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It does seem like Etsy has basically become eBay. I used to buy from Etsy all the time, but at this point, I have zero trust that I would actually be buying som

It does seem like Etsy has basically become eBay. I used to buy from Etsy all the time, but at this point, I have zero trust that I would actually be buying something handmade from a real, independent creator. Which of course means I just won't buy from them at all. I don't know why Etsy seems to welcome this instead of doing everything they possibly can to fight it.

redisman 5y ago
I would guess it jives better with SEO garbage and brings more sales in the short term
cjsawyer 5y ago
Sounds like short term greed overcoming desire to hold onto their unique gimmick that made customers initially care
- alecbz 5y ago
  Yeah... that may seem naive (to value the "niche" over actual revenue numbers), but once etsy loses its original niche, I'm not sure what differentiates them from Amazon/eBay/etc. => their brand dries up => revenue eventually dwindles? What stops this?
  - dylan604 5y ago
    >What stops this? Nothing really. Most people do not pay attention to how the sausage is made. They don't care if the car service they use was a total toxic fratbro culture using unsustainable pricing to lure in users. They just wanted "cheap" rides without caring about why they were cheap. Just as another comment on this topic suggested they don't care about original as long as the thing they want is cheaper. So no, I don't really think that educated populace will stop supporting shit practices because they can't be bothered.
    - alecbz 5y ago
      Well I'm not talking about people supporting Etsy though, I'm talking about Etsy itself. Like one possible story is that Etsy does this and it's shitty for sellers and maybe a lot of buyers too, but it ends up making Etsy successful in the long-run so they don't care. That's not the story I'm telling though, it's one where Etsy chases medium-term revenue at the cost of their long-term niche and thus their long-term success. If me and GP are right, in theory Etsy itself ought to not want this to happen.
      - dylan604 5y ago
        But the only way that Etsy can measure any decision they make is with the number of transactions from which they receive a cut. If they allow mass produced items to be sold that increases the number of transactions, then that's the bottom line numbers they care about. If they force a rule that it has to be small batch hand crafted type of items to be sold, then the per transaction numbers go way down. Bean counters and stock analysts don't like those numbers, and they are after all the people any public corp are most concerned.
        alecbz 5y ago
        Yes, but the interesting question I think is why the bean counters are given free reign to make decisions that ultimately lead to the company's downfall[0]. Like what if you had a fine dining restaurant where things are going okay, and someone comes in and is like "Hey guys, I noticed we're spending a lot of time washing plates. We'd be able to serve X% more customers if we just like scraped off the food and did a quick rinse." The restaurant tries it, it works for a bit until diners see specs of old food on their plates, the restaurant's reputation tanks, they lose all their customers, and they go out of business. I think most restaurants are structured such that this does not happen. The restaurants correctly see that even though it seems like doing this might make some graphs go up in the short-term, it will actually make everything terrible in the long-term, and so they don't do it. And again, this isn't about like, benevolent restaurant owners valuing the custom experience even if it's bad for the bottom line. Washing the plates thoroughly is good for the bottom line; any sufficiently intelligent restaurant owner shouldn't listen to the bean counter even if the owner's just a greedy capitalist. (This reads enough like a Scott Alexander post that I'm pretty sure I might just actually be copying one; I think he wrote something along these lines once.) [0]: Again, all of this is precipitated on the idea that actually Etsy will fail once it loses its niche, since it'll just get beaten by Amazon/eBay/etc. when it's just like any other seller of goods. If what's really going to happen is that Etsy will do fine as a company, then this becomes a totally different shape of problem: "the market rewards things that we actually maybe don't want for society".
- JAlexoid 5y ago
  What's their unique gimmick? Paying for mass produced quality weekend project items?.. Tie dyed tees at 3x the price? I bought from Etsy once, but even then the items were recommended to me via Instagram. Etsy in 2014 was already filled with poorly made "artsy" crap at double the price. No idea why people are so excited about it.
ineedasername 5y ago
>I don't know why Etsy seems to welcome this I've sold on Etsy for a while as a hobby side business. The change seems to happen after their IPO. It felt like pretty quickly after that there began a trickle of incremental changes. A rule that allowed "manufacturing partners" really opened a huge loophole though, and in general things went down hill rapidly over the last 2-3 years.
- JAlexoid 5y ago
  To be fair - you really can't do volume sales without outsourcing manufacturing. There's only so much you can get from handcrafting.
  - christop1957 5y ago
    That's a little cynical. We don't make the screws that go into our furniture or smelt the iron ore that goes into the steel pipe fittings or grow the trees or generate the electricity that supports distribution of this thread. But we do feel like we make each piece that we sell on Etsy.
    - JAlexoid 5y ago
      It's not cynical. I'm saying that crafting community isn't large enough to produce enough goods to sustain Etsy. Therefore wholesale outsourcing of production is the only way. These days you can outsource original product manufacturing in moderate quantities as well. Doesn't mean that you're not the artist behind them. I make electronics and have most of my PCBs fully prebuilt by mass manufacturer.
      - ineedasername 5y ago
        >I make electronics and have most of my PCBs fully prebuilt by mass manufacturer. I don't have a problem with "manufacturing partners" in this sense. It's when that loophole is used to justify or hide countless sellers simply white labelling items that is the problem. If I make a design and have a manufacture stamp out copies in the thousands, but then offer customization that I add JIT for each order (a hallmark of etsy) then that's fine. But if I take a $0.50 beaded necklace bought in bulk on Alibaba and resell then at $10 with not other value added, that does not fit the supposed mission of Etsy. Take that to Amazon, Ebay, & it's okay. But it's absolutely not within the handcrafted marketplace, even when "handcrafted" is loosely defined, that Etsy is supposed to be.
IgorPartola 5y ago
Exactly. It sucks because I have bought absolute garbage from there. I know the seller matters just like on eBay but the trust that I’ll be getting a craftsman-made item when buying from Etsy is now firmly lost outside of specific stores. It is actively user hostile now.
mardifoufs 5y ago
Ironically enough Ebay is probably the most trustworthy platform atm. It might sound insane but eBay listings are usually pretty clear on the origin and condition of the items. You know when the seller is from China, or if the item is used, and while there are tons of scams and misleading descriptions... for the most part sellers are usually pretty honest in the item descriptions. I don't mind buying knock offs as long as I know that they aren't the real deal, and cheap items are at least priced accordingly. Which is not the case on Amazon.
- KingOfCoders 5y ago
  I also buy (after 10+ years) much more from eBay than Amazon. First for trust, second they often have more specialized filters than amazon (E.g. cardboard box sizes).
  - kingcharles 5y ago
    eBay's search gets worse every year, but Amazon's sucks way harder. As you say, at least you can filter better on eBay (although their price filters are getting vague like Amazon).
- reilly3000 5y ago
  I dropped my Prime membership over a year ago and have no regrets. eBay has made that possible. I’ve gotten consistently fair prices and quick shipping, and ironically fewer quality issues. Target and Costco have also become a bigger factor as well with free shipping and in store returns. My cloud computing has moved to GCP, DO, and my homelab (built from eBay stuff!). I still use Amazon if I have no other option. I just pay for shipping, but surprise… it’s usually still free over $25. #cancelprime
  - function_seven 5y ago
    I think I'm headed the same way you went. It's crazy how these 2 platforms seemed to have switched places. Several years ago, Amazon would have been the place to do for scam-free purchasing, and eBay was the shady site that you had to do your due diligence on before buying. More and more it's the opposite. I have to wrangle with searches and filters on Amazon to try and avoid the "fake" brands and knockoff goods. eBay is easier and often cheaper to boot.
Workaccount2 5y ago
Etsy makes money on transactions. More transactions = more money. Most users of etsy do not care about source or authenticity. They just want what they see for the price listed. Losing the handmade trinket shops is meaningless compared to the full scale China operation doing 100x more business. Customers by and large cannot tell the difference nor do they actually care too much.
- after_care 5y ago
  I disagree. Having a reputable online handmade trinket shop was very valuable because it was the largest and had the best brand recognition. Being a Chinese factory retail outlet is less valuable because _everyone_ is a Chinese factory retail outlet.
  - Workaccount2 5y ago
    We just have to solve which market has a larger space to grow in: Market for cheap Chinese goods. Market for handmade trinkets. I have a pretty good feeling that I know which one is more profitable. I'm sure investors know too.
    - TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
      Small businesses have absolutely no obligation to work for "investors."
      - ehvatum 5y ago
        That really depends on how the small business is funded.
      - Cederfjard 5y ago
        Is Etsy, a public company with a valuation in the tens of billions, still a ”small business”?
      - JAlexoid 5y ago
        Every business has an obligation to work for the investor.
DanTheManPR 5y ago
I started out selling my own hobby stuff on eBay, and then switched to Etsy because I appreciated the way it presented my products as a storefront. It seemed more "legitimate". But with the way things are going, I'm ironically thinking about moving primarily back to eBay and just embracing the free-for-all there.
slg 5y ago
How much demand is there truly for handmade products from independent creators? It is possible that Etsy has decided that is no longer a market that is worth pursuing and they would rather try to compete with Amazon and AliExpress. It is often better to have a small piece of a huge pie than the majority of a tiny pie.
- TigeriusKirk 5y ago
  There's more than enough demand to support a good-sized business mediating such sales. However, there's not enough to demand to keep the shareholders of an IPO'ed company happy. And there's the problem.
  - JAlexoid 5y ago
    Considering that the strike is complaining about hike in fees - it doesn't seem like there is enough demand. Is Etsy such a good aggregator, that setting up a storefront with Square is that hard?
    - dangrossman 5y ago
      Etsy has somewhere on the order of 100 million active buyers, searching Etsy for goods to buy every month. If you set up a storefront on Square, you start out with 0 active buyers, searching your storefront 0 times every month. Marketplaces bring tremendous value to small sellers.
      - JAlexoid 5y ago
        So... Let me get this straight - they get a lot of customers off other people's work, but aren't willing to pay for the increased costs of providing them those extra customers. These Etsy people sound like entitled brats.
- naravara 5y ago
  The pattern with these sorts of Web 2.0 companies is grimly familiar now. They start promising more access and reach for small creators. They get a lot of small creators in the door with the ease of use and cutting out of the old middle-men. Then they implement a bunch of mechanisms to foster lock-in and fleece the small creators in ways that aren't much better than the old middle-men (though, admittedly, with more reach). It's like one of those fish traps you put in a current where the fish swim in but can't turn around to get away.
Nextgrid 5y ago
> I don't know why Etsy seems to welcome this instead of doing everything they possibly can to fight it. They can raise short-term profits this way. The problem is that there's only so much rent you can seek before it becomes unprofitable for sellers. It turns out that "industrial-scale" sellers, copycats and outright scammers have lower operating costs which means they can stick around and replace the independent creators that have essentially been priced out of the market. Of course, in the long-term it will be the death of the company, but by that time, bonuses would've been paid, raises would've been awarded, stock would've vested and lots of "shareholder value" would've been created. They've also recently bought Depop for a significant amount of money and I'm not sure if it's profitable, so they might be intentionally cannibalizing their earlier product to make money to prop up the next one.
- JAlexoid 5y ago
  Independent, small scale sellers aren't priced out. Cost of doing business includes sales costs - that needs to be integral to the price. What means is that these craftspeople don't produce enough value for the markets they are targeting.
  - Pet_Ant 5y ago
    Well part of the value is being handcrafted and being original. If others lie about the first, and can just steal the second, then yes, it is hard to compete.
    - JAlexoid 5y ago
      Brand recognition and originality is value. Making felt handbags for 10 years and expecting that no one else would copy that - is what drives people away from stagnating crafts people.
- treis 5y ago
  Why can't you build a business around selling "industrial-scale" artsy/customizable stuff? In a different context, someone made a great point that your first million users don't necessarily need to be included in your next 20 million. Maybe Etsy has or will cycle through all their early buyers & sellers. But that doesn't matter if the group cycling in is more valuable.
JAlexoid 5y ago
Cost. Simple as that. Etsy cannot charge AirBnB commissions, to verify every single seller and keep them in check
troydavis 5y ago
> It does seem like Etsy has basically become eBay That’s what Etsy’s board chose when they appointed ex-eBay executive Josh Silverman to be Etsy’s CEO: https://www.etsy.com/team/member/jsilverman https://www.etsy.com/team/member/jsilverman (2017) More background: https://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/abblog/blog.pl?/pl/2018/8/1533611934.html https://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/abblog/blog.pl?/pl/2018/8/1... (2018), https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/9/4/20841475/etsy-free-shipping-amazon-handmade-josh-silverman https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/9/4/20841475/etsy-free-sh... (2019). Chad Dickerson ran Etsy. Josh Silverman turned it into eBay.
- fao_ 5y ago
  As a parallel, I'm not sure how Elon Musk would turn SpaceX into PayPal.
  - dangrossman 5y ago
    You wouldn't hire Elon Musk to turn anything into PayPal, as he wasn't a founder nor truly even an employee or executive of PayPal. Musk joined PayPal via merger with his fledgling X.com online bank. It was Confinity's PayPal product that continued from the merger, not Musk's X.com product. Musk was appointed CEO of the combined business, but contributed nothing of note to it. He was only there for a few months before the board ousted him from the company, while on vacation: his regular absence from the job was one of the reasons. The other was that his contribution to the engineering direction of the company amounted to "let's stop working on the business, and instead rewrite the platform on .NET to run on Windows servers", which the organization found so preposterous they circulated a petition to the board among the engineers to have Musk removed. The board did so.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    I suppose he could let rando users load their crap into a launch and then have people bid on "owning" a bit of spacejunk memorabilia orbiting the planet. Think, "Shamrock Beanie Baby, but orbiting the Earth!". Probably not great if you want the actual thing, in hand. No one spending 3x the price of a Steam Deck right now will want that price going towards launching it into orbit instead of having it in hand, playing games. Still, maybe there's a market for "owning" orbiting space debris contributing to Kessler Syndrome? Sort of like buying & burning an item to make an artificial scarcity NFT? Only this way you get to contribute to the destruction of mankind's ability to easily launch anything into orbit.
wtf242 5y ago
yeah, the last item I bought from Etsy showed up in an Amazon box. The seller legit just bought the item on amazon and shipped it to me for 2x the price.
nomel 5y ago
From what I've recently found, the search results have been completely overrun with ugly 3d printed goods, most being duplicate designs.

redisman 5y ago

I would guess it jives better with SEO garbage and brings more sales in the short term

cjsawyer 5y ago

Sounds like short term greed overcoming desire to hold onto their unique gimmick that made customers initially care

alecbz 5y ago
Yeah... that may seem naive (to value the "niche" over actual revenue numbers), but once etsy loses its original niche, I'm not sure what differentiates them from Amazon/eBay/etc. => their brand dries up => revenue eventually dwindles? What stops this?
- dylan604 5y ago
  >What stops this? Nothing really. Most people do not pay attention to how the sausage is made. They don't care if the car service they use was a total toxic fratbro culture using unsustainable pricing to lure in users. They just wanted "cheap" rides without caring about why they were cheap. Just as another comment on this topic suggested they don't care about original as long as the thing they want is cheaper. So no, I don't really think that educated populace will stop supporting shit practices because they can't be bothered.
  - alecbz 5y ago
    Well I'm not talking about people supporting Etsy though, I'm talking about Etsy itself. Like one possible story is that Etsy does this and it's shitty for sellers and maybe a lot of buyers too, but it ends up making Etsy successful in the long-run so they don't care. That's not the story I'm telling though, it's one where Etsy chases medium-term revenue at the cost of their long-term niche and thus their long-term success. If me and GP are right, in theory Etsy itself ought to not want this to happen.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      But the only way that Etsy can measure any decision they make is with the number of transactions from which they receive a cut. If they allow mass produced items to be sold that increases the number of transactions, then that's the bottom line numbers they care about. If they force a rule that it has to be small batch hand crafted type of items to be sold, then the per transaction numbers go way down. Bean counters and stock analysts don't like those numbers, and they are after all the people any public corp are most concerned.
      - alecbz 5y ago
        Yes, but the interesting question I think is why the bean counters are given free reign to make decisions that ultimately lead to the company's downfall[0]. Like what if you had a fine dining restaurant where things are going okay, and someone comes in and is like "Hey guys, I noticed we're spending a lot of time washing plates. We'd be able to serve X% more customers if we just like scraped off the food and did a quick rinse." The restaurant tries it, it works for a bit until diners see specs of old food on their plates, the restaurant's reputation tanks, they lose all their customers, and they go out of business. I think most restaurants are structured such that this does not happen. The restaurants correctly see that even though it seems like doing this might make some graphs go up in the short-term, it will actually make everything terrible in the long-term, and so they don't do it. And again, this isn't about like, benevolent restaurant owners valuing the custom experience even if it's bad for the bottom line. Washing the plates thoroughly is good for the bottom line; any sufficiently intelligent restaurant owner shouldn't listen to the bean counter even if the owner's just a greedy capitalist. (This reads enough like a Scott Alexander post that I'm pretty sure I might just actually be copying one; I think he wrote something along these lines once.) [0]: Again, all of this is precipitated on the idea that actually Etsy will fail once it loses its niche, since it'll just get beaten by Amazon/eBay/etc. when it's just like any other seller of goods. If what's really going to happen is that Etsy will do fine as a company, then this becomes a totally different shape of problem: "the market rewards things that we actually maybe don't want for society".
JAlexoid 5y ago
What's their unique gimmick? Paying for mass produced quality weekend project items?.. Tie dyed tees at 3x the price? I bought from Etsy once, but even then the items were recommended to me via Instagram. Etsy in 2014 was already filled with poorly made "artsy" crap at double the price. No idea why people are so excited about it.

ineedasername 5y ago

>I don't know why Etsy seems to welcome this I've sold on Etsy for a while as a hobby side business. The change seems to happen after their IPO. It felt like pretty quickly after that there began a trickle of incremental changes. A rule that allowed "manufacturing partners" really opened a huge loophole though, and in general things went down hill rapidly over the last 2-3 years.

JAlexoid 5y ago
To be fair - you really can't do volume sales without outsourcing manufacturing. There's only so much you can get from handcrafting.
- christop1957 5y ago
  That's a little cynical. We don't make the screws that go into our furniture or smelt the iron ore that goes into the steel pipe fittings or grow the trees or generate the electricity that supports distribution of this thread. But we do feel like we make each piece that we sell on Etsy.
  - JAlexoid 5y ago
    It's not cynical. I'm saying that crafting community isn't large enough to produce enough goods to sustain Etsy. Therefore wholesale outsourcing of production is the only way. These days you can outsource original product manufacturing in moderate quantities as well. Doesn't mean that you're not the artist behind them. I make electronics and have most of my PCBs fully prebuilt by mass manufacturer.
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      >I make electronics and have most of my PCBs fully prebuilt by mass manufacturer. I don't have a problem with "manufacturing partners" in this sense. It's when that loophole is used to justify or hide countless sellers simply white labelling items that is the problem. If I make a design and have a manufacture stamp out copies in the thousands, but then offer customization that I add JIT for each order (a hallmark of etsy) then that's fine. But if I take a $0.50 beaded necklace bought in bulk on Alibaba and resell then at $10 with not other value added, that does not fit the supposed mission of Etsy. Take that to Amazon, Ebay, & it's okay. But it's absolutely not within the handcrafted marketplace, even when "handcrafted" is loosely defined, that Etsy is supposed to be.

IgorPartola 5y ago

Exactly. It sucks because I have bought absolute garbage from there. I know the seller matters just like on eBay but the trust that I’ll be getting a craftsman-made item when buying from Etsy is now firmly lost outside of specific stores. It is actively user hostile now.

mardifoufs 5y ago

Ironically enough Ebay is probably the most trustworthy platform atm. It might sound insane but eBay listings are usually pretty clear on the origin and condition of the items. You know when the seller is from China, or if the item is used, and while there are tons of scams and misleading descriptions... for the most part sellers are usually pretty honest in the item descriptions. I don't mind buying knock offs as long as I know that they aren't the real deal, and cheap items are at least priced accordingly. Which is not the case on Amazon.

KingOfCoders 5y ago
I also buy (after 10+ years) much more from eBay than Amazon. First for trust, second they often have more specialized filters than amazon (E.g. cardboard box sizes).
- kingcharles 5y ago
  eBay's search gets worse every year, but Amazon's sucks way harder. As you say, at least you can filter better on eBay (although their price filters are getting vague like Amazon).
reilly3000 5y ago
I dropped my Prime membership over a year ago and have no regrets. eBay has made that possible. I’ve gotten consistently fair prices and quick shipping, and ironically fewer quality issues. Target and Costco have also become a bigger factor as well with free shipping and in store returns. My cloud computing has moved to GCP, DO, and my homelab (built from eBay stuff!). I still use Amazon if I have no other option. I just pay for shipping, but surprise… it’s usually still free over $25. #cancelprime
- function_seven 5y ago
  I think I'm headed the same way you went. It's crazy how these 2 platforms seemed to have switched places. Several years ago, Amazon would have been the place to do for scam-free purchasing, and eBay was the shady site that you had to do your due diligence on before buying. More and more it's the opposite. I have to wrangle with searches and filters on Amazon to try and avoid the "fake" brands and knockoff goods. eBay is easier and often cheaper to boot.

Workaccount2 5y ago

Etsy makes money on transactions. More transactions = more money. Most users of etsy do not care about source or authenticity. They just want what they see for the price listed. Losing the handmade trinket shops is meaningless compared to the full scale China operation doing 100x more business. Customers by and large cannot tell the difference nor do they actually care too much.

after_care 5y ago
I disagree. Having a reputable online handmade trinket shop was very valuable because it was the largest and had the best brand recognition. Being a Chinese factory retail outlet is less valuable because _everyone_ is a Chinese factory retail outlet.
- Workaccount2 5y ago
  We just have to solve which market has a larger space to grow in: Market for cheap Chinese goods. Market for handmade trinkets. I have a pretty good feeling that I know which one is more profitable. I'm sure investors know too.
  - TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
    Small businesses have absolutely no obligation to work for "investors."
    - ehvatum 5y ago
      That really depends on how the small business is funded.
    - Cederfjard 5y ago
      Is Etsy, a public company with a valuation in the tens of billions, still a ”small business”?
    - JAlexoid 5y ago
      Every business has an obligation to work for the investor.

DanTheManPR 5y ago

I started out selling my own hobby stuff on eBay, and then switched to Etsy because I appreciated the way it presented my products as a storefront. It seemed more "legitimate". But with the way things are going, I'm ironically thinking about moving primarily back to eBay and just embracing the free-for-all there.

slg 5y ago

How much demand is there truly for handmade products from independent creators? It is possible that Etsy has decided that is no longer a market that is worth pursuing and they would rather try to compete with Amazon and AliExpress. It is often better to have a small piece of a huge pie than the majority of a tiny pie.

TigeriusKirk 5y ago
There's more than enough demand to support a good-sized business mediating such sales. However, there's not enough to demand to keep the shareholders of an IPO'ed company happy. And there's the problem.
- JAlexoid 5y ago
  Considering that the strike is complaining about hike in fees - it doesn't seem like there is enough demand. Is Etsy such a good aggregator, that setting up a storefront with Square is that hard?
  - dangrossman 5y ago
    Etsy has somewhere on the order of 100 million active buyers, searching Etsy for goods to buy every month. If you set up a storefront on Square, you start out with 0 active buyers, searching your storefront 0 times every month. Marketplaces bring tremendous value to small sellers.
    - JAlexoid 5y ago
      So... Let me get this straight - they get a lot of customers off other people's work, but aren't willing to pay for the increased costs of providing them those extra customers. These Etsy people sound like entitled brats.
naravara 5y ago
The pattern with these sorts of Web 2.0 companies is grimly familiar now. They start promising more access and reach for small creators. They get a lot of small creators in the door with the ease of use and cutting out of the old middle-men. Then they implement a bunch of mechanisms to foster lock-in and fleece the small creators in ways that aren't much better than the old middle-men (though, admittedly, with more reach). It's like one of those fish traps you put in a current where the fish swim in but can't turn around to get away.

Nextgrid 5y ago

> I don't know why Etsy seems to welcome this instead of doing everything they possibly can to fight it. They can raise short-term profits this way. The problem is that there's only so much rent you can seek before it becomes unprofitable for sellers. It turns out that "industrial-scale" sellers, copycats and outright scammers have lower operating costs which means they can stick around and replace the independent creators that have essentially been priced out of the market. Of course, in the long-term it will be the death of the company, but by that time, bonuses would've been paid, raises would've been awarded, stock would've vested and lots of "shareholder value" would've been created. They've also recently bought Depop for a significant amount of money and I'm not sure if it's profitable, so they might be intentionally cannibalizing their earlier product to make money to prop up the next one.

JAlexoid 5y ago
Independent, small scale sellers aren't priced out. Cost of doing business includes sales costs - that needs to be integral to the price. What means is that these craftspeople don't produce enough value for the markets they are targeting.
- Pet_Ant 5y ago
  Well part of the value is being handcrafted and being original. If others lie about the first, and can just steal the second, then yes, it is hard to compete.
  - JAlexoid 5y ago
    Brand recognition and originality is value. Making felt handbags for 10 years and expecting that no one else would copy that - is what drives people away from stagnating crafts people.
treis 5y ago
Why can't you build a business around selling "industrial-scale" artsy/customizable stuff? In a different context, someone made a great point that your first million users don't necessarily need to be included in your next 20 million. Maybe Etsy has or will cycle through all their early buyers & sellers. But that doesn't matter if the group cycling in is more valuable.

JAlexoid 5y ago

Cost. Simple as that. Etsy cannot charge AirBnB commissions, to verify every single seller and keep them in check

troydavis 5y ago

> It does seem like Etsy has basically become eBay That’s what Etsy’s board chose when they appointed ex-eBay executive Josh Silverman to be Etsy’s CEO: https://www.etsy.com/team/member/jsilverman https://www.etsy.com/team/member/jsilverman (2017) More background: https://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/abblog/blog.pl?/pl/2018/8/1533611934.html https://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/abblog/blog.pl?/pl/2018/8/1... (2018), https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/9/4/20841475/etsy-free-shipping-amazon-handmade-josh-silverman https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/9/4/20841475/etsy-free-sh... (2019). Chad Dickerson ran Etsy. Josh Silverman turned it into eBay.

fao_ 5y ago
As a parallel, I'm not sure how Elon Musk would turn SpaceX into PayPal.
- dangrossman 5y ago
  You wouldn't hire Elon Musk to turn anything into PayPal, as he wasn't a founder nor truly even an employee or executive of PayPal. Musk joined PayPal via merger with his fledgling X.com online bank. It was Confinity's PayPal product that continued from the merger, not Musk's X.com product. Musk was appointed CEO of the combined business, but contributed nothing of note to it. He was only there for a few months before the board ousted him from the company, while on vacation: his regular absence from the job was one of the reasons. The other was that his contribution to the engineering direction of the company amounted to "let's stop working on the business, and instead rewrite the platform on .NET to run on Windows servers", which the organization found so preposterous they circulated a petition to the board among the engineers to have Musk removed. The board did so.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  I suppose he could let rando users load their crap into a launch and then have people bid on "owning" a bit of spacejunk memorabilia orbiting the planet. Think, "Shamrock Beanie Baby, but orbiting the Earth!". Probably not great if you want the actual thing, in hand. No one spending 3x the price of a Steam Deck right now will want that price going towards launching it into orbit instead of having it in hand, playing games. Still, maybe there's a market for "owning" orbiting space debris contributing to Kessler Syndrome? Sort of like buying & burning an item to make an artificial scarcity NFT? Only this way you get to contribute to the destruction of mankind's ability to easily launch anything into orbit.

wtf242 5y ago

yeah, the last item I bought from Etsy showed up in an Amazon box. The seller legit just bought the item on amazon and shipped it to me for 2x the price.

nomel 5y ago

From what I've recently found, the search results have been completely overrun with ugly 3d printed goods, most being duplicate designs.