
Was Etsy too good to be true? - detaro
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/9/4/20841475/etsy-free-shipping-amazon-handmade-josh-silverman
======
a2tech
Etsy fell apart when they failed to police non-handmade goods. For example I
was looking for a picture frame and any permutation of search terms I used
returned thousands of results from a handful of sellers that are obviously
just Chinese junk I could buy at Wal-Mart (all mislabeled of course--I was
searching for 'walnut 18x24 picture frame' and the results contained frames of
all colors, shapes, and wood types). Then to make things even worse when I
waded through the results I DID find someone selling a frame like I wanted,
but then I looked a bit further down the page and found the EXACT same frame
from another seller. They're located geographically near to each other
(separate cities though) and they used the same pictures. And the prices were
quite different. Some sort of scam is going on there but I'm not sure what--
either people are buying from a local craftsman and reselling on Etsy, or the
local craftsman is selling his products online at slightly different prices
for a reason I couldn't quite grasp.

~~~
heymijo
> _when they failed to police non-handmade goods_

They never failed at this. Moving beyond handmade goods was a deliberate move.

FTA

> _But the growth — and yet another round of VC funding — put even more
> pressure on Etsy. Chief technology officer Chad Dickerson had taken over as
> CEO after Kalin was voted out by the board in July 2011, and in October
> 2013, in an infamous town hall meeting at Etsy HQ, he announced that the
> company would allow sellers to contract with outside manufacturers to help
> make their products, so long as they designed everything themselves and were
> willing to provide detailed explanations of their process to Etsy’s
> Marketplace Integrity team.

Much of the community was aghast, fearing the change would ruin the culture of
the site forever._

~~~
dspillett
_> willing to provide detailed explanations of their process to Etsy’s
Marketplace Integrity team_

Either that rule has been dropped, or is simply not (adequately) enforced, in
my limited experience of Etsy. Unless "I order it, it comes in a boat from
China, I list it for sale" counts as a perfectly good explanation of a
process.

There are still many "proper" makers on Etsy (I know people personally who use
the site to sell artwork, corsets & other dressware, etc) that are genuinely
hand-made, but they are often undercut by those selling similar but mass-
produced alternatives (that are usually lower quality, but people often don't
seem to care about that until after they receive the product, and they then
judge all on Etsy by that standard).

~~~
fgonzag
The rule was placed so the community could swallow the pill. Once factory
built products make it into the marketplace, it is a lot easier to gradually
decrease rule enforcement over time, until you are effectively a niche
alibaba, allowing factories to sell directly to consumers (they probably sold
the board on that exact term)

------
tablethnuser
Etsy is my go-to for counterfeit licensed merchandise. Need some video game
themed dish towels? Cuff links inspired by your favorite book series? It's all
there. Etsy is the genie lamp you get when you cross image search with
artists' alley.

Amazon could never ever compete with Etsy in this category. The twist is Etsy
can't advertise that they are the font of dreams for whatever IP you'd like to
violate the commercial rights of.

~~~
Spivak
Selling fan-art should honestly just be allowed at this point. There are a lot
of rules that should be in place like not being able to directly use the
official assets or labeling that it's 3rd-party and not endorsed but these
kinds of things should be able to operate above board.

The current system of "don't get on the copyright holder's bad side" is silly.

~~~
jplayer01
> Selling fan-art is just a copyright loophole that should honestly just be
> plugged at this point.

Or we should stop letting companies monopolize markets and become insanely
rich off of that thing they came up with 30 years ago. Plug it? Tear it wide
fucking open.

~~~
Spivak
I don't disagree with you but I think perfect is the enemy of good in this
case. Changing copyright a little bit to allow fan-art is a much smaller
problem than dismantling copyright in it's entirety and we can work on both.

------
coldcode
I looked at selling stuff on Etsy recently and was completely turned off,
basically you are competing against cheap knockoff or mass produced products
from sweatshops. Despite what management says, its nothing more now than an
Amazon with a better looking website. What Etsy was, was a valuable place for
small craftspeople, what Etsy is today is just another money machine.

~~~
ineedasername
I sell on Etsy. It's harder, yes, since the explosion of clearly mass-produced
knockoffs. However, with quality products (and especially a focus on producing
quality photos of those products) sellers can still do well, and plenty of
buyers recognize the difference. In fact plenty of buyers deliberately avoid
those super low priced items because they are looking for legitimately
handmade quality items. I actually raised my prices to help distinguish myself
in that way and while I don't sell as many items, I still sell about the same
$ amount.

------
chrisbro
My wife and I have been slowly buying furniture for our house, and Etsy is our
go-to. I don't know where else I can search for such a wide array of styles
for things like desks and coffee tables, find exactly the style I want, and
THEN get it custom-made to the dimensions I want. I really like the way it
opens up smaller shops like that for higher-end purchases like furniture, and
I've never had a bad experience despite buying items in the 4-digit range.

That being said, complete dumpster fire on the lower-priced items like this
article is getting at. I really enjoy Etsy when it can deliver on its promise
of opening up a marketplace of skilled artisans who otherwise would've have
had a hard time getting started. Hope it can get back to that.

~~~
kamarg
There used to be a site for exactly this called custommade.com. Aside from a
list of items that others have already made for you to browse, you could also
put up a description of the project and let craftsmen contact you with
questions or bids for the project.

I'm not entirely sure what happened but they ended up refocusing on strictly
custom jewelry instead of custom whatever you want that someone else can make.
It's really unfortunate because it was an excellent service with very talented
makers and I haven't been able to find anything similar to replace it.

~~~
chrisbro
That sounds (sounded) awesome! As I was typing up my previous comment I was
wondering if there are any other services out there that does this same sort
of thing. Fingers crossed.

~~~
technotarek
If you're near one of our current 11 markets, you can find some local, custom
makers: [https://attic.city](https://attic.city). Or ff you're in the DC area,
see [https://attic-dc.com/custom-furniture](https://attic-dc.com/custom-
furniture) for an expanded offering.

Sorry if you're from outside of these markets; we're working on building out
to more. Feel free to put in a vote for a particular one :)

~~~
kamarg
Looks like a great service. Sadly none of your current markets are near me and
the closest city I could vote for is an eight hour drive away. I'll check back
periodically and see if you've expanded to anywhere within driving range.
Thanks for letting me know about the service!

------
gravitas
Anecdotal comment: I've been a buyer of Etsy sourced things since around 2011
(roughly 160 purchases? hard to tell without manually counting, 16 pages of
about 10 per page) - I have watched the features of the site degrade over time
around the community aspects, usability features and whatnot - the way making
and sharing interest lists was drastically changed, for example, and is now
frustrating and non-intuitive. Certain other features were introduced with no
way to edit or disable them, such as their Notifications fiasco. I rarely
visit the site anymore - even Instagram has better handcrafted makers who are
easier to find than Etsy. (contrary to many popular memes, IG has a lot of
healthy small communities for collectors and aficionados)

Etsy's movement as a site and company drove me away as a frequent buyer of
goods - they don't listen to real user feedback (well, mine :)), they're
definitely trying to engage the mass market buyer now with quantity not
quality and craftsmanship even in search results. Recently. I wanted a silver
ring; it took a _lot_ of work to find actual, real handcrafters who bang out
the silver bar, solder it into a ring and polish it (I did find two great ones
though, a guy in Greece and a gal in Thailand - beautiful rings, bought one
from each). But it took me a lot of time and effort just to locate these two
actual crafters buried amongst an overwhelming number of pretend crafters
selling pressed rings they probably bought in bulk and are just reselling.

------
mcguire
" _It doesn’t help that Etsy changed its transaction fee from 3.5 percent to 5
percent last June — fair enough, it had been flat for 13 years, but still, the
timing._ "

Wait. That's not how this works. This is not a price, it's a proportion.

Anyway, it sounds like Etsy has decided to become a more general online
retailer, which does open it to a much larger market. It also removes any
barriers protecting Etsy from being marginalized by larger retailers. I hope
the management really is smarter than everyone else in the field.

~~~
daedalus6174
I think the author meant the 3.5% was flat in the sense that it hadn’t
increased in thirteen years.

It’s not very clear English either way.

~~~
sweeneyrod
Usually if you say you're raising prices because they've been flat for years
the implied justification is that it's to match inflation. But that doesn't
apply to a percentage fee.

------
brosinante
I wish Etsy would hang on to being the "alternative" seller so that i can
still satisfy my well-paid hipster sensibilities by going "Oh, they add
shipping costs but that's ok because i'm supporting independent makers", but
can see why they have to do this.

------
ineedasername
This story is framed all wrong. It even admits that this change will improve
sales, but still comes down hard on Etsy for making a change. A change that
improves sales for its sellers.

Not only that, it's really not Etsy that is forcing this change, it's consumer
behavior that has been changed by access to free, fast shipping by both Amazon
and others. Etsy has little choice but to ride that wave. If they didn't make
this change, sellers on Etsy would be pushed out in the long term anyway.

Not only that, but it's clear that sellers on Amazon often price their
shipping costs into the product price, which is the exact option that Etsy
built explicitly into this switch: When turning on free shipping, sellers had
the ability to say "change my product prices to be [current price] + [shipping
cost].

Finally, I sell on Etsy. I switched to free shipping mid July. My sales have
improved by about 30% over where I'd expect them to be for this time period.
More people are buying more items to get to that $35 threshold. It more than
covers the difference in shipping.

Sure, that positive scenario may not play out for all sellers. But then the
long term picture wouldn't have been any better as Amazon's own "handmade"
venue and cheap mass-produced alternatives eat their sales.

~~~
morelikeborelax
It is 100% Etsy forcing this change. Josh Silverman is there to increase
revenue and this is how they are doing it.

There was no consideration for their sellers, a large number of which cannot
do free shipping. Etsy want to be "Etsy" not a platform and service for
sellers.

Sure some stores won't be affected but plenty had already tried free shipping
and reported it did not work, Etsy didn't care. Anyone shipping heavy items or
internationally can't do free shipping properly. I know UK stores who have
been told to just offer a code and discount back some of the value to their UK
customers so that these stores can sell with free shipping in the US. It
doesn't make sense. This is a pure revenue driver, it does not benefit stores.

Etsy do not know how to run small businesses and they are forcing people who
do to make bad decisions.

You could have offered free shipping anyway if you had wanted to.

~~~
ineedasername
Your right, I could have offered free shipping. But it wasn't until Etsy made
it nearly a requirement that I did so. I wasn't happy, but it actually turned
out to be better for me. Maybe there are some small minority of sellers that
truly can't offer free shipping, but I don't see how most can't offer it and
simply add the cost to their items, or as it was in my case, result in more
sales that more than make up for the difference.

And yes, technically it is Etsy that is implementing this change. In that
sense they are "forcing" it. But a failure to do this would also have resulted
in the slow demise of many of their sellers. In that sense, the market, in
order to keep pace with competitors, forced this change. Etsy, acting in its
own best interest, also acted in the best interests of a majority of its
sellers. A failure to act might have been in the best interest of a minority
of its sellers. So it was a choice of doing what's best for Etsy _and_ most
sellers or nothing, which would slowly kill Etsy and _all_ of its sellers. Not
much of a choice.

~~~
detaro
How does it work with international sales? Do you need to make shipping free
to everywhere, or only to one place to get the ranking boost?

------
jasonlotito
So, we were an Etsy seller. At first it was nice, but then slowly we saw the
problems, the issues, and Etsy started adding "features" that were insulting
at best. Etsy might be fine for the home hobbiest, but the reality is, at this
point, anyone doing serious business on Etsy is looking for alternatives.
Shopify is a probably the most popular choice. But Etsy hasn't done anything
to support sellers for a long time.

In the end, the only reason you use Etsy is to bank on the brand and people's
expectations that Etsy is still hand made.

However, even that reputation is losing ground, and soon it will be a store
front with limited tools and even more limited features.

We moved off Etsy, and it was the best thing we did for our business.

Edit: I want to add, in hindsight, we didn't need Etsy to be able to move. We
could have started on Shopify and been just as successful.

~~~
jeremymcanally
I guess maybe it depends on what you're selling, but we found we badly needed
the discoverability of the Etsy marketplace. Which sucks, because as of late
they've been doing a lot of things to annoy sellers.

We (mostly my wife) have three Etsy shops, all paying Etsy+ customers. Each
shop does probably 30-50 orders a month, so we're not tiny potatoes. We
received two low ratings (one three star and one one star) across 6 months in
one of our shops. The one star was because Etsy didn't wait until the order
was mark delivered by USPS to solicit feedback from the user, so they said "we
haven't gotten it yet so I don't know." The other was an issue that the buyer
didn't read the listing at all (they complained about the item being smaller
than expected, but the measurements on the listing were actually a good bit
_smaller_ than what they got so it should have been too big...?). Either way,
two somewhat off feedbacks in like 200 sales.

Etsy sends an email that basically says we've fallen below their standards for
customer satisfaction and we need to get back on track. When we asked what
they were talking about, they said they'd gotten a "significant number" of
customer dissatisfaction reports. When pressed, it was those two reviews. When
we pushed back that those were kind of unfair negative feedbacks, they just
brushed it off and, basically, said we need to get our act together. What the
heck?

The kicker? That shop went from 2-3 sales a day on average to zero. For like,
weeks. It's finally back and selling things, but I think we were being removed
from search results or at least ranked much lower as punishment or something.
They've really pumped up this gatekeeping behavior lately, and it's really
starting to chafe me. :/ I'm 99% sure because we're paying Etsy+ customers
that we get preference in search rankings. I know they definitely prioritize
shops that offer free shipping even if the price is higher because they've
said so (which is a really annoying way to squeeze your sellers for more money
while inciting them to raise prices and thus increasing your percentage take
on the final value fees...). I wish they'd stop trying to influence people's
discovery so much, but I'm guessing they have to have their data scientists
working on something to make money?

But like I said, without the community (which is great) and discoverability of
their marketplace, our sales are junk (we've tried). I know we could invest in
marketing this or sales that or promoting locally, but frankly we're very
small and don't make enough to invest in that sort of stuff to get an equal
return. It just sucks that it at least _feels_ like Etsy has become a lot more
seller hostile in the past year. :(

------
ourmandave
Whatever Etsy is, they spawned the wonder Regretsy.com (sadly dead now), so
there will always be that silver lining.

[https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home/craft-ideas/how-
to/g21...](https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home/craft-ideas/how-
to/g2191/craft-disasters-regretsy/)

[https://www.wired.co.uk/article/regretsy-
closure](https://www.wired.co.uk/article/regretsy-closure)

------
erikig
The looming scepter of Amazon seems to cast a very long shadow nowadays. It is
beginning to feel like the bogeyman on which every company blames their
current struggles.

~~~
ineedasername
Well, Amazon did go out and create a new seller venue, "Handmade",
specifically to compete with Etsy in this area. So it's not like some random
retailer complaint, Etsy legitimately has a new struggle as a result. It's
honest competition though. And plenty of Etsy sellers (me, for example)
checked out Amazon Handmade, hated it, and still just sell on Etsy. So Amazon
can compete on prices and a larger captive audience, Etsy is still competing
on quality, unique marketplace (though more generic than it used to be) and a
better seller experience.

------
lokl
My one Etsy experience was great, I paid an order of magnitude less than
"regular" businesses were asking for a small piece of brass acid-etched with
my own .svg design. I turned to Etsy because I imagined that such an item
could be manufactured at home with low overhead cost. Still, many Etsy sellers
were asking more than I expected and it was only when I searched based on a
common use for such an item (not my use) that I found a great price. My use:
boat plaque. Common use: pet tag.

I wonder what other small-batch custom manufacturing can be found on Etsy at a
good price and under what search terms.

More generally, is there a list of "where to get it made" based on
manufacturing methods, materials, (small) quantity, size, etc.?

~~~
owenversteeg
That would be a great list! Perhaps HN could make one?

In particular, some things that would be useful for me:

\- product enclosures (plastic, metal, wood even?)

\- fabric products (backpack? tent? blanket?)

\- small metal items

------
mc32
They can’t beat Amazon but they’re trying to become it.

Second, they’re not getting their sellers to ensure they’re not drop shipping
or acting as a front to sweatshop manufacturers.

It’s unsure whether they could have grown to their size remaining a
craftsperson’s and artisan’s marketplace, but it’d be nice to have a store
dedicated to people who are small time producers of craft and artisanal goods.

~~~
ansible
Is there an alternative to Etsy for actual hand-crafted goods?

For a version 2.0, I'm thinking each seller would be required to post a
5-minute video on their production, showing where they do the work, and
showing actual people working in a non-factory, non-assembly line environment.

I'd also require on-site visits by an agent to ensure veracity of that.

Yes, this would be enormously invasive / intrusive and a high burden for
sellers. And it doesn't scale well. Maybe the sellers could police each other?
Have the person in Wilmington who makes HO-scale vintage sports cars also
check in on the Wilmington resident who quilts superhero-themed stuff.

I don't know.

~~~
ineedasername
> _" Is there an alternative to Etsy for actual hand-crafted goods?"_

There are a few, none nearly so larger with such a large audience though. I
think people that sell on them are often using them as a second option, Etsy
as the first. One is aftcra.com. There's also a few services geared toward
making it very easy for hand-crafted sellers to make their own shop-- Big
Cartel and IndieMade come to mind.

~~~
ansible
Overall the aftcra.com site seems nice, though the selection is very limited.

Then I ran across this for Adobe Acrobat XI Pro:

[http://www.aftcra.com/fullstop/listing/308980/adobe-
acrobat-...](http://www.aftcra.com/fullstop/listing/308980/adobe-acrobat-xi-
pro-download)

WTF?

~~~
NikkiA
Pirates infiltrate any service where they can list an item for sale. Report
and move on.

------
MrLeap
I tried selling some blacksmithed items I created on etsy and found it really
hard to even get views. I was able to sell a few steel ladles I forged to a
local craft store, but I failed big on the internet. Ah well.

------
technotarek
Opportunities abound in this space for someone to do things better for
consumers. The e-com retail space is soooo fragmented. Take furniture for
example, a maker/dealer has all of the following online retail options (and
probably more): Etsy, eBay, ApartmentTherapy, 1stDibs, Chairish -- and those
are just the marketplaces. They can also chose a more roll their own such as
an ecom site from SquareSpace, Shopify, Wix etc. The same is true, but even
more fragmented, in the area of fashion. Add to the above PoshMark,
theRealReal and many others.

The fragmentation is a disservice to consumers. If this move by Etsy leads for
vendors to further disperse across some of the other options, then it adds
even more barriers for consumers who want to see the full breadth of offerings
in a particular vertical. It's unclear Google is really interested in or up to
the task of resolving this.

(Shameless plug time.) So we built ATTIC, a hyperlocal search and discovery
engine for a limited set of product verticals (furniture, decor, fashion).
Etsy makes up a fair share of the product you'll find, but we do it in a
curated manner, namely by location. Even more important though, we also index
products from hundreds of other stores, dealers and makers that are on other
platforms. We're quickly approaching 1000 stores, currently across 11 cities
and several more to come. See [https://attic.city](https://attic.city).

In the end, I'm not sure consumers really care where they get their product
from. They're not that loyal. They care about the product and the ease of
getting the product. If vendors flee Etsy, the customers will follow. We're
hoping we can eliminate the worry about or need to figure out where those
dealers went.

------
heymijo
> _“The house was burning and nobody was paying attention,” Etsy board member
> and Union Square Ventures co-founder Fred Wilson told the New York Times.)_

This feels like asking the wolf what happened after he bought access to the
hen house.

An accounting we will never get, but I would love to see is just how much
dysfunction and detriment venture capitalists caused their portfolio companies
over the past 15 years.

Fred Wilson gets my attention because unfortunate for him, the book, Hatching
Twitter shows just how much discord he sowed at Twitter [0]. He is also on
record saying he doesn't regret any of it.[1]

Yes, Etsy exists within the VC system, which demands an acquisition or going
public, but how many of the bad decisions throughout its hypergrowth were
pushed or enabled by Wilson/USV and Etsy's other VC's?

I think it's important to understand these stories, especially in a world
where venture capitalists have positioned themselves and their industry as
thought leaders in the startup and growth arenas. VCs' actions are almost
always behind the scenes, opaque at best, but when actually brought to light
can drastically differ from their public opining.

[0] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18656827-hatching-
twitte...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18656827-hatching-twitter) [1]
[https://www.quora.com/What-does-Fred-Wilson-think-about-
Hatc...](https://www.quora.com/What-does-Fred-Wilson-think-about-Hatching-
Twitter)

------
empath75
Realistically, free shipping means the price of shipping is included in the
product.

~~~
onion2k
A long time ago I wrote a warehouse management system for a fishing gear
manufacturer that shipped enough packages every day that they had a contract
with a courier for a fixed price on their deliveries. Regardless of how many
there were and where they were doing a lorry turned up at the warehouse at 4pm
every day, all the outgoing packages got loaded on it, and off they went. It
cost _a lot_ but it was far cheaper than pricing the packages individually,
especially as fishing rods are quite an unusual shape. It meant shipping was a
fixed business cost, so the price was only part of the product price in the
same way that the office rent was a part of the product cost, or the CEO's
salary. I imagine quite a lot of B2C product businesses work the same way.

~~~
petra
Sure. That's because a lot of the delivery business is fixed costs.

But still, depending on the cost and the average number of packages, it could
come out as a significant cost per order.

~~~
jessriedel
Employee salaries would also come out as a significant cost per order. The
point is that it might not make any more sense to pull out explicit shipping
prices as it would to include an employee-salary fee on all products.

~~~
jerf
That's an interesting point.

The core reason why shipping costs were pulled out separately is that it
allowed the customer to choose between various options freely, if they needed
it tomorrow vs. whenever. If there's no choice, there's much less incentive to
do that.

However, there's still at least a little something I can think of; shipping is
generally not part of the sales tax. Rolling it into the price means you're
also making your customers pay sales tax on it. That depends on whether you've
got to pay tax on the item in question, of course, which varies every which
way.

------
stevewillows
Early on, Etsy got rid of all of the 'vintage' stores, and there was a good
deal of backlash --- but proper crafters were totally behind the move.

Back then, if you wanted to get some _great_ traction, you got into the chats
with the 'Moms' \-- basically a small group that could easily get a lot of
traffic to your shop. Sadly, that aspect of the site died out, they brought
back the vintage, and ultimately accepted the non-handmade stuff.

For me, I left Etsy when they dropped / changed the chat part.

Etsy kind of followed the trend of my local indie craft scene. At first it was
a small, tight-knit group of actual crafters -- then over time folks who used
to visit the shows would blatantly copy another product and start selling...
then came the vintage sellers... and then the sellers who sell other sellers,
often when they're at the same show as those sellers... and ultimately people
selling items that were made overseas that they either designed the pattern
for or just purchased and glued something.

It's weird. But overall, as the local craft scenes became more popular, they
also became more diluted and generic. There were more people selling, but
roughly the same categories of products.

That being said, if you get into the right shows, you can still make bank...
but, like Etsy, the maker spirit has died off.

------
gridlockd
There is no such thing as "free shipping". On a site where people rarely make
any bulk purchases, adding shipping into the base price is the right thing to
do. It's just behavioral economics.

Case in point, I prefer "free shipping" despite being fully aware that it's
not a real thing. Just because you're aware that's it bullshit doesn't mean it
doesn't work on you.

------
josefresco
Just read an article about how these changes (and others) are making Etsy
profitable and competitive.

Not sure if this is it because it's from 2017:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/business/etsy-josh-
silver...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/business/etsy-josh-
silverman.html)

------
DanBC
One of the problems with Etsy is drop-shipped chinese junk sold for excessive
price.

This free shipping thing seems like it'll make that worse.

~~~
ineedasername
Hard to say, but with the US set to withdraw from the UPU, it may become much
harder for those cheap items with free shipping from China to compete in the
same way.

~~~
NikkiA
It won't, they'll just drop-ship bulk to some guy in the US who answered a
'make money from home' ad, who will receive a weekly 'box' of packages to send
out with bulk-rate prepaid USPS envelopes. A lot of places already have this
workaround going on.

------
rchaud
This is unfortunately a natural consequence of going public. The founder was
pushed out 4 years before the IPO, so what's happening now (pressure to
compete with gigantic ecommerce stores) was already being planned around that
time.

"The New York Times called it (the IPO) a test of whether Wall Street will
embrace a company that puts doing social and environmental good on the same
pedestal with, if not ahead of, maximizing profits."

A test for which the answer sheet has been available for decades. A company
like Etsy had no chance of retaining their original culture once their
operations had to fit into Wall Street analysts' "competitor metrics" decks.

Now it'll be measured on the same metrics as Walmart and Amazon, like it or
not, and management will be incentivized to continue to push for free shipping
and other seller-unfriendly policies to keep that revenue growth up,
regardless of whether it's sustainable or not.

------
wayanon
Could Etsy be cleaned by restricting number and quantity of products sold per
vendor?

~~~
marcinzm
a) Etsy doesn't want that since they want to maximize their own revenue b)
Preventing people from seeing a path to this being a full time job makes Etsy
less appealing even to small time sellers

~~~
smolder
I don't see the logic in removing what made them unique and worth visiting for
the sake of increasing revenue. To me, this seems like just one more example
of how relentless pursuit of growth destroys good things. IMHO they should
have let Etsy stay as small as it needed to to maintain it's charm, and
focused on building on other things, even another market place site, if they
wanted more revenue.

~~~
marcinzm
Who is they?

Etsy managed to grow by taking on VC money which comes with strings attached.
It then went public, to satisfy the VCs, which also comes with strings
attached. Moreover, if not for VC money then they probably wouldn't have taken
over the market compared to a better funded competitor.

So, to me, the they here is the whole VC ecosystem.

~~~
smolder
Leadership. I don't know if it was Etsy executives, hired strategists, or
shareholders that prioritized growth of their marketplace over its quality,
but it was, in retrospect, not a good way to handle the brand. The other
possible ways they could have grown their company are innumerable even if they
aren't obvious. You may be right it's the VCs that are to blame.

------
pkamb
I find that the Etsy "Vintage" filter still works pretty well to show only
true old/authentic items.

I love that it is a prominent, top-level control. eBay has nothing like it
except for "new/used" Condition, which doesn't work nearly as well.

I still think that the filter I want the most is some AI to determine if
product photos are "real". Fake backgrounds and generated images are sure
signs of a mass-produced item that I'm NOT searching for. Even shots in a
light-box are a bad sign. This could be done in a browser extension and I
think would produce great results.

------
jessriedel
I would pay good money for a Chrome extension that would intelligently remove
opening vignettes and other human-interest crud that every writer feels
compelled to insert in putative analysis.

~~~
opportune
I agree, but I'm kind of curious as to why it's so pervasive. There must be
some sort of A/B test that writers have done that proves it improves
engagement. But which people actually are more engaged by it?

------
achow
This sums up Etsy and why it is still good to root for it..

 _“Etsy at its worst is still better than so many companies at their best,”
she says now. “They try to live their values and help people succeed, and not
every company can say that.”_

------
plink
Instead of dreaming about what potential lies in Etsy 2.0, why doesn’t someone
build a competing marketplace that takes the advantage by not accepting a
shit-ton of corrupting VC investment?

------
lhopki01
I don't understand why including the price of shipping in the cost of the item
is so bad. We include the price of everything else related to the item in the
price. I personally like to know the actual price when I look at the item.

Similarly a few years ago when the EU made it mandatory to have the full price
listed for air fares I was really happy. Before you'd have a price then when
it came time to checkout you'd have taxes, landing fees, handling charges all
added and end up with a price 3 times what was originally quoted.

Since I can't get the item without shipping it should just be included in the
price.

~~~
amdavidson
How far do you live from the seller?

Shipping prices can vary widely for items of significant size.

It is easy for a giant like Amazon to negotiate shipping terms that they can
amortize over a vast amount of sales, but that is not true for a small seller
moving only double digit numbers of items.

------
mlthoughts2018
> “Right now, customers add things to their cart and balk at shipping costs,
> then bounce from the site for good.“

lol... so the solution is to make customers balk much earlier in the funnel
when they see unreasonable base prices? And put (craft item, low volume)
sellers in a terrible position to give up extremely important marginal revenue
by not raising prices to fully offset shipping costs? Or else lose sales with
dropoff in search placement (even if you’re the more relevant search result to
satisfy a certain customer query)...

Etsy just seems gassed for ideas.

~~~
Spivak
You see a item on the page and think “I’m willing to pay that to have it.”
Then you add it to your cart and see a large fee added and you are given a
moments pause “Is this item really worth it?” and close the tab.

For some goods cost hiding is good because there is a mental commitment that
is made by getting to the check-out process and fees are an annoyance but not
a deterrent.

For Etsy they believe that cost hiding is bad because the number of people who
would pass up an item at a higher initial price is less than the number who
would put the item back on the second evaluation once the ‘price to own’ is
known. Etsy is cost anchoring against their own interests.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
> For some goods cost hiding is good because there is a mental commitment that
> is made by getting to the check-out process and fees are an annoyance but
> not a deterrent.

Good for the seller, maybe. I'll give up on sites that do this and look
elsewhere on principle, no matter how deep I am in the checkout process.

------
carapace
Here's my pie-in-the-sky concept for an Etsy reboot:

1\. Member-owned. There are so many details, but the idea is to align the
company directly with the values of the members.

2\. Grow by IRL social graph, with people inviting and vouching for new
members. You can't sign up from the web, only from in-person contacts.
Probably hardware-backed (Yubikey or whatever). Web-of-Trust... handwave!

3\. Open business. Radical openness and honesty as in "Honest Business: A
Superior Strategy for Starting and Managing Your Own Business" by Salli
Rasberry & Michael Phillips
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22105625-honest-
business](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22105625-honest-business)

4\. Minimum prices, high. Like a baseline of US$150. I'm seriously. The #1
problem most Etsy sellers have is they set their prices too low. The market
should foster the idea in customers' heads that their purchases are deliberate
economic decisions to support a given person IRL as an independent creative
success. You _also_ get a fantastic scarf or whatever.

5\. Straight-up _handmade_. No compromises. This is a showcase and marketplace
for artisans and creators.

6\. Explicit focus on the growth and success of the members. Things like
organizing free classes on running a business, maybe tied in with SCORE (
[https://www.score.org/](https://www.score.org/) ) or something. I think there
should be an option for members to have public goals and meters for themselves
like e.g. Kickstarter. I'd also like to have "plans" available to outline the
paths to certain levels of success. Like, Plan A "Comfortable life in the
country, plus good health insurance." to Plan O "Be the next Oprah".

7\. Along those lines, there should be specific help for IP: developing it and
protecting it, _and_ paths to automated production. If there's a demand for
your style or product the market should help you fulfill it, as opposed to
having third parties rip off your designs and order imitations from rapid-
turn-around factories. This has to be harmonized with the idea that the
primary market is strictly handmade only. You shouldn't be punished for making
something so popular it's pirated. The modern automatic economy should be a
service, not a competitor.

8\. There should be a kind of graduation when a member becomes successful
enough on their own that they don't need the marketplace anymore. I'm not sure
of the details here because I don't mean that they should be kicked out or
anything like that, but rather that, once you've "made it", your role should
shift a bit to where you're helping others reach their success.

9\. All-in-all, double-down on the idea that we're really creating a viable
new economy here. Emphasize tracking the supply chains and try to ground them
in ecological sources. Have explicit ratings and discussions of the sources
for raw materials. People who live off grid should have some sort of extra
oomph, like badges to display or something. Promote sustainable, or better yet
_regenerative_ , economy.

~~~
onemoresoop
I was thinking about the same thing. The money could be deducted from the fee
they add to the sales.

VC capital and fast growth are toxic

------
ailideex
Pretty much exactly what I expected. Maybe the author should just have more
reasonable expectations.

------
jononomo
I tried Etsy once and it was just cheap crap.

------
kevmo
Another check in the "Amazon should be broken up" category.

