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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 y
by rectang 11y ago
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.
- deelowe 11y agoAgreed. 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.
- cwyers 11y agoEtsy 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.
- smackfu 11y agoThey spend a lot on marketing and product development.
- wnissen 11y agoExactly, this is not at all like when eBay changed from people selling stuff out of their garage to mostly regular retailers. In that case, the nature of the merchandise didn't change, and the service actually got better because you were dealing with pros. Etsy has some wonderful sellers and items (in his spare time, a guy is making me a pair of gorgeous faceted opals that you can't find anywhere else) but if it becomes mass, who cares? The degree to which they succeed in doing Etsy Manufacturing is going to be the degree which they become irrelevant to anyone looking for their traditional handmade product. If I just want something cute I can go to Target. It's the exclusivity that creates the value.