and the scale is orders of magnitude smaller. Auction houses can organize things into collections that are mostly accessed and cleared out all at once-- there's no random access to individual pieces in a giant churning collection, and they don't keep things around that don't get sold in case someone wants them. People can't get a single item from any collection auctioned whenever they want. It's the same problem space-- like going grocery shopping and sourcing food for a large hotel-- but to calculate the logistic viability of nearly anything in one task based on the other just doesn't make sense.
Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe, I'm not too familiar with their story. Who were the business users on Etsy?
This provides a good overview https://spy.com/articles/lifestyle/gifts/etsy-downfall-12030...
Please point me to the part where it talks about Etsy putting the users first, then the sellers, then Etsy itself.
Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy
#67Eh, from my perspective as a buyer it's still a decent place to look for customized or handmade items. I have many treasured items that were purchased on Etsy, and I wouldn't hesitate to buy items like these again. For example, I bought hand-turned knurled wood pens and razor handles (as gifts for myself and my groomsmen), with wood chosen based on my color preference. The seller is still on the platform, and I'd happily buy gifts from him again. I also have several carved/engraved wood items from other sellers.
Is there tons of non-customized stuff that's drop-shipped from somewhere else? Yes. But you can ignore if what you want is the old-school Etsy stuff. I'm sure some sellers have bailed as they've been edged out by big sellers. But for me, it's still a useful platform that I enjoy using.
Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy
#681. Etsy far as I can tell charge a 20% mark-up on sale price direct from the merchant's own web-site. This is too high - this is Apple tax money.
2. Etsy also look to be charging 4% for currency conversion (which occurs if you view the Etsy site in a currency different to the currency the store issues its prices in). Esty I think are deliberately hiding this charge; it is listed _nowhere_ in the invoice or in billing. Furthermore, Etsy base their conversion choice on the country the bank card comes from, which is not correct for multi-currency cards, and so you can end up paying Etsy 4% and the 0.5% to the multi-currency FinTech as well (when you should be paying only the 0.5% to the FinTech).
Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy
#69This 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,…
the /actual/ etsy creators can't afford an expensive bond.
etsy should vet their sellers, simple as
Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
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,…
This would be a minor inconvenience for drop shippers but kill small businesses by drowning them in fees and paperwork. Etsy already charges fees, even just to LIST items, regardless of whether they sell or not. I've been wanting to sell some of my 3D printed designs, but I'm not paying a buck a piece for a listing that will earn me 5 to 10 bucks if I manage to sell.
> I've been wanting to sell some of my 3D printed designs, but I'm not paying a buck a piece for a listing that will earn me 5 to 10 bucks if I manage to sell.
The listing fee on Etsy is 20¢ ($0.20).