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The Fall of the House of Etsy

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Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#91

Post by quartesixte »

marcinzm wrote: post #41
irq-1 wrote: post #26

Earlier 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,…

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.

True, but I think when creating marketplaces, you want a little bit more friction on the sell side. Sellers undertake risk + labor to bring products to market. In exchange, they are rewarded via profit. Buyers take no risk + labor in exchange for paying that profit. The market exists to match sellers and buyers and provide a forum for price discovery.

Make it too easy to sell but not have equal reduction in price penalty is how you get Etsy's current problem. Removing the dropshipped items will (hopefully) remove race-to-bottom conditions that in turn allow for small time creators to charge higher prices + profits and buyers to regain confidence that they are getting more perceived value despite the non-commodity prices. But so long as the dropshippers exist, that balance gets destroyed.

Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#92

Post by quartesixte »

marcinzm wrote: post #40
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…

> 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 the seller's goods are inspected by the fulfillment ce…

>See the previous point. No one would use Etsy if they had to make a whole video and go through an automated process for an item that might sell once per year.

I am not entirely sure of this claim. My own experience with artisnal craftspersons is that they will tolerate higher levels of inefficiencies precisely because they are not operating at scale, and being artisnal makes their cost of revenue really really wonky.

>Because that costs money and most Etsy sellers sell very few things. We're not talking thousands or hundreds or even dozens per months. We're talking single digits per month. Per store. Not per item. With 7 million stores.

I agree with this though, and to direct this at the parent post, that is a LOT of operational overhead. Like, a mindboggling amount you will require Amazon's levels of profit and scale just to properly pull this off. Do not underestimate the sheer amount of labor it takes just to run even fairly simple operations that deal in the lot counts in the low hundreds. Doing this for tens of thousands of potential transactions a day across millions of sellers is asking for trouble. This is why Etsy has sellers outsource this to UPS, FedEX, and the Postal Systems.

Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#93

Post by paulmd »

marcinzm wrote: post #41
irq-1 wrote: post #26

Earlier 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,…

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.

Fun thing about a two-sided marketplace, it has two sides, and sellers need buyers too. In most cases they need buyers so drastically that they will actually pay for the privilege of access to the buyers!

You can make all these same arguments about eBay, or credit card merchant fees. If you charge the seller more for access to rewards-card customers then they won’t join, right?

There is a point of balance, Amex or Diners Club do struggle for adoption, but the guy with the 3% visa or mastercard is actually hugely desirable even if it does cost an extra % or two to get access to that segment of the marketplace.

Unless your business is so entrenched that people are actively seeking you out, you have to go where the customers are. Even if that means accepting an unfavorable deal.

That’s the whole argument about the App Store, right? Android market is free (if you set up your own store etc). But people want access to the apple customer base, because they’ve got more money and tend to spend more money too. So it’s objectively a worse deal to write android apps even if the terms are more favorable, because the customers are less valuable.

Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#94

Post by iLoveOncall »

alwillis wrote: post #70
iLoveOncall wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

In the UK it's more if I remember correctly, and this is only the basic fee which doesn't offer all the functionalities.

Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#95

Post by marcinzm »

quartesixte wrote: post #92
marcinzm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 the seller's goods are inspected by the fulfillment ce…

>See the previous point. No one would use Etsy if they had to make a whole video and go through an automated process for an item that might sell once per year. I am not entirely sure of this claim. My own experience with artisnal craftspersons is that they will tolerate higher levels of inefficiencies precisely because they are not operating at scale, and being artisnal makes their cost of revenue really really wonky…

> I am not entirely sure of this claim. My own experience with artisnal craftspersons is that they will tolerate higher levels of inefficiencies precisely because they are not operating at scale, and being artisnal makes their cost of revenue really really wonky.

To make a video that a human can recognize as showing local craftwork and cannot be replicated at a workshop in China for $50 is a ton of work. Like a ton. Many of these are multi-day or multi-week projects that involve numerous steps. Do they all need to be shown? Or just snippets? How many? How do you ensure that all the snippets are in the same location? Do you need to do this for every product or every product type? If you sell 400 variants per item do you need to cover all of them (if not someone will have a $1000 variation that is hand made and a $10 one that isn't)? Do you pay money for experts to review each video? If not then how do you know it's this seller's cutting board being made and not another, almost identical to most people, cutting board?

Maybe the key difference in our viewpoints is that I very much know that drop shippers aren't stupid or without resources. Their job and "passion" is to know Etsy and it's processes. Actual craftspeoples' job and passion is to make things. The more bureaucracy you add the more the drop shippers benefit because they know how to work through the bureaucracy better than non drop shippers. It's their sole job after all.

Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#96

Post by marcinzm »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #94
alwillis wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

In the UK it's more if I remember correctly, and this is only the basic fee which doesn't offer all the functionalities.

That's not true.

https://help.etsy.com/hc/en-us/articles/115014483627-What-ar...

Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#97

Post by marcinzm »

nobody9999 wrote: post #59
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…

>• 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 the seller's goods are inspected by the fulfillment c…

Etsy already does all that. Funds are held for some time. There's also a way to dispute a sale to get a refund and so on. Plus credit card charge backs if you're really pissed. Paypal basically exists because it's included htis functionality for the last 20 years so it's nothing new.

The thing is that the vast majority of buyers are perfectly happy with their drop shipped item.

That's the real difference, Darknet has very savvy buyers because the barrier to entry is fairly high and theres is little real competition. If you don't like Etsy then there's Ebay or Shopify stores or Amazon handmade or a local craft fair or just emailing a maker.

I think it's important in these situations, like many others, to not jump to a conclusion such as "legit marketplaces are idiots for not doing X" but rather "why doesn't X work for legit marketplaces but does work for non-legit ones."

Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#98

Post by marcinzm »

nobody9999 wrote: post #79
jeromegv wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing with handmade and unique items is that the definition of “as advertised “ differs quite a lot. Your definition is not the same as mine. Also customer tend to game that to get free products which makers hate.

>The thing with handmade and unique items is that the definition of “as advertised “ differs quite a lot. Your definition is not the same as mine. A fair point, although photos provided on the site, as well as seller reputation can (and mostly the latter on darknet sites, but both are useful) address that issue. What's more, an escrow system that requires the buyer to confirm receipt and quality for the seller to rec…

None of those are innovations. They've existed in legit marketplaces for decades.

Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#99

Post by yowlingcat »

marcinzm wrote: post #74
RileyJames wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of the article was that Etsy has already established both sides of the marketplace. And that both sides of the marketplace are not equal, as competitors/disruptors are discovering. To be successful, they need a large consumer base, and a small seller base, who sell high quality goods (which is subjective, but mass drop shipping is certainly not what those consumers are expecting). Of those, the hardest to a…

> To be successful, they need a large consumer base, and a small seller base, who sell high quality goods (which is subjective, but mass drop shipping is certainly not what those consumers are expecting). The only way a small seller base can support a large consumer base is if it's some form of mass manufacture. That more or less leads to drop shipping as the logical conclusion and optimization.

1stdibs, Grailed and Depop would beg to differ.

Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#100

Post by noodlesUK »

derefr wrote: post #28
noodlesUK wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real answer is where they always have: local markets and craft fairs. Most towns and cities have some kind of periodic craft market, which is often related to a farmers and/or food market. They usually have some kind of weird schedule like first Sunday of every month or similar. You can also see if your local arts centre/university/whatever has some kind of market. There's also usually different kinds of conventi…

Why are you so sure that an item being sold at a local craft-market gives you any guarantee of its local origin? The "hobbyist jeweler" standing at the twee little booth in the community center on a Saturday afternoon, could just as well have 1000pc boxes of identical "artisanal" rings and pendants from Alibaba sitting under the table, ready to replenish your purchase. Mind you, you can at least be sure that food ite…

It's usually pretty easy to tell tbh. Unlike buying online you can inspect the goods as they are right there in front of you. There's usually a pretty noticeable difference between Alibaba "artisanal" stuff and the real McCoy. In any case, I suspect that at a lot of markets, if someone were to be coming in and selling stuff under totally false pretences, the other stalls would get their pitchforks out.

You can also chat to the person and see if they're knowledgable about their stuff. Depending on the craft, the person might actually be doing it in front of you (or customise their goods somehow).

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