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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 smal

• 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 9y 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 9y ago
          The community of glass artists I'm in has sold tons on facebook over the last few years. FB has always let you sell in Groups, and unlike many online venues, has zero problem with art glass pipes. It was the #1 place to sell online 2011-2013, then the community switched to Instagram. Instagram has since been the #1 place where people hold auctions and sell glass since then, and that's from $10 pendants to $500 tubes and up to $10, 20, 30k pieces. So, to sell on FB, you say hey, i have this piece for $300, here's pics, I take paypal.
      • 9y 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 9y 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
      [deleted]
    • 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
        [deleted]
      • 10y ago
• 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 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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 9y ago
    Because reviews are extremely easy to game.
• lobster_johnson 9y 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 9y ago
    I miss regretsy.com. It had the ability to shame some of those vendors while being entertainment.
• mseidl 9y ago
  Just out of curiosity how much did you pay for the necklace from etsy?
• rdslw 9y 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 9y 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 9y ago
  My wife bought something at a "local artist fair". They didn't even bother to remove the "made in china" sticker.
  • faet 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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.