(Matt, Maria, and Amanda from Ebbandflo)
Tonight I had the pleasure of meeting Matt, Anda and Maria from Etsy as they swung through Vancouver on their Etsy West Coast tour. About 75-80 people showed up, a few of them familiar to me from past Vancouver meetups, and a lot of new faces. The meeting was held at The Cambrian Hall just off Main St, a great place for shopping for Vancouver handmade, and was organized by the lovely Amanda of Ebbandflo and Pomo Mama Design.
It was a great space for a meeting and I was amused to see the chairs set up in a circular triple row, much like the "seats" in the Etsy Virtual Labs. Maria made a few opening remarks to kick things off, and then Matt talked a little about how Etsy came to be: in a nutshell, Rob Kalin made a fancy kitchen, then made a half-price website for a restaurant in order to pay rent, then won a photo contest with the first picture he ever took and argued a lot with the guys who made the animated flame on the restaurant website. It was a good story, but you really need to hear it from Matt, he tells it better than I do.
Then Maria took the floor again and spoke a bit about her past jobs in digital-based businesses like Amazon and NPR, and how she came to Etsy, attracted by its values, "something bigger than commerce", and the stories behind how things are made. She said she wanted to talk to us about Etsy's principles and top-level ideas, which I will encapsulate here to the best of my recollection and hastily scrawled notes. (if anyone has any corrections that should be made to these notes, please let me know!)
Maria's favourite feature is speed. The most important thing Etsy can do for its sellers is to bring us qualified buyers and keep them coming back. To do this, they need to work on the back-end architecture of the site, the things you don't see but improve interaction. This includes speed, scaleability, security, and reliability.
A question was asked concerning how robust is the Etsy platform. Maria's answer: extremely robust. She said she is confident in the back-end infrastructure, but when it comes to the front-end architecture, there is much to do - it is a question of best practices. But the foundation is solid and ready for "smart growth".
Maria also commented that although Etsy may seem like a big company to the average small one-person business, in terms of the global marketplace (i.e. Amazon and eBay) Etsy is a small company.
Maria also touched on the ever-important question "what is handmade?" as it pertains to Etsy's fundamental principle. Matt also chimed in on this issue. To them, "handmade" takes on meaning that is beyond the literal interpretation of the word. It is the unique end product and the story behind it that matters. They talked a little about why vintage fits into Etsy - things that are cherished and have history can fit into the handmade ethic this way.
Maria admitted that Etsy is very U.S.-centric, but that their intent is to make the site become internationalized in the front-end architecture (i.e. currencies, languages). She gave some interesting statistics: 25% of monthly gross merchandising sales involves either a non-U.S. buyer, a non-U.S. seller, or both. As well, last year transactions took place in 159 different countries. She spoke about geography as it applies to allowing supplies on the site; supplies form a part of the continuum of handmade, and it is hard for small-town and rural sellers to get supplies as easily as their big-city counterparts.
As an example of their efforts to be more interntionally-friendly, Maria pointed out that they had retained legal counsel in order to make the current Etsy Handmade Moment Video contest enterable for sellers from several countries, including Canada.
Etsy is not yet a profitable company. This is something I have seen posted in the Etsy forums before, but it was news to a lot of people there. They are, however, at the break-even point.
Etsy's focus right now is on the buyer. Their top priority is the buyer experience. To this end they are developing the "playfulness" of the site, encouraging discovery, self-expression, and a strong focus on sharing and favourites. Someone asked for the ability to organize and group their hearts and favourites, and this is a to-do item for Etsy. Matt described a term they use at Etsy HQ to describe such organization: listology. Matt also mentioned that he'd like to see no limits on treasuries.
Someone asked how Etsy plans to bring in buyers. Maria listed off various ways: ad campaigns on blogs identified by Etsy survey participants, email marketing (i.e. Etsy Finds), social marketing (Twitter, Facebook), word-of-mouth marketing, and some limited print campaigns. They are also partnering with venues like Lucky Magazine, Martha Stewart and Good Housekeeping. They are skeptical of traditional media channels for advertising, as the return on investment is not that great. Since Etsy is not yet making a profit they have to be cautious with their advertising budget. At the present time they would prefer to focus on a campaign with more impact.
A few other questions were asked - who curates the Etsy Finds emails? Maria answered that they are curated by a small group of Etsy employees who also source items to fill the Gift Guides and the items that accompany Storque articles.
I asked what Etsy intended to do about resellers, namely in terms of the flagging system operating at a glacial pace, and the frustration of seeing resold items in the public areas of the site. Regarding the flagging system, Etsy added more manpower to clearing the queue of flags about a month ago. The goal is to have no queue at all. How to keep resellers off the site in the first place is a more complicated problem. Maria gave a bit of background to the issue by explaining that when Etsy was first created the intent was to make it as easy as possible to sign up for and open a store. This front-end ease of access is what also makes it easy for resellers to set up stores. She talked about a possible solution being to make the sign-up process a little more involved - not by jurying, but by requiring a profile to be filled out or questions answered. This would have the additional benefit of assisting Etsy in dealing with flagged items/shops as well. I mentioned the problem of lack of clarity in the emails sent to flagged sellers - frequently the flagged item is not mentioned at all and so the seller does not know which item to address - and Matt said this was a pet peeve of his as well. Maria said Etsy takes full responsibility for that problem and is going to address it.
The final question involved copyright and what to do if you find your work being sold by another seller as their own. Anda spoke up and said that Etsy's in-house lawyer, Sarah Feingold (a.k.a. SarahSays), takes copyright complaints very seriously and acts on them immediately as they are received, so if your items are being infringed upon, Sarah is the go-to admin.
That wrapped up the Q&A part of the evening, but a lot of people stayed on and mingled for a couple of hours. I had an interesting chat with Matt about what he likes to make (lamps out of guitars!) and read (books about online payment systems), and talked with Anda about the excellent shopping along Main Street, and the upcoming move to their new digs. Altogether it was a very enjoyable evening, and, as Matt said more than once, it's always great to put a face to a name.
Much thanks to Etsy admin for coming all the way to Vancouver, Canada!
