Etsy is cutting 11% of its staff, or roughly 225 employees, as part of a broader restructuring. In a letter to employees, CEO Josh Silverman said the company’s current business model was “not a sustainable trajectory.” Silverman also said Etsy’s marketplace had doubled in size since 2019, but gross merchandise sales have been “essentially flat since 2021,” amid rising employee costs. Noting the timing of the announcement amid the holiday season, the company will pay affected workers through at least January 2, although the last working day for most of them is Wednesday.
On top of the announced layoffs, Chief Marketing Officer Ryan Scott will leave the company. His responsibilities will be assumed by Raina Moskowitz, Etsy’s chief operating officer.
Hasbro recently announced it’s eliminating nearly 20% of its workforce or about 1,100 jobs due to weak toy and game sales.
Maybe it’s because you let so much (more) garbage on the site JOSH, and had no experience in handmade or retail before joining Etsy JOSH.
For a decade, hardly anyone had heard of Etsy. Then briefly some did. It was even known for handmade with a wink, wink. Then it went public (bowing to shareholders), and then in came Josh.
Nowadays? It has no brand. It’s just another place to buy/sell. Announcing cuts after thanksgiving is a very bad sign. Josh came from Amex, and it was drilled in there to do it before November, or wait till January.
Lots of commercials featuring the “Mission Impossible” theme music, where Etsy is promoted as the source of cool customized things with guaranteed delivery for Christmas.
You can imagine the demands made of Etsy craftspeople to make this open-ended promise a reality, as it is easy for Etsy to make promises on behalf of its craftspeople.
The reduction in staff? Well, they commercials were expensive, and the remaining staff can be cajoled into doing 2 people’s jobs for the price of one.
Every year, the same British Artist does a new Christmas card for us, and we first encountered her on Etsy, but after the first purchase, we dealt direct.
We have a very large Christmas card list, so she sends sketches and ideas well in advance, and we get everything done before Halloween every year, as writing little personal notes in 3500 Christmas cards is a daunting task, one that we actually hire a sheltered workshop to handle - we type the messages for each person in the address database, and they copy the messages on each card and even do a handwritten address. (The trick here is that no one except family will ever recognize handwriting).
It’s a great way to add a personal touch to your business without actually needing to put in the effort / hire a sweatshop to do it. You could probably get ChatGPT to write most of the cards as well.
And MakerPlace. I’ve always done great 4th qtr on Etsy but this year I’m 44% down. MakerPlace beat last year Etsy 4th qtr in the last 30 days. I know that is far from the experience of many if not most MakerPlace sellers but it shows there are a lot of pie slicers. And don’t forget TikTok (even though I had to look up how it was spelled).
But who’d feed the machine all day? I feel MUCH better giving business to the sheltered workshop, as the folks who work there do a great job, and they enjoy the work, as they get excited when they get to address a card to a “famous person” that they know from the news or TV, or sports. NYC is a series of small villages crammed into a massive city, so you run into everyone eventually, and one’s Christmas card list can look very impressive.
This exactly - In the article they even say how 2 executive roles were cut and are being combined, including marketing I believe.
It hurts my heart every time I see a post on the Etsy subreddit (and there are usually several a day) where buyers say they bought something, never got it, and the Etsy store is now gone. Unfortunately, much like Amazon, Etsy has done a lot to make individual sellers invisible so it’s “ETSY” as a whole that’s a scammer. In most/all cases those are people who will never buy anything there again.
I’m down 69% from last year - and I have almost 20,000 sales there so it’s not like I’m a novice. My Etsy store is dying, and it’s always been my bread and butter. I just can’t compete with the downloads. I remember chuckling at those, saying people are too lazy to print themselves. But Etsy put the nail in the coffin by integrating Printify. My work is completely buried now.
I’m going to try doing the CSV upload. I have all of my listing images saved, hoping I can download data from my Shopify store and spend a few days manipulating it into a MakerPlace upload.
Which is why you’d think Etsy and Amazon would do a better job of vetting their sellers and the products that are being offered. It is their reputation that gets damaged not the individual seller because that is how they choose to market their marketplace.
When Etsy brought Josh in I was a pretty big seller and I pooh-pooh’d all the people who said he would ruin it and turn it into eBay to please the stockholders. Etsy had made big changes in the past and I just rolled with them. I was very, very wrong. As soon as they changed the rule to allow ‘light manufacturing’ (which means any manufacturing) it was the death knell. Turned it into a junkstore.
The problem’s bigger on etsy since it’s 100% FBM. At least on Amazon the majority of listings that rank high are FBA so the nonshipping FBM listings get a lot less visibility.
This happened to my Mum recently, and thankfully Etsy refunded her. But I’m like…WHY do you not ask me first to take a look? I’m sure most of us could spot these in advance.
I’m down 30% there, but I’ve been diving down for years since I stopped making it my first priority. I have less than half my listings there now. I grew well from 2010 to 2015, my last holiday before Amazon took off, but in 16/17 it started to slide despite my keeping it up. The effort to profit ratio was going backwards.
Search there stinks. So much worse than it used to be.
Oh, 1000% - It’s so easy for dropshippers to sell on Etsy and just run. On Amazon with FBA at least you know the product is physically there.
I have continued to make it my top priority - mostly due to nostalgia. Etsy helped put my oldest through college. I have felt determined to make it work. But, alas, I think the time has definitely arrived to focus elsewhere.
My daughter falls into this trap. She just sees and orders. I have told her it is SO EASY to check reviews, shipping times, etc.
Well look what happens when a platform actually focuses on handmade integrity!