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> intractable problems with quality and fulfillment • Re: fulfillment — why not ask Etsy sellers to pre-stock everything that's not made-to-order into fulfillm

by derefr 2y ago

> intractable problems with quality and fulfillment • Re: fulfillment — why not ask Etsy sellers to pre-stock everything that's not made-to-order into fulfillment centers like Amazon's? And, in fact, to send anything that is made-to-order to a fulfillment center first, where it'll be inspected, re-wrapped and re-shipped by the fulfillment center — with the buyer's card only having a hold, not a charge, on it until the seller's goods are inspected by the fulfillment center as good? (In other words: turn the process into a goods-for-money mediated escrow.) • Re: quality / drop-shipping — I feel like a lot of this could by solved just through simple semi-automated verification. Require for a product to be listed, for the seller to upload a video of themselves making the thing. Then pass those videos to MTurk workers to evaluate them for tricks. > Etsy has every reason in the world to want to get away from small sellers and move to high volume manufacturers Except that... that's their whole niche. Specifically, 90% of Etsy's value at this point is in the market of buyers they have slowly marketed and engaged and cultivated brand recognition with over decades — and those buyers are people looking for low-volume goods. They don't want to buy high-volume goods from Etsy. That's not the association they've been painstakingly educated to have. If Etsy wanted to get into Amazon's business, they'd have to create a new brand to do it with, because that's just not the business that people associate with the Etsy brand. And that would mean starting from scratch.

hinkley 2y ago
If you sell your goods at fairs or cons it’s not uncommon for the site to go dark for a few days while they haul all their goods to man a booth. Anything that doesn’t sell goes back up.
- derefr 2y ago
  Since it is by definition a low (sales) volume process, you'd only need to keep one or two of each thing in stock at the Etsy fulfillment center. Items in stores run on "tight logistics" would just have their items constantly going in and out of stock as they alternate between 0–2 copies in stock at the warehouse. Of course, if things were constantly going out of stock, then you'd want to create a system to allow people to put down a hold on their card to reserve a copy of something, waiting in a virtual line to be the first to get it when it does come back in stock. (Which would actually work much better than Etsy does today, as it would give makers the ability to know how many of each thing to target making as a batch to attempt to satisfy upcoming demand — without money already captured forcing them to work to a potentially-impossible deadline.)
  - hinkley 2y ago
    I think you might be overestimating the throughput of hand crafts. 1-2 items in escrow could be more than 20% of their expected sales at an in person event. I’m sure it would work better for people who don’t do fairs, but we have decent farmer’s markets in my area and there’s a good number of artists who sell on Etsy or similar in addition to touring the regional in person events.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
marcinzm 2y ago
> Re: fulfillment — why not ask Etsy sellers to pre-stock everything that's not made-to-order into fulfillment centers like Amazon's? And, in fact, to send anything that is made-to-order to a fulfillment center first, where it'll be inspected, re-wrapped and re-shipped by the fulfillment center — with the buyer's card only having a hold, not a charge, on it until the seller's goods are inspected by the fulfillment center as good? (In other words: turn the process into a goods-for-money mediated escrow.) Because that costs money and most Etsy sellers sell very few things. We're not talking thousands or hundreds or even dozens per months. We're talking single digits per month. Per store. Not per item. With 7 million stores. > Re: quality / drop-shipping — I feel like a lot of this could by solved just through simple semi-automated verification. Require for a product to be listed, for the seller to upload a video of themselves making the thing. Then pass those videos to MTurk workers to evaluate them for tricks. See the previous point. No one would use Etsy if they had to make a whole video and go through an automated process for an item that might sell once per year. edit: Amazon sells something like 350m products including the marketplace and 12 million directly. Etsy sells over 100m. Amazon has 40x the sales revenue. The economists are so different between them it's not even the same universe.
- quartesixte 2y ago
  >See the previous point. No one would use Etsy if they had to make a whole video and go through an automated process for an item that might sell once per year. I am not entirely sure of this claim. My own experience with artisnal craftspersons is that they will tolerate higher levels of inefficiencies precisely because they are not operating at scale, and being artisnal makes their cost of revenue really really wonky. >Because that costs money and most Etsy sellers sell very few things. We're not talking thousands or hundreds or even dozens per months. We're talking single digits per month. Per store. Not per item. With 7 million stores. I agree with this though, and to direct this at the parent post, that is a LOT of operational overhead. Like, a mindboggling amount you will require Amazon's levels of profit and scale just to properly pull this off. Do not underestimate the sheer amount of labor it takes just to run even fairly simple operations that deal in the lot counts in the low hundreds. Doing this for tens of thousands of potential transactions a day across millions of sellers is asking for trouble. This is why Etsy has sellers outsource this to UPS, FedEX, and the Postal Systems.
DrewADesign 2y ago
Amazon only works because they're centralized and full of uniform, neatly packaged groups of fungible units. Imagine having a super high turnover warehouse full of unique one-off items of different shapes, different sizes (from the size of your fingernail to the size of a large appliance, different materials with most of them being fragile, nothing being uniform enough to be stackable, different risk levels for everything from flammability to pest control... And even then, many people on Etsy sold antiques and vintage clothes. Maybe they even designed them and had them manufactured in small batches?
- derefr 2y ago
  > Imagine having a super high turnover warehouse full of unique one-off items... Auction houses manage it somehow.
  - marcinzm 2y ago
    That's like saying people can fly by flapping their arms because birds can. Auction houses store items for a limited period of time before liquidating them. The time in storage is fixed and the fees are fairly high. It's a fundamentally different approach to an online retailer. An auction house that has to store items for years, charge no more than a 10% fee and only charge it if an item sold would go bankrupt.
  - DrewADesign 2y ago
    Sure. So don't antique shops, but your customers do discovery and retrieval on their own, and the scale is orders of magnitude smaller. Auction houses can organize things into collections that are mostly accessed and cleared out all at once-- there's no random access to individual pieces in a giant churning collection, and they don't keep things around that don't get sold in case someone wants them. People can't get a single item from any collection auctioned whenever they want. It's the same problem space-- like going grocery shopping and sourcing food for a large hotel-- but to calculate the logistic viability of nearly anything in one task based on the other just doesn't make sense.
nobody9999 2y ago
>• Re: fulfillment — why not ask Etsy sellers to pre-stock everything that's not made-to-order into fulfillment centers like Amazon's? And, in fact, to send anything that is made-to-order to a fulfillment center first, where it'll be inspected, re-wrapped and re-shipped by the fulfillment center — with the buyer's card only having a hold, not a charge, on it until the seller's goods are inspected by the fulfillment center as good? (In other words: turn the process into a goods-for-money mediated escrow.) Why not take a hint from Darknet markets[0] and require escrow for all transactions[1], with funds only being released to the seller after the buyer has confirmed receipt of the goods as advertised, along with seller (and buyer) ratings as well as dispute resolution services? In many ways, darknet markets are much better than the "legit" online marketplaces. And more's the pity -- because the "legit" players know better and should act accordingly. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet_market [1] And since Etsy is a publicly traded corporation and their sellers are presumably "legit" (i.e., selling stuff that doesn't run afoul of nation-state dicta), an exit scam[2] is unlikely. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_scam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_scam
- jeromegv 2y ago
  The thing with handmade and unique items is that the definition of “as advertised “ differs quite a lot. Your definition is not the same as mine. Also customer tend to game that to get free products which makers hate.
  - nobody9999 2y ago
    >The thing with handmade and unique items is that the definition of “as advertised “ differs quite a lot. Your definition is not the same as mine. A fair point, although photos provided on the site, as well as seller reputation can (and mostly the latter on darknet sites, but both are useful) address that issue. What's more, an escrow system that requires the buyer to confirm receipt and quality for the seller to receive payment could have an even stronger impact on such issues. >Also customer tend to game that to get free products which makers hate. Which is why darknet sites have dispute resolution policies and processes, as well as ratings of sellers and buyers. Those buyers who try to take advantage are shunned pretty quickly as bad actors and unprofitable to boot. You can't game a system that won't play with you. I suggest you check out some darknet markets[0] -- not to purchase anything that might raise the hackles of your local government, but rather to see how a marketplace which doesn't have the sanction of law/government/the courts tries to ensure fairness and minimize rip offs and bad actors. If you do, I think you'll find that many of the tools used in those environments would improve user satisfaction (on both sides) and create a much better marketplace. Even a "legitimate" marketplace like Etsy. Edit: fixed grammar, added references. [0] https://darknetmarketlist.com/darknet-market-list/ https://darknetmarketlist.com/darknet-market-list/ [1] [1] Some of the listed markets have been seized/exit scammed/otherwise offline. As the old saw goes, 'caveat emptor'.
LargeWu 2y ago
I sell on Etsy, primarily hand-printed t-shirts, and stickers. When I make a run of shirts, I might make a dozen or less. Being forced to send them to a fulfillment center means I can't sell them in person or on another channel. I also can't then throw in random extras when I fulfill an order, or send a personal thank you. Forcing fulfillment center usage would only benefit stores who do a lot of volume. They can afford to take the risk on producing a lot of inventory up front.

by derefr 2y ago

hinkley 2y ago

If you sell your goods at fairs or cons it’s not uncommon for the site to go dark for a few days while they haul all their goods to man a booth. Anything that doesn’t sell goes back up.

derefr 2y ago
Since it is by definition a low (sales) volume process, you'd only need to keep one or two of each thing in stock at the Etsy fulfillment center. Items in stores run on "tight logistics" would just have their items constantly going in and out of stock as they alternate between 0–2 copies in stock at the warehouse. Of course, if things were constantly going out of stock, then you'd want to create a system to allow people to put down a hold on their card to reserve a copy of something, waiting in a virtual line to be the first to get it when it does come back in stock. (Which would actually work much better than Etsy does today, as it would give makers the ability to know how many of each thing to target making as a batch to attempt to satisfy upcoming demand — without money already captured forcing them to work to a potentially-impossible deadline.)
- hinkley 2y ago
  I think you might be overestimating the throughput of hand crafts. 1-2 items in escrow could be more than 20% of their expected sales at an in person event. I’m sure it would work better for people who don’t do fairs, but we have decent farmer’s markets in my area and there’s a good number of artists who sell on Etsy or similar in addition to touring the regional in person events.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

marcinzm 2y ago

> Re: fulfillment — why not ask Etsy sellers to pre-stock everything that's not made-to-order into fulfillment centers like Amazon's? And, in fact, to send anything that is made-to-order to a fulfillment center first, where it'll be inspected, re-wrapped and re-shipped by the fulfillment center — with the buyer's card only having a hold, not a charge, on it until the seller's goods are inspected by the fulfillment center as good? (In other words: turn the process into a goods-for-money mediated escrow.) Because that costs money and most Etsy sellers sell very few things. We're not talking thousands or hundreds or even dozens per months. We're talking single digits per month. Per store. Not per item. With 7 million stores. > Re: quality / drop-shipping — I feel like a lot of this could by solved just through simple semi-automated verification. Require for a product to be listed, for the seller to upload a video of themselves making the thing. Then pass those videos to MTurk workers to evaluate them for tricks. See the previous point. No one would use Etsy if they had to make a whole video and go through an automated process for an item that might sell once per year. edit: Amazon sells something like 350m products including the marketplace and 12 million directly. Etsy sells over 100m. Amazon has 40x the sales revenue. The economists are so different between them it's not even the same universe.

quartesixte 2y ago
>See the previous point. No one would use Etsy if they had to make a whole video and go through an automated process for an item that might sell once per year. I am not entirely sure of this claim. My own experience with artisnal craftspersons is that they will tolerate higher levels of inefficiencies precisely because they are not operating at scale, and being artisnal makes their cost of revenue really really wonky. >Because that costs money and most Etsy sellers sell very few things. We're not talking thousands or hundreds or even dozens per months. We're talking single digits per month. Per store. Not per item. With 7 million stores. I agree with this though, and to direct this at the parent post, that is a LOT of operational overhead. Like, a mindboggling amount you will require Amazon's levels of profit and scale just to properly pull this off. Do not underestimate the sheer amount of labor it takes just to run even fairly simple operations that deal in the lot counts in the low hundreds. Doing this for tens of thousands of potential transactions a day across millions of sellers is asking for trouble. This is why Etsy has sellers outsource this to UPS, FedEX, and the Postal Systems.

DrewADesign 2y ago

Amazon only works because they're centralized and full of uniform, neatly packaged groups of fungible units. Imagine having a super high turnover warehouse full of unique one-off items of different shapes, different sizes (from the size of your fingernail to the size of a large appliance, different materials with most of them being fragile, nothing being uniform enough to be stackable, different risk levels for everything from flammability to pest control... And even then, many people on Etsy sold antiques and vintage clothes. Maybe they even designed them and had them manufactured in small batches?

derefr 2y ago
> Imagine having a super high turnover warehouse full of unique one-off items... Auction houses manage it somehow.
- marcinzm 2y ago
  That's like saying people can fly by flapping their arms because birds can. Auction houses store items for a limited period of time before liquidating them. The time in storage is fixed and the fees are fairly high. It's a fundamentally different approach to an online retailer. An auction house that has to store items for years, charge no more than a 10% fee and only charge it if an item sold would go bankrupt.
- DrewADesign 2y ago
  Sure. So don't antique shops, but your customers do discovery and retrieval on their own, and the scale is orders of magnitude smaller. Auction houses can organize things into collections that are mostly accessed and cleared out all at once-- there's no random access to individual pieces in a giant churning collection, and they don't keep things around that don't get sold in case someone wants them. People can't get a single item from any collection auctioned whenever they want. It's the same problem space-- like going grocery shopping and sourcing food for a large hotel-- but to calculate the logistic viability of nearly anything in one task based on the other just doesn't make sense.

nobody9999 2y ago

>• Re: fulfillment — why not ask Etsy sellers to pre-stock everything that's not made-to-order into fulfillment centers like Amazon's? And, in fact, to send anything that is made-to-order to a fulfillment center first, where it'll be inspected, re-wrapped and re-shipped by the fulfillment center — with the buyer's card only having a hold, not a charge, on it until the seller's goods are inspected by the fulfillment center as good? (In other words: turn the process into a goods-for-money mediated escrow.) Why not take a hint from Darknet markets[0] and require escrow for all transactions[1], with funds only being released to the seller after the buyer has confirmed receipt of the goods as advertised, along with seller (and buyer) ratings as well as dispute resolution services? In many ways, darknet markets are much better than the "legit" online marketplaces. And more's the pity -- because the "legit" players know better and should act accordingly. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet_market [1] And since Etsy is a publicly traded corporation and their sellers are presumably "legit" (i.e., selling stuff that doesn't run afoul of nation-state dicta), an exit scam[2] is unlikely. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_scam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_scam

jeromegv 2y ago
The thing with handmade and unique items is that the definition of “as advertised “ differs quite a lot. Your definition is not the same as mine. Also customer tend to game that to get free products which makers hate.
- nobody9999 2y ago
  >The thing with handmade and unique items is that the definition of “as advertised “ differs quite a lot. Your definition is not the same as mine. A fair point, although photos provided on the site, as well as seller reputation can (and mostly the latter on darknet sites, but both are useful) address that issue. What's more, an escrow system that requires the buyer to confirm receipt and quality for the seller to receive payment could have an even stronger impact on such issues. >Also customer tend to game that to get free products which makers hate. Which is why darknet sites have dispute resolution policies and processes, as well as ratings of sellers and buyers. Those buyers who try to take advantage are shunned pretty quickly as bad actors and unprofitable to boot. You can't game a system that won't play with you. I suggest you check out some darknet markets[0] -- not to purchase anything that might raise the hackles of your local government, but rather to see how a marketplace which doesn't have the sanction of law/government/the courts tries to ensure fairness and minimize rip offs and bad actors. If you do, I think you'll find that many of the tools used in those environments would improve user satisfaction (on both sides) and create a much better marketplace. Even a "legitimate" marketplace like Etsy. Edit: fixed grammar, added references. [0] https://darknetmarketlist.com/darknet-market-list/ https://darknetmarketlist.com/darknet-market-list/ [1] [1] Some of the listed markets have been seized/exit scammed/otherwise offline. As the old saw goes, 'caveat emptor'.

LargeWu 2y ago

I sell on Etsy, primarily hand-printed t-shirts, and stickers. When I make a run of shirts, I might make a dozen or less. Being forced to send them to a fulfillment center means I can't sell them in person or on another channel. I also can't then throw in random extras when I fulfill an order, or send a personal thank you. Forcing fulfillment center usage would only benefit stores who do a lot of volume. They can afford to take the risk on producing a lot of inventory up front.