Etsy - eBay for the creative
Written by Gregg Henglein
When a business becomes a verb, it’s perhaps grown too much. “Whatcha doing?” “eBaying.”
There’s nothing wrong, mind you, with a business becoming an overwhelming success. They find gaps in our lives we may not have even known existed, and they fill it brilliantly. The struggle as a consumer, of course, is to find the hidden gem, the niche product in the megastore.
Welcome to the principle behind Etsy.com. If eBay is an online mall, then Etsy is an online craft fair – and a massive one at that. Yet, for its grandiose size, Etsy brilliantly maintains a craft shop feel that makes it easy to lose an hour – or several – browsing the creations.
Based in Brooklyn, New York, and founded in June 2005, Etsy carries, almost exclusively, handcrafted items designed by skilled artists with an unparalleled pride in their work.
“The standard pitch,” founder Robert Kalin says, “is [an] online marketplace for handmade goods.”
That’s the bulk, but not all. “There’s also pictures and supplies, so it’s just basically a P2P [person-to-person] marketplace.”
That person-to-person feel exudes from every pixel on an Etsy-filled screen, and that’s clearly the idea.“It’s really about the stories that the items tell that you buy,” Kalin says. But the big story is Etsy itself. Just over two years after it was founded, the site had more than 100,000 registered sellers and had logged more than two million sales. And in 2008, more than US$100 million in goods were sold on the site, Kalin says.
But the goods are irrelevant if the site itself lacks functionality. This is no problem on Etsy, which was obviously constructed with the consumer in mind. Tools include ‘Color’, which returns items matching a colour of the user’s choosing; ‘Geolocator’, which links to local sellers; and a ‘Time Machine’ that will put together a slide show of all the recently flashed items on the site.
Yes, I said flashed. The entire site is constructed in Flash format, slick in appearance and easy to navigate. For a buyer, the site’s items are arranged under broad categories – such as Clothing, Accessories, or Art – and further sorted according to user-defined tags and the previously mentioned tools.
Perhaps the biggest difference between Etsy and eBay, though, is in the shipping charges. Any visitor to eBay is well aware of the ‘cheap product, expensive shipping’ tactic so many sellers employ as a sneaky way to turn a profit. Etsy has far less of this, and there seems to be a concerted effort within the community to keep it that way. As a seller, though, Etsy seeks – and succeeds – in out-price-pointing eBay. The company charges users a flat listing fee of 20 cents per item, and takes a commission of merely 3.5% on all items sold. If you personally craft your product, you can sell it on Etsy. Jewellery is the top selling category according to Kalin, but items range from soaps and candles to clothing and toys such as trains or hand-knit dolls.
And much more besides.
“When I started Etsy I was waiting for a luthier to show up because I wanted to buy a guitar,” Kalin said in an interview. It took a year, but a luthier signed up, and Kalin purchased a custom, handcrafted guitar. This prompted Kalin to include a site feature called ‘Alchemy’, in which buyers can request a seller to make them
a specific product.
As the holidays approach, another handy inclusion is a ‘gift guide’ at the top of the site, which links to lists compiled by Etsy administrators with gift ideas for everyone – ranging from ‘male best friend’ to ‘mother-in-law’ – targeted to price ranges you define. With the variety and customisation available on the site, you can be certain you will give a gift no-one else will replicate because, essentially, if you can think of it, you can find it.
It’s the thought that counts, after all.
FOUND
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Carnelian Necklace (US$26.99)
Made of genuine carnelian stones and Czech glass seed beads, this 19” drop necklace is crafted with various reddish-brown tinged stones interspersed with white, and a teardrop carnelian pendant centrepiece.
Red and white clothespin doll with candy cane (US$35.00)
Holiday inspired cuteness crafted from a clothespin, donning a red and white felt dress and equipped with poseable floss-wrapped arms, this little girl looks as sweet as her striped candy treat.
Fruit Flan Cufflinks – Miniature Food Handmade (US$30.00)
In less than an inch, these nickel-plated fashion pieces fit supremely realistic slices of strawberry, kiwi and orange, blackberries, raspberries and black cherries – crafted in polymer clay – for a delicious design.
