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Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff

• mustacheemperor 10y ago
  The conversion problem on mobile does seem like an issue, but speaking as a former customer of Etsy what drove me away was the selection. Not that it's too small - rather, Etsy is now flooded with thousands of storefronts selling "artisan" pieces that are actually bought on AliExpress or similar and marked up. If they're trying to apply ML to managing customer recommendations, they should figure out how to identify who's actually selling legitimate wares. I stopped buying from Etsy a couple years ago - I purchased my SO what I thought was a unique, interesting "handcrafted" necklace. I thought it looked a little factory-made when it arrived, but it wasn't anything too expensive so I didn't sweat it...then she found it on AliExpress for $5. I then realized the six week lead time for "hand crafting" was actually the time for international shipping and domestic re-packaging.
  • celticninja 10y ago
    I only started looking at etsy last year when I was looking for a unique gift for an anniversary present, having spent a lot of time on ali express and the like I noticed lots of items being sold as handmade and as a result avoided the site entirely. I wouldn't trust any of the sellers because I don't have the time to check them all and if I have to do that I may as well look elsewhere, I also caution people against etsy for this reason.
    • jasonlotito 10y ago
      That's a real shame. My wife has a store on Etsy and is downstairs right now sewing up another handbag. So it's kinda tough to hear that the reputation she's worked hard for on Etsy with the solid ratings, and with the hard work she's put in, the Etsy brand itself is turning people away. Etsy provides just enough to make it easy and worthwhile to use the system, but I wonder if she's legitimately losing sales this way.
      • busterarm 10y ago
        Handbags? Oh my god, why isn't she selling on Facebook? I know a very wealthy woman in Thailand selling custom $400-600 handbags to New York yuppies and literally her entire business is on Facebook. I normally don't advocate this sort of thing but their ad platform and social network are basically made for this kind of business. Custom/Handmade luxury goods for upper-middle class women over a certain age? Facebook, every time.
        • seanmcdirmid 10y ago
          Well, you can always try your luck selling on wechat. According to my wife, she drops a few people a month because they start trying to sell her something.
          • busterarm 10y ago
            She isn't marketing that way at all, she's buying Facebook ads and she has a page for her store. Her customers come to her through clicks or through asking their friends where they got their bags.
        • losteverything 10y ago
          How does one sell on FB?
          • busterarm 10y ago
            https://developers.facebook.com/industries/ecommerce/ https://developers.facebook.com/industries/ecommerce/
            • jyarbs 10y ago
              FB works with a handful of ecommerce platforms to enable this natively as well. https://www.bigcommerce.com/facebook/ https://www.bigcommerce.com/facebook/
          • code_duck 10y ago
  • cracell 10y ago
    This has been my experience as well. Etsy in just a few years has gone from a artisan marketplace to a bunch of mass produced junk. From the articles I've read they've done this to increase the number of sales (cheaper items = more conversions) but I think it's been slowly costing them their customer base. Hopefully they realize this and start banning mass produced items and listening to their artisan stores feedback again.
    • amorphid 10y ago
      I wonder if they can police the reselling of mass produced junk. I'm imagining initial efforts, making a notable dent in the problem, and then kicking off a "Made By Me" social media campaign. If resellers stopped seeing Etsy as a easy way to sell dollar store items at artisan prices, made that'd curb the problem a bit more.
      • YZF 10y ago
        Sure. Require a refundable deposit of $1000 (replace by some magic number) which is forfeited if you're caught selling mass produced junk. Other after-the-fact punitive measures can be in the contract you have to sign to get on the site. Something along these lines must exist where legitimate sellers can live with it while the cost to the spammers must be unacceptable.
        • throwaway61891 10y ago
          that would go over really poorly. nobody would spend $1000 on what is essentially a gamble (since etsy is determining whether you're 'selling mass produced junk'). sellers already feel like etsy is way too buyer-friendly (at the expense of sellers).
          • YZF 10y ago
            Etsy has to invest effort in making sure that legitimate sellers don't have this gamble. They have to be sure they're only penalizing the spammers. It's not unlike insurance fraud, do you feel it's a gamble that you're getting insurance because the insurance company won't pay out or will pursue you for fraud? Probably not. Yet they still try to identify and prosecute the fraud. If the site is dominated by spammers selling stuff from the dollar store everyone loses. You have to make it so that it's not worthwhile for the spammers. A deposit is one way. Pursuing legal action for contract violation could be another. Another industry with similar issues is banking. It's not easy but you have to invest in maintaining the credibility of your platform. Machine learning helps but these problems have existed pre machine learning and can have more traditional economic solutions. EDIT: The deposit could also depend on your prices and sale volume. This way really small players can pay in with a lower deposit. There are probably many variations but again the key is to make it a losing proposition for the spammers/dollar store guys assuming you want them off your platform. If you're only doing machine learning/filtering the cost to attack the system and try to get in is too low.
  • ceejayoz 10y ago
    What's Etsy's policy in this sort of situation?
  • throwaway91111 10y ago
    Meanwhile, etsy is the only place I can shop for mens jewelry with any sense of success. Anecodtal evidence can point both ways. Even if it's just a really effective store front, it works better for me than the huge retailers do. I'm gonna guess it depends heavily on what you're looking for.
  • tqkxzugoaupvwqr 10y ago
    It sounds like this problem of fake self-made art could be prevented if etsy introduced a clause that prohibits sellers to sell items they haven't made themselves and fine any seller in violation. The fine could be a multiple of the last n months of revenue on etsy.
    • derefr 10y ago
      How would they ever enforce this? I mean, maybe you can figure it out for the AliExpress case—but what about when it becomes one local "artisan" supplier supplying slightly-customized variants to each of its thousand Etsy-shop customers? Or, beyond that, what about the case where something is 99% a pre-fab vendor good "base", and then 1% (or less) original work? Would an Etsy seller's signature on a store-bought mug make it "their" work?
    • mcguire 10y ago
      Theoretically, Etsy already has that: https://www.etsy.com/legal/sellers/#allowed https://www.etsy.com/legal/sellers/#allowed The downside, I guess, is how to enforce it. I was on the verge of setting up an Etsy shop (I have a bad habit of going to local auctions and buying china tableware for offensively low prices), but with this sort of thing going on, I'm conflicted.
  • cassieramen 10y ago
    This hit the nail on the head for me. Etsy was all the parts I loved about Ebay mashed with the parts of an art fair I loved. It's been on a slow slide to another Ebay in my eyes.
    • mustacheemperor 10y ago
      And their new CEO is the former head of eBay shopping, here to finish the job for the investors who can't understand they missed this boat already.
  • physcab 10y ago
    If Etsy wants to moderate this, they can enforce GTIN verification. Google Shopping does this so they know how to rank bids for the same items by multiple department stores. Google Shopping requires that you put in some GTIN value (they verify it) or you make up your own Manufacturer Identifier (either you control manufacturing or you have a virtual item). The downside of using your own identifier is that they penalize you with worse cost / rankings but thats the cost of not having a GTIN.
    • duskwuff 10y ago
      How would that help? Each reseller could just create a unique GTIN for each item they resold. Nothing would force them to pick the same GTIN as other resellers of the same item.
  • niftich 10y ago
    Like issues arising in most multiparty content aggregators, whether they're social networks or marketplaces, Etsy's seller situation reduces down to a discovery and reputation problem. - How do you highlight "genuine" artisan products without some laborious process to inspect the seller? - How do you allow new sellers to build the requisite reputation to be trusted as good and legit? How do you do this in a way so they don't get drowned out by more established sellers who have been around longer? - How do you process incoming reviews to prevent voting rings and voting abuse, while nonetheless accumulating information on the seller's performance and trustworthiness? These are difficult, inexact problems that can't be solved from a book and to the best we know, have to be trial-and-error tuned to the particular community in question. Much more so than anything solely technical, the way these problems are solved end up being the secret sauce behind communities, and similarly often responsible for their decline.
    • gwaefawfewaef 10y ago
      We recently purchased a handcrafted rustic patio set from an Etsy seller in Michigan. https://www.etsy.com/shop/naturalcrafting https://www.etsy.com/shop/naturalcrafting There are definitely some legitimate artists on there.
      • ansible 10y ago
        Ditto. I recently upgraded my EDC multi-tool to a Leatherman Surge. I also wanted to carry the bit kit and socket extension. Leatherman's own belt pouch for this is laughably bad: http://www.leatherman.com/surge-premium-leather-sheath-314.html?cgid=accessories#start=1 http://www.leatherman.com/surge-premium-leather-sheath-314.h... After searching around a little, I did find this guy who makes really heavy duty sheaths: https://www.etsy.com/shop/Nayscustomleather https://www.etsy.com/shop/Nayscustomleather It is a bit bulky, but it is likely to last the lifetime of the tool itself. Very good quality.
  • ryandrake 10y ago
    There seems to be some natural law of Internet shopping that ensures that every "Specialized marketplace for X," will, once it becomes popular, inevitably devolve into a flood of thousands of sellers all reselling identical cheap junk from AliExpress for $0.99 + free shipping--to the point where it's impossible to find anything genuine or non-counterfeit.
    • ThrustVectoring 10y ago
      Perhaps "Where it's easy to sell goods, it's easy to sell counterfeit goods"?
    • swalsh 10y ago
      On the plus side, it should be exceptionally easy to identify since they probably don't have custom photos.
      • greglindahl 10y ago
        That works on day 1 of the crackdown, but not on day 15.
        • lightedman 10y ago
          A magic number analysis of the images used in accounts would handle pretty much every duplicate found (which would highly hint at mass-reselling) unless the people got smart enough to figure it out and start jacking with the color palette.
    • icantdrive55 10y ago
      It's up the the Founder to hire 8% more Quality Assurance Agents. When I used to browse Esty, I found it rather easy to spot the imported junk. I have no sympathy for companies that just let it grow out of control. Actually, maybe it's good. There will be room for another clone? (I have nothing against buying material/parts from anywhere in the world. It's when you try to deceive your customers--that's what bothers me. Just when I was getting into Esty--bang all the crap started showing up. And no--I don't want a bunch of rules/requirements to peddle hand made stuff, just some common sence a Founder/Founders should possess. So Fire the current CEO--fine--done. Bring in someone with common sence.)
  • throwaway61891 10y ago
    it's trickier than you think. a VERY common complaint i saw while i was at etsy: "i make bracelets and someone on aliexpress is ripping off my designs and even my photos, what do i do?" i'm not denying that someone would do exactly what you're describing (purchase on ali and resell on etsy), but it's sometimes way more complicated than that.
    • ChuckMcM 10y ago
      This is something which is really a challenge. In many markets discovery is a challenge (how do you create visibility to all of the customers who might be interested in your product) and then operational costs when your concept is discovered. When brainstorming things I heard an idea which I thought was pretty cool, create a "trademark" registry in these bespoke market places. It would work by sending the market maker (Etsy in this case) pictures and a description of an item you are going to sell on the site. They would take those images and descriptions and first verify that nothing else on the site already had both the same look and application, and then they would issue you a "trademark" for the product which you could start selling and advertising. If it was popular and someone tried to make copies, they would not be allowed to sell them on Etsy because when they submitted pictures and descriptions it would be apparent they were too similar to an existing product. It is interesting to consider what the overall effect of such a system would be, we know that it would give a strong 'first mover' advantage (+1 to the sellers) but also prevent price competition (-1 to the buyers). It would help prevent counterfeits (+1 to the buyers) and might limit a seller selling their own product because the copy had already gotten to the market first (-1 to sellers). I put trademark in quotes because while this is exactly the role of trademarks in the US, it is too expensive to pursue trademark violations for a $10 bracelet that you sell may 20 a month of. So you need a locally implemented system that can reduce the cost to implement and as much as possible automate enforcement through policy.
      • ThrustVectoring 10y ago
        Essentially, it's riffing off of Youtube's ContentID system? The "might limit a seller selling their own product" problem is one of the issues with ContentID as well.
  • taysic 10y ago
    I have to completely agree. The times I've bought something on Etsy I've spent hours filtering through the stuff that either didn't seem that interesting or unique or just wasn't handmade. So its more of a time commitment.
  • danso 10y ago
    I had forgotten that Etsy changed its policy on allowing mass manufacturing several years ago: https://www.wired.com/2015/09/etsy-embraces-mass-manufacturing/ https://www.wired.com/2015/09/etsy-embraces-mass-manufacturi... http://abcnews.go.com/Business/etsy-ceo-ipo-mass-production-ruin-websites-handmade/story?id=29416433 http://abcnews.go.com/Business/etsy-ceo-ipo-mass-production-... Alibaba-resells has had a detrimental effect on Kickstarter and Indiegogo-type platforms too. Many of the things submitted to r/shittykickstarters seem to be resells. Indiegogo doesn't mind them, and Kickstarter only stops them when the negative publicity about a campaign gets high enough: https://www.reddit.com/r/shittykickstarters/comments/3gm8xj/raising_460k_with_a_050_product_sourced_from/ https://www.reddit.com/r/shittykickstarters/comments/3gm8xj/...
    • accountyaccount 10y ago
      The amazing thing about Kickstarter knockoffs is that there's a huge market for simply stealing an idea and beating it to market. People have made hundreds of thousands of dollars doing this. It's completely absurd, Kickstarter product transparency is, in hindsight, almost ideal to steal products from.
      • deleted 10y ago
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      • danso 10y ago
        Reminds me of this: "Your brilliant Kickstarter idea could be on sale in China before you’ve even finished funding it" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12724096 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12724096 That said, there's still vibrant opportunity in the other direction, i.e. finding items off of Alibaba, claiming to not only have made those items but that they are best-in-class/first-of-its-kind, and attracting people who don't bother double-checking on Google or Amazon, nevermind Alibaba.
        • deleted 10y ago
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  • ohyes 10y ago
    They need mass produced junk in order to have the revenue to be worth big money. I doubt there's enough genuinely artisanal product out there for them to stick to that business model and still have high growth...
    • jlarocco 10y ago
      I wonder how many viable product ideas have disappeared because the companies were too focused on exponential growth. There's definitely a market for Etsy, but the concept behind it doesn't scale enough to meet crazy startup growth expectations.
  • accountyaccount 10y ago
    Amazon is also having this problem. Their marketplace is flooded with knock-offs and incredibly low-end goods masquerading as cashmere or wool. It's either wholesale garbage or drop-shipped.
  • JohnJamesRambo 10y ago
    It seems like tons of things on AliExpress are just resold on Etsy. I was looking at plant seeds on there and just found and bought the exact same ones with same pics and everything without markup on AliExpress, so it isn't just jewelry and handmade items. That left a bad impression on me about Etsy.
    • semi-extrinsic 10y ago
      You really shouldn't be buying plant seeds off the internet. Invasive species is a big problem, and even if you buy legit oregano (or whatever) seeds, there's a high risk that a couple of the seeds are really something else that's not native to your region.
      • roel_v 10y ago
        What is 'native'? All apple trees are Persian, in the end. Just because there are a few species that outcompete others, doesn't mean that we need to freeze whatever is the current state of geographic dispersion of species to the 'gold standard', that we will defend and maintain at all cost. I explicitly seek out exotic seeds to see how they will behave in my climate. Diversity is good. This whole 'native first' (or rather, 'native only') needs to die already.
        • semi-extrinsic 10y ago
          Well, there's quite a few examples of invasive species that have constituted significant threats to human, animal or plant health, for instance. Like malaria, the bubonic plague, minor nuisances like that. For some examples from more recent times, the US timber industry has spent tens of millions of dollars fighting the Asian long-horned beetle, the citrus industry has an extensive quarantine program in place fighting Asian Citrus Psyllid, invasive varroa mite are part of the reason for the strong decline in honeybee populations, etc. Now you may say, "but I'm not importing mosquitos, just seeds", but really with Chinese seed suppliers with unknown QA and no knowledge of the ecosystem in your region, you run a real risk of introducing fungi, bacteria, insects etc. that can spread and do serious damage. Do us all a favour and buy seeds in your own country, where at least some QA and vetting for big risk factors has been performed.
  • stevewillows 10y ago
    Its interesting to see the path Etsy has taken. IIRC, around 2007 or so they closed all of the 'vintage' shops because they weren't handmade. They quickly went back on that and restored those accounts. (In 2014 they also tried removing 'vintage' from 'browse', which resulted in a lot of backlash.) Its a shame to see them relaxing the standards over the years. In 2007 their blog even acknowledged the mass-produced items and the lack of support for these products [1] [1] https://blog.etsy.com/news/2007/cultivating-a-strong-community/ https://blog.etsy.com/news/2007/cultivating-a-strong-communi...
    • wilgertvelinga 10y ago
      Maybe the future of Etsy is with Vintage instead of handmade? I think it is easier to distinguish between vintage and factory made then handcrafted and factory made. For example: https://www.etsy.com/shop/BonjourBizarre https://www.etsy.com/shop/BonjourBizarre . I'm pretty sure you could not find any of those items on AliExpress.
      • stevewillows 10y ago
        Definitely. I think a combination of handmade and 'curated' is fantastic --- just not 'curated items from AliExpress.' The overarching issue is that Etsy doesn't appear to recognize their users and what they're actually looking for. They've allowed for too much noise over the years.
        • TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
          The overarching issue is that profit trumps everything else. I don't think Etsy "allowed noise". It's more that becoming a stick-on-folksy tat [1] bazaar was infinitely more profitable than trying to be a genuine source of lovingly crafted artisanal hand-mades. Etsy seems to have enough users who are just fine with this. I wonder if the real story is that other sources of tat have become more competitive and more widely known. Maybe there is no mass exodus of outraged craft buyers - Etsy's customers are simply shopping for the same things elsewhere, and paying less for them by cutting out the middlesite. Etsy's profits didn't seem unduly harmed when they opened up their market, so the exodus theory seems unlikely. [1] In case "tat" isn't a thing in USian English: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tat http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tat
  • jasonlotito 10y ago
    My wife has a store on etsy selling handbags, and frankly, the traffic has gone done over the past year. She has a great reputation, and she still makes sales, but not because of Etsy. It's simply a store front for her where she can direct people that she finds via other avenues, such as Facebook and referrals. I imagine part of the reason of the decline is the fact that she focuses on higher end handbags, and doesn't try to compete on price. I've told her that she's isn't going to compete with Asia on price, so focus on quality and custom work. Not to mention the fact that Etsy has done nothing to improve the sellers experience in years. Sure, they put out some new way to design your store front with something more custom, but practically speaking, it lacks critical features. She literally sent a customer to the store to pay for the bag via Etsy, and the customer couldn't find the PayPal button to pay because they didn't offer PayPal through the custom storefront. It's really bad when your store prevents a legitimate customer from making a purchase, and that's literally what you are selling. Seriously.
    • toomuchtodo 10y ago
      Why not move to shopify? Disclaimer: no relation, just a satisfied user.
  • blhack 10y ago
    This is tougher than it seems on the surface. A few years ago, I was involved in planning and running a maker "fest". We invited makers, and artists to the festival to show off their projects, and some of them wanted to sell things. A not-insignificant number of participants who wanted to sell things were just reselling things you could buy at Michaels, or buy online (in bulk) for cheap. Sometimes with just a little modification, or maybe a creative recombination, or repackaging. The problem is that you basically have to examine every single item, and then personally decide if it qualifies as art or not. That's a lot harder than it sounds, and can quickly devolve into a judgemental mess that nobody wants to participate in (we wanted to encourage makers, not subject them to some "must be at least this cool" test, which is scary for people). Imagine the PR fallout for etsy the first time they tell somebody that their handmade widgets look like mass produced junk. I think they're in a really tough spot. When they weighed the options, my guess is that they realized that it would be best to let the consumers just decide what they want to buy.
    • TulliusCicero 10y ago
      > I think they're in a really tough spot. When they weighed the options, my guess is that they realized that it would be best to let the consumers just decide what they want to buy. ...but then the problem is, what makes them better or different from any other storefront? If there's a ton of mass-produced product on Etsy, why would I want to shop there rather than on Amazon?
      • blhack 10y ago
        >what makes them better or different from any other storefront? Brand, or...genre? I'm having a difficult time finding the word for it, but there is definitely a type of thing I go to etsy to look for. For instance, this: https://www.etsy.com/listing/159631469/aztec-death-whistle-terrifying-roaring?ref=pr_shop https://www.etsy.com/listing/159631469/aztec-death-whistle-t... (which is such a cool piece with such a cool story!). I have no idea where else to go to even look for something like that. When I wanted one, etsy is the first thing that came to mind. So I think that the mass produced stuff hurts browsing, but if you know what you are looking for, it's still easy to cut throgh the noise.
  • asafira 10y ago
    Why are poor reviews not enough to combat this? (in the long term)
    • WillPostForFood 10y ago
      Every poor review represents a failure and an unhappy customer. You want to stop that before it happens.
    • nommm-nommm 10y ago
      Because reviews are extremely easy to game.
  • lobster_johnson 10y ago
    For someone who is into vintage design and handmade interior design pieces, Etsy is still top notch, though. There are some emerging competitors such as Chairish (overpriced), AptDeco (very little worth collecting), 1stDibs (hilariously overpriced) etc. And there's still eBay. But Etsy is still beating all of them. I have also yet to come across a bad seller there. Everyone I have bought from have not only provided a superb product, but also packaged it immaculately. The search and discovery isn't great, I admit. (It's particularly hard to browse without being deluged with kitsch -- horrific "shabby chic" pieces made to look worn, or furniture made from old metal pipes or driftwood. They are lacking a "style" dimension.)
    • coredog64 10y ago
      I miss regretsy.com. It had the ability to shame some of those vendors while being entertainment.
  • mseidl 10y ago
    Just out of curiosity how much did you pay for the necklace from etsy?
  • rdslw 10y ago
    Estsy is doomed because of this reason you stated. I call it '(downard) inflation of expectations'. And there is a VERY GOOD information what happens with all this great 'do not eveil', do not harm, only for the consumer' startups the moment they have investors: “The company’s historical pattern of ill-advised spending has completely obfuscated the extremely attractive underlying marketplace business model,” said by external activist investor in addition to: “We are fully prepared to take any actions we believe are necessary to protect the best interests of all Etsy shareholders.”
  • StreamBright 10y ago
    Less is more. I think this case is a prime example of how chasing higher revenue gets you in trouble in the long run. Amazon also suffers from this, just look at the recent cases of fake products.
  • devopsproject 10y ago
    My wife bought something at a "local artist fair". They didn't even bother to remove the "made in china" sticker.
    • faet 10y ago
      All of my local farmers markets are full of aliexpress crap. At least they're smart enough to remove tags. I've asked what kind of solder they used for a specific piece. "uhhh. just the normal stuff".
  • crescentfresh 10y ago
    I remember the one-and-only time I used Etsy. It was for my wife for mother's day. I found a handmade ring that had holders for 3 tiny stones. I contacted the seller and asked if she could use 3 gem stones for each of our two children and pearl for their mom. It looked like I was gonna knock it out of the park for mother's day, she was gonna love it. I paid. Mother's day came and went, the seller's Etsy store went. After months of back and forth, Etsy issued me a refund. I lost that marriage, I guess it was the beginning of the end lol.
  • Oblouk 10y ago
    Agreed, I tend to stay away from anything taking more than a week to arrive. I recently made my first purchase on Etsy for mother's day for my wife. Her father recently passed and I got his fingerprint on a necklace from https://etsy.com/shop/RachelRothJewelry https://etsy.com/shop/RachelRothJewelry I received terrific customer service, the shop owner went way out of her way to edit the fingerprint which was basically a blob. I received the print a couple days ago and for about 1/5 of what the funeral home would have charged for the same thing, even after editing. So there are definitely some great shops on etsy but I did have to look around a lot to find a shop which could deliver this in under 2 weeks.
• benwilber0 10y ago
  I browsed and bought a lot of stuff off Etsy about 5 years ago. Anymore it's hard to find anything decent unless I discover someone's Etsy store by some other means. Which is becoming less and less frequent. I don't think I've purchased anything there for maybe a year.
  • wingworks 10y ago
    My sister sells handmade art on etsy and she's seen a big drop in sales recently, and she's been looking at other places to sell on, where do you go to buy these things these days?
• flukus 10y ago
  No monthly who's firing thread for may?
  • rajathagasthya 10y ago
    There was one today, but it seems to have disappeared.
    • vyrotek 10y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14247701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14247701
• tedmiston 10y ago
  > "We are fully prepared to take any actions we believe are necessary to protect the best interests of all Etsy shareholders." What exactly are they insinuating?
  • accountyaccount 10y ago
    fuck everyone else who isn't a shareholder, especially you
• jph 10y ago
  I spend a lot of time with Etsy sellers, all one-person micro-businesses creating fully-handcraft items. They tell me there are three major problems that are all interconnected: 1) search is poor, 2) cheap knockoffs swamp the search results, 3) there's no obvious way to emphasize truly handcraft items. All the sellers are experimenting with alternate platforms, such as Shopify, Wordpress, Wix, etc.
  • e15ctr0n 10y ago
    You have only half the picture because the three problems you've listed have existed for quite some time. Here are some new problems that are driving more sellers off Etsy: 4) October 2013: Etsy redefines "handcrafted" and allows Etsy sellers to get "help" with making and shipping their items. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/12/opinion/etsys-industrial-revolution.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/12/opinion/etsys-industrial-r... 5) September 2015: Etsy openly embraces mass manufacturing https://www.wired.com/2015/09/etsy-embraces-mass-manufacturing/ https://www.wired.com/2015/09/etsy-embraces-mass-manufacturi... 6) October 2016: Etsy forces sellers to enroll in Google Shopping ads and spend their own money promoting their items. On the surface it looks innocent enough but most sellers are not sophisticated enough to run their own ad campaigns. They expected Etsy to provide that service as a marketplace. With no traffic coming in from Google any more, sales have tanked. https://blog.etsy.com/news/2016/introducing-google-shopping-ads-for-etsy-sellers/ https://blog.etsy.com/news/2016/introducing-google-shopping-... 7) April 2017: Etsy forces sellers to direct all revenue to Etsy's own bank account (no more Paypal), or the seller can't sell on Etsy any more. https://www.etsy.com/teams/7716/announcements/discuss/18325841/ https://www.etsy.com/teams/7716/announcements/discuss/183258... The deadline to comply is May 17 so expect many shops to die on May 18 because shop owners are loath to turn over their bank account information and personal identity proof to Etsy. https://www.etsy.com/teams/7722/discussions/discuss/18322006/ https://www.etsy.com/teams/7722/discussions/discuss/18322006... I can confirm that I know at least one seller who set up their shop on Shopify in January this year. Here are some current Etsy forum threads discussing the situation from the point of view of the buyer as well as the seller: Josh Silverman, Here's What You need to Know from Sellers https://www.etsy.com/teams/7722/discussions/discuss/18351569/ https://www.etsy.com/teams/7722/discussions/discuss/18351569... Out of curiosity... reasons you won't buy from etsy stores? https://www.etsy.com/teams/7722/discussions/discuss/18232946/ https://www.etsy.com/teams/7722/discussions/discuss/18232946...
• artursapek 10y ago
  Wow, this has been a bad day for tech stocks.
• ahmeni 10y ago
  It's bizarre to see how Etsy went from producing a significant amount of technical software and community engagement a few years ago and then suddenly stopped. Their GitHub is a testament to this sudden dropoff. Was there anything ever mentioned about why they went from super public about things like dashboarding to nothing?
  • mason55 10y ago
    Code as Craft was one of the best engineering blogs ever at a time when the concept was pretty rare.
    • on_and_off 10y ago
      Wow, what a flashback ! Code as Craft was one of my favorite blogs back when I was a junior dev.
  • throwaway61891 10y ago
    former etsy employee here: lots of reasons, but around that time etsy invested heavily in infrastructure and tools like statsd resulted from it. the last few years the focus has been mostly on product, and product teams usually don't produce the kind of significant technology contributions you're talking about (huge generalization there obviously). this is more of a personal opinion, but my experience was that the last few years etsy has focused less on technical solutions to problems and more on "people solutions" - if something is inefficient they look for non-technical solutions to that problem, sometimes fruitlessly. as you can imagine in that environment, things like statsd don't get made.
    • look_lookatme 10y ago
      I just assumed everyone booked it after the IPO.
      • throwaway61891 10y ago
        not really. some people, but very few all things considered.
• baccheion 10y ago
  Etsy should just die. They've been in a perpetual state of "not quite making it" for more than 10 years.
• badloginagain 10y ago
  What's the deal with the "Activist investor" that is forcing these changes? Is this a common thing in the investment world? Does anyone have deeper insight into this?
  • charlesdm 10y ago
    Yahoo is a basic example of activist investing. Activist investors try to increase shareholder value in the companies they invest in, in any way possible, to achieve above average returns for their investors. If that means burning down the house (e.g. selling a company in bits and pieces, or pushing certain strategic changes) then they will. Apple has plenty of cash on their books. If an activist shareholder could somehow force them to spend all that cash on buybacks (-> significant share price increase), they can make a nice buck that way. That's actually what Carl Icahn did, over the last few years.
    • bpodgursky 10y ago
      Yahoo was a bloated carcass by the time activist investors got involved. Cutting the fat, selling off parts, and returning some value to investors was the only fair outcome.
      • adrr 10y ago
        Yahoo stock price went up 400% in 5 years. Investors made out quite well.
        • gaius 10y ago
          ... almost entirely off their stake in BABA. YHOO was effectively just an ETF invested in just one stock, their actual business had negative value.
          • charlesdm 10y ago
            Meaning it was a good activist play? It was trading negatively because there was a chance Yahoo management would sell that BABA stake, and use that money to fund their operating business.
• quotemstr 10y ago
  Welcome to the bursting of the second tech bubble. It's been slow so far, but it'll accelerate soon. Hang on! Why is it that on these threads, nobody seriously considers the possibility of a secular decline? Fundraising, after all, has slowed, real estate in south bay has softened, and interest rates are rising (making tech relatively less attractive). Not to mention the scandals that have erased billions; see Theranos. Look at Yik Yak collapsing. A few isolated incidents is to be expected, but there seems to be an emerging pattern. There's a real possibility that articles like this reflect a real bubble bursting.
  • thesmallestcat 10y ago
    You said "a bursting of the bubble," and then asked why people aren't considering a decline. I think most people accept that investors are getting pickier, but that's not the same as your first paragraph (the sole contents of the original comment) suggesting a bubble burst, which by definition is a violent event.
  • dkarapetyan 10y ago
    How is mismanagement and terrible user experience about the tech bubble bursting? How are you making that leap?
    • andrewguenther 10y ago
      My guess is that the argument is because companies with mismanagement and terrible user experiences are getting gobs of funding and going public. Not that I necessarily agree, but I can see the argument.
  • a13n 10y ago
    > Fundraising, after all, has slowed This was definitely true Q2-4 last year, but it's made a come back. It feels to me like 2016 was the year where fundraising "corrected" (more accurate than slowed) from "prioritize growth above anything" to "show a path to profitability or you're screwed". I'm even starting to hear from founder peers that I should raise because the seed market's hot again. I think it could easily heat up even more. Theranos is a scandalous outlier. Yik Yak had no path to profitability. Have you been watching the stock market recently? AMZN, TSLA, FB, GOOGL, AAPL have all set huge all time highs.
• pcurve 10y ago
  Based on reading through all the comments, it sounds like Etsy should've never gone public. A lot of people saw this coming a mile away.
  • throwaway61891 10y ago
    eh, etsy should've never gone public because etsy was trying to be a company that put "people above profits", which is extremely difficult to do as a public company. market backlash against that kind of sentiment is severe. see also: american airlines.
    • exclusiv 10y ago
      I scraped all the Etsy stores about 4 years ago and ~80% of stores had never sold more than 20 items. Ever. In aggregate over several years for many stores. They started as "people above profits" but in reality it was all resellers because that's what did volume. They turned the other cheek and allowed them to take over. They eventually changed policies and alienated a lot of real artisans. That strategy boosted revenue of course but removed their core differentiator. It's hard to turn down revenue and growth, even moreso when investors are involved. But like most empires, you eventually fall from overextension.
• DanBlake 10y ago
  I can only add my experience with etsy on the affiliate side. TheHunt.com previously sent them significant traffic (as in, hundreds of thousands of visitors) via their affiliate program. We then got a email that they were going to change our rates to be something like 5x less than our current rates because we were high volume. Needless to say we removed every etsy product on our site and replaced them with amazon/farfetch/etc.. products within a week. We actually ended up tripling our revenue off of the etsy traffic so I am glad it happened. It did show a lack of appreciation for traffic on their end they were so willing to let us go without a fight. No room to budge on rates or even suggest a alternative- Not sure if that was management or department based decision but it was certainly enlightening.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • TorKlingberg 10y ago
    Affiliate marketing involves so much scams and tricks that I can understand they are limiting it.
• eliudnir 10y ago
  I ordered a rustic pipe desk from Etsy a while back and the seller was not able to deliver the item on time. He/she communicated the issue so it wasn't that big of a deal for me. I had a prearranged vacation coming up while waiting for the item to be finished and sent, so things took a little bit longer then expected on both ends. When I finally got back home and put the desk together, I noticed that there were items missing and some things had not been packaged well so they were damaged/scuffed in shipping. Most of the issues were minor and I decided to not make a stink about it with the seller as I could easily work around and fix the problems. I did however want to leave a review of my experience for the seller to be made aware and future buyers to be warned. Etsy's policy was however to deny me to review an item outside of a certain time window. I emailed Etsy's customer service to petition that I should be allowed to leave a review even though my window had passed given that the seller could not deliver in the time he/she had promised. Etsy's replies and refusal to allow this left a permanent impression on me and I will never spend another dollar there as a result of this ordeal.
  • contingencies 10y ago
    This is why centralized marketplaces in general are, in my opinion, on the way out. In the future people with something to offer will be able to offer it without being routed through one-size-fits-all platforms who want to control your options for communication, payment, reputation, shipping, etc. in a "my way or the highway" attitude. If one takes this perspective, then Ebay, Taobao, and Etsy are all anachronisms, though Amazon has smartly enhanced delivery speeds by focusing on logistics and will therefore maintain relevance. Why can't I barter for goods? Why can't I route around Paypal, credit cards, or USD? In the future, these will be normal consumer decisions.
    • throwaway61891 10y ago
      i dunno, people like those centralized solutions because managing communication, payment, reputation, shipping, etc. are a huge pain in the ass. i mean even if you look at major alternatives to etsy (like shopify), they still are "centralized" in that regard. buyers also need some sort of discovery platform - even if it's just google, then google becomes the centralized platform, no?
• JohnnyConatus 10y ago
  This should have happened sooner but it took longer than they expected to knit a pink slip.
• robattila128 10y ago
  I've put basically no work in marketing and no money in advertising yet I've got a lot of sales already in the last few years. I really hope they stick around a long time! eventually I want to take my shop seriously.
  • vincnetas 10y ago
    What are you selling?
• 0xADADA 10y ago
  I looked into this, because a bracelet I bought for my wife looked great on Etsy, but when it arrived, it was obviously shitty chinese-knock-off quality Here is the bracelet I bought as a gift, $52 https://www.etsy.com/transaction/1238204808 https://www.etsy.com/transaction/1238204808 Here is the same fucking thing, on AliExpress for $6.52 a piece, or you can buy them in lots of 6 for $20. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/24k-Gold-Electroplated-Edge-Mixed-Color-Bar-Quartz-Druzy-Bangle-Bracelet/32765306497.html?ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_2_10152_10065_10151_10130_10068_436_10136_10137_10157_10060_10138_10155_10062_10156_10154_10056_10055_10054_10059_10099_10103_10102_10096_10052_10053_10142_10107_10050_10051_10084_10083_10080_10082_10081_10178_10110_10111_10112_10113_10114_10181_10183_10182_10078_10079_10073_10070_10123,searchweb201603_16,ppcSwitch_5&btsid=d1696a11-7f72-4896-8629-496304840bb6&algo_expid=7cd84419-e60d-44b9-bce5-030e3106d0ab-11&algo_pvid=7cd84419-e60d-44b9-bce5-030e3106d0ab https://www.aliexpress.com/item/24k-Gold-Electroplated-Edge-... fucking fuck.
  • ryanwaggoner 10y ago
    Your etsy link doesn't work for me
    • paulddraper 10y ago
      Or me
    • pja 10y ago
      It’s a transaction ID rather than a link to the actual seller’s page.
  • lightedman 10y ago
    I'll make you something next time you're looking. http://www.etsy.com/shop/DesertFoxMinerals http://www.etsy.com/shop/DesertFoxMinerals I actually go out and mine 95% of my material, refine it myself, and make it myself. I teach lapidary classes for California's oldest mineralogical society.
• fujipadam 10y ago
  Maybe ignorant question. Why would one choose Etsy over Amazon
  • strictnein 10y ago
    Etsy was originally a marketplace for artisan or custom goods that would allow you to buy directly from the artists/craftsmen.
    • bpicolo 10y ago
      And now that they aren't, there's new opportunity for a marketplace for artisan goods perhaps. Heh.
  • electricEmu 10y ago
    Well, a consumer generally visits Amazon for cheap, not quality, goods. Etsy is supposed to be the place a consumer goes to purchase small batch, hand made, custom items.
    • j-walker 10y ago
      Which, from my experience, isn't the case anymore. It's people selling cheap Chinese charms on some string.
  • Neliquat 10y ago
    That you would even ask that is exactly why they are failing.
  • slouch 10y ago
    Custom orders. I just had a rubber stamp created from an illustrator file via Etsy.
• gech 10y ago
  Is there a deficiency in some cultures (Chinese, also maybe Jewish) that lends itself to profit above quality?
  • Neliquat 10y ago
    Quality can only exist when people are willing to pay for it. And often, they are not. Making money in that case is not a deficincy, but a skill.
  • dang 10y ago
    This is race trolling. We ban accounts that do things like that, so please don't do anything like that again. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14251703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14251703 and marked it off-topic.
• yalogin 10y ago
  On a related note, how is Pinterest doing? How long can it survive as an independent social network. It focuses solely on one thing but how much is that pie growing?
  • wingworks 10y ago
    I try to avoid Pinterest at all cost (as a user), it's filled with crap these days.
  • cLeEOGPw 10y ago
    Can't a business live without growing any more? The mean of business to survive is to stay positive, not exponentially positive.
• debacle 10y ago
  If Etsy can't fix discoverability it's dead. It's the only problem. There's so much low quality, zero effort, dropshipped crap that there's no real value to the platform anymore.
• mathattack 10y ago
  Is there any kind of conflict of interest when a board member names themselves CEO? Or is this considered OK in corporate governance circles? (Or is just "Beware when swimming with the sharks"?)
  • harryh 10y ago
    He is interim CEO. This is very common when a CEO is fired and there is no one internal to the company who is appropriate to take over. Someone has to do the job so the board member does it for a while while they look for someone to hire.
• throwit2mewillU 10y ago
  Always dreadful to hear this. Years of best practices in product/engineering in blogs (DevOps, I also remember their endless scrolling A/B tests!), youtube, conferences, then product doesn't work, company fires people.
• dboreham 10y ago
  Interesting in that I came up with the idea that is basically etsy in 2000 (as I'm sure thousands of others did), after noticing that various artist/artisan friends I had made after moving to Montana had no viable way to sell their work on the 'net. I still have the code for the site somewhere in my projects directory, called "asite" for "Artists' Site". Anyway, I got distracted by an influx of work, a new baby, and ultimately other startup ideas. Good to know I would have wasted my time trying to finish and launch that company...
  • code_duck 10y ago
    Etsy is very successful overall. They've been dogged by poor management the entire time... Especially the founder. He had very confused visions that were wildly ambitious with ridiculous ideas, ignored the practicalities of the actual business they were in, and regularly shot himself, his staff and his customers in the foot. I wish someone else had done it. The way this worked out has hurt the segment they tried to serve - small business artists who want to bring their work to the public.
• jv0010 10y ago
  I really think the start of a lot of marketplaces closing down. Facebook has become so easy to use and quick to list it will be dominant one
• chx 10y ago
  Thing is, even my favorite Etsy artists (I have bought five Unicorgis from Squidbrains...) I have found via social media and not through Etsy. If they were selling on their own website, Shopify or whatnot, my willingness to buy and discovery process would be the same. I just do not see the value in Etsy. I am sure there is some but I do not know what.
• fffernan 10y ago
  Etsy alternative: https://www.thegrommet.com/ https://www.thegrommet.com/
• mendelk 10y ago
  Not sure if it's related to this, but I was scheduled to have an interview with them on 1/24/2017 for a Full Stack position, and an hour before our scheduled time, they sent me an email that "due to some changes in hiring priority this role is currently on hold", and cancelled the interview. I wasn't too impressed :)
  • alexpetralia 10y ago
    I interviewed with them just a few months ago for an analytics role - very friendly and intelligent people. I was impressed. #anecdotes
• perseusprime11 10y ago
  I moved away from Etsy once I started comparing prices to EBay . Products on Etsy is overpriced for some reason.