
Etsy Welcomes Manufacturers to Artisanal Fold - kanamekun
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/14/business/etsy-welcomes-manufacturers-to-artisanal-fold.html
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jph
Etsy's move into manufacturers is an error IMHO.

Etsy would be better served by shoring up its advantage in craftpeople
sellers, including artisinal products, one of a kind items, and handmade
creations.

Etsy has had difficult times since the spring IPO. The causes that I see are
primarily due to large increases (+50%) in spending vs. no corresponding
movement in income. Discoverability/search has decreased, and gamed listings
by knockoff manufacturers are squeezing out legitimate handcrafters.

In addition, Etsy sellers who are true independents are moving to other
hosting platforms that provide more capabilities such as Wix and SquareSpace,
and to more popular promotions areas such as Instagram and Pinterest. Amazon
Handmade looks promising as well.

Rather than trying to diversify into manufacturers and supply choices, Etsy
would be wise IMHO to focus on its core strength of handcrafting, and
specifically focus on two immediate goals:

1) Significantly improve discoverability/search. Esty needs to make it easier
for people to locate items by e.g. regional areas, fair trade practices, true
handcrafting, one of a kind items, etc.

2) Return the Etsy treasuries. Treasuries were user-curated collections
featuring browse by image. The treasuries worked much like Pinterest, and
looked somewhat like Instagram. The important aspects are the user curation
and the inclusion of multiple craftspeople and items on one page.

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paulmd
The manufacturers were already on Etsy anyway, and Etsy wasn't really making
much of an effort to get rid of them, so it's basically a move to legitimize
the status quo. I agree that the brand damage is probably going to hurt in the
long term, Amazon and eBay have already locked up the "generic crap from
China" market. But I guess Etsy is probably thinking that their money spends
just like everyone else's, so.

I strongly agree with your first point. Etsy's search is hot garbage, you just
can't get there from here. The only major e-commerce site with a comparably
bad search is Amazon, and they are highly aware of how many of their inlinks
are coming from "productName amazon" and working hard to rectify the problem.

Personally I wish more sites implemented searches that let you get at
categories and attributes and apply Boolean logic to them (eg "glass bowl NOT
pipe region:PacificNorthWest"). At least then the powerusers can eventually
strugglebus their way through the crap. Ebay's search is actually fantastic in
this respect, and you can find a lot of the same stuff that's on Etsy - much
more easily. Especially, again, the generic Chinese crap.

Now mind you, I've never seen anyone actually DOCUMENT their searches well,
even in the cases where they implement them. Not even Google has a single
source where you can find everything.

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Someone1234
I used to be an Etsy customer. Now the site has turned into eBay but with
worse filtering/categorisation than eBay itself (and a smaller selection).

Etsy used to be good because items were either literally made by someone in
their living room, or at least made by small businesses. It was more
expensive, but the products were made in small batches so could be much more
targeted/niche.

Plus you had tons of commission sellers that did customisation. And these were
real people you could actually contact and discuss your needs, not drones
pumping out generic items with your name stamped on them.

Now, being realistic, there was always mass produced items on Etsy. But it was
like an 80/20 thing (20% being mass produced) and it was pretty easy to tell
who was what.

Now if you go on the site it is like 10/90 (90%+ are mass produced). And worse
still it is too difficult to find anything that is not, the "Handmade"
checkbox is a lie.

So now Etsy is another eBay. That's fine on the face of it, but eBay makes it
far easier to find, sort, and filter. So ultimately Etsy is now an eBay with
an inferior site design.

PS - If others choose to use Etsy, more power to you, I just want an Etsy
replacement that does custom goods again.

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rectang
Since Etsy is battling to achieve profitability, I'm reluctant to second-guess
this move. But as a consumer, I want an exclusively artisanal marketplace.

If you're patient, you can find some outrageously awesome stuff here and there
on Etsy, but a lot of merchants game the system by offering the same product
under many different listings. Mass-producing merchants will have the
incentive and the resources to dump an avalanche of listings for low-margin
dreck on the site. I doubt the ability of the Etsy team to counter that effect
and maintain the kind of marketplace where someone interested in artisanal
goods would want to shop.

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deelowe
Agreed. I don't know why etsy isn't profitable (really? seems like a fairly
simple site), but I use it exclusively to avoid manufactured stuff. Same goes
for tindie.

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cwyers
Etsy is one of the 50 most popular websites in the US, according to Alexa. And
because it's facilitating ecommerce, it has to handle a lot of anti-fraud
measures, customer service... all that seeming simplicity over that actual
complexity costs a fair amount of money.

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lifeisstillgood
I only know of etsy through their software blog, so this might be a bit left
field, but I have always wondered how much money there really is in that
"perfect" hand made item. Most artists in Anglo-Saxon world can't make a
living - they either have jobs and do painting / sculpting as a hobby, or they
turn to crafts (I'm a three-year postgrad trained sculpture artist - can I
make you a gate for your driveway?)

Our society simply does not value art sufficiently to pay a living wage for
it. Look at painting - the number of prints and posters sold in the mass
market is enormous. At between 10 and 100 bucks it's a fairly common and
lucrative trade, and some photos of New York can be found in a million IKEA
furnished homes.

But if IKEA stocked genuine, hand painted one offs, even in the volumes
needed, would they go at say, 500 to 1000 bucks?

(I assume we want a nice painting of average poster size - so 2-5 days work to
paint a canvas at a decent rate - about 25,000 bucks pa at the low end - just
above the U.S. Poverty line if raising a family)

So, not disparaging etsy, but my "mental smell test", highly biased that it
is, tells me that 1000 bucks for a painting against 750 for a sofa won't go
well at the mass market - and it won't go well in a mass market web site
either.

Etsy is a Walmart, stocked high with that "perfect distressed framed mirror",
and wondering where the impedance mismatch is coming from.

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smackfu
It's more a matter of originals vs. copies. The original may take 10x the time
to make as the copy, but most of society doesn't value the original at 10x the
copy.

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lifeisstillgood
Thank you - bang on the nail there. Yes we like art, but we sell a lot more TV
than theatre.

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mmt
"Though Etsy does not intend to visit or otherwise directly vet manufacturers
— or limit the size of companies that apply — the site will require that they
commit to providing a safe and just workplace and agree to be transparent
about the processes and other details involved in their manufacturing work,
Ms. Peyton said. ... Manufacturers who receive negative reviews from Etsy
sellers or are found to be violating Etsy guidelines could be removed from the
platform."

The last sentence seems awfully weasel-worded to me, especially since the
first sentence says that, for compliance, Etsy will just take the
manufacturer's word for it.

It definitely reminds me of the controversial "but we're just a platform"
stance of, e.g., Uber.

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smackfu
If you have a hand-made product, and it suddenly explodes in popularity, it's
not like hiring a company to manufacture it is easy, even if someone like Etsy
is connecting you. Machine-knit is not hand-knit, for instance. I predict a
lot of disappointed purchasers.

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Bjorkbat
Well now that means that Etsy is just a marketplace for people with quirky
ideas and a number of knockoff competitors.

I'm not entirely certain I like that.

