
How Etsy Alienated Its Crafters and Lost Its Soul - wallflower
http://wired.com/2015/02/etsy-not-good-for-crafters/
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virmundi
While aspects like 3rd party manufactures is disturbing, I'm surprised by the
notion that successful companies move beyond Etsy.

Etsy seems like a small business incubator. It provides, at a reasonable fee,
a working environment conducive to growth. You have forums and other
communication mechanism to train with others. You get the ability to have the
e-commerce headache serviced. You get a known location that customers arrive
at looking for their special things. At some point all of this infrastructure
is limiting. You leave the small business incubator for a more custom
environment.

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jnevill
I agree completely. I helped a store migrate from Etsy to a custom CMS because
they had outgrown Etsy, and they did so in about a year. Etsy would do well to
pivot their marketing from Handmade/Craft to Small Business Incubator. Or
maybe they have and that's what all the butt hurt is about.

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akgerber
That is, in fact, Etsy's goal. But the DIY & handmade is a movement on its own
with its own set of virtues, probably an heir to the Arts & Crafts movement as
a reaction against mass production:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_and_Crafts_movement#Social...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_and_Crafts_movement#Social_and_design_principles)

So a whiff of mass production is seen as taint.

~~~
michaelt
The question is how Etsy wants to position itself relative to Ebay.

Now, there's nothing wrong with being ebay! It's a fine way to find traders
selling mass-produced items. But I was under the impression Etsy wasn't trying
to compete with them directly.

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awjr
I think that's the fundamental flaw with Etsy. By it's very nature, you
earnings are time limited. So once you get well known enough and successful,
suddenly Etsy does not look attractive any more.

Etsy's move into allowing designed items to be sold is a recognition that to
cash out on Etsy you need to have other people make your products for you (as
you are time limited) or attempt to price yourself high while trying to sell
into a market where people are constantly undercutting each other.

So there is a natural progression to mass made designer items. The moment you
begin thinking about higher pricing, you're on the path to selling at your
local craft markets or in local boutique shops.

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pjc50
.. except that the entire sales pitch for "craft", "handmade", and "indie"
relies on believing that the items are being made in a particular way, by non-
alienated labour. Turning it into mass production is the opposite of what the
original buyer's culture wants.

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Agustus
Exactly this, the products became more and more mass produced instead of the
etsy sales pitch of one-offs.

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ourmandave
What took so long?

Regretsy.com (which sadly doesn't exist anymore) was constantly pointing out
crafts that were being sold as one-of-a-kinds and originals with a direct link
to their alibaba.com source.

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adventured
I've seen this story before. Ten years ago.

"How eBay alienated its sellers and lost its soul"

Was it true? Perhaps, and it has nothing to do with whether eBay was able to
build an auction platform business that spits off two billion dollars per year
in profit.

Etsy will be just fine, despite the scare headlines. There's nothing else
quite like it, and no replacement for it of scale. They already won, and
that's why they can afford to alienate people now.

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felix
Is there an Image comics to Etsy's Marvel/DC? Curious if there's a place that
re-captures the soul of indie crafts? Or if the successful crafters simply
open up their own store and etsy remains the primary place for people to
become successful crafters.

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gadders
I wonder if Pinterest could jump in here? I would imagine they have quite a
similar audience demographic, and I'm sure people would quite like being able
to buy nice stuff they see pinned.

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zantana
I've really liked the work that Etsy's devops team has done, with stuff like
statsd, even though I never liked the company.

I hope they can survive the turmoil. Maybe they can move as a group to another
company.

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squozzer
I can't find too much fault with the author's complaints, being an etsy
customer on occasion I have found it hard to wade through the flood of stuff
to find the "perfect" trinket - after a while "perfect" and "make it stop,
please" become hard to distinguish.

The author seems to wish Etsy would play gatekeeper, er, I mean, "curate"
goods, assuming of course the author's goodies make the cut. That seems to go
against Etsy's values - not to mention the zeitgeist of the Internet age.

But who knows? Maybe someone will come along and out-etsy etsy.

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vlucas
Seems like this happens to everything that starts small and then experiences
exponential growth. This is the inevitable change to anything that gets
significantly popular.

* Facebook started with colleges only, and lots of people lamented when they opened up signups for all

* Twitter used to be a close-knit community for tech people, and tons of people whined, saying all the new people joining Twitter were ruining it.

Pinterest could have a similar story too.

Once a website/app/tool gets large enough to be useful, brands move in with
money and fundamentally change the platform.

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gwmacintyre
Etsy is also alienating their customers. I bought an item that I never
received. Etsy told me that's not their problem. They do not have a customer
service number. The reason is simple: They have no customer service. They are
not responsible or accountable for anything!!! You pay your money and take
your chances - might be a real company/item... might be totally bogus! The
arrogance of their attitude, and their unwillingness to vouch for the veracity
of their sellers, will take them down over time!

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xxxargs
The point about the search feature is extremely accurate; in my opinion it's
one of the most fatal flaws in Etsy.

It works poorly, and users can tag an item in endless categories (often
conflicting ones, like 'gemstone' and 'rhinestone'), and so frequently give
items dozens of tags, that it makes the search irrelevant.

The categorization and organization forces you to "wade through pages of crap"
to find anything relevant; that awful feature lost me as a buyer years ago --
agree 100% with the author there.

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bibabo
eBay again.

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capitalsigma
Read:

> Guys, I used Etsy before it was cool. Now it's like, super mainstream, and
> it's not cool anymore. Totes.

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cousin_it
Ah, the tried and true debate tactic of repeating someone's words in a high
voice to make them sound funny.

