Etsy, eCommerce With a Focus On The Unique

Categories: Community Marketing, Video, eCommercePosted on February 24th, 2008

Etsy created this “electronic press release” to show how hand made products are created, shared, sold, and discussed on their community site.

All of the products are hand made and are unique, unlike the mass produced commercial products are sold. Think back a few years, this wasn’t possible, hand made items would be generally limited in distribution to local stores, craft shows, or maybe some type of catalog.

How is Esty different? While Craigslist is more impersonal, Etsy focuses on building community, relationships and even online events (like a virtual craft show). Ebay, which certainly has similar features, doesn’t cater to only these unique handmade items.

Now, the web provides access for anyone to share unique items, and benefit from a global storefront. Expect more of smaller, individual, and customized goods to be created, traded, and sold due to the web.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, February 24th, 2008 at 10:25 am and is filed under Community Marketing, Video, eCommerce. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

[...] Let’s finish with a little video about Etsy (via Jeremiah) [...]

Posted by Do we have a winner in Etsy? on February 24th, 2008 at 12:41 pm

i’m eager to see what Etsy does with the 27 million in venture money they just secured!

Posted by Jim Long on February 24th, 2008 at 12:47 pm

What a coincidence..the founder is the brother of a kid I went to high school with. I just sent this video to him.

Posted by Dan Schawbel on February 24th, 2008 at 4:48 pm

They just accepted $17 million in funding after 3 years of working to form this p2p community marketplace for “home-wares.”
Wrote a small post on it & some of their proposed advertising ideas for 2008 that you can view here:
http://www.brentter.com/etsycom-gets-27-million-investment/

It’s a service i’ve used to get presents for friends on multiple occasions. You’re buying the product directly from the person who made it, which other than being cool in itself, also helps make sure that there is little to no chance that whoever you give the gift to runs into others with the same item (i.e. these aren’t your typical “Urban Outfitter” type vendors (well, most aren’t anyways), so the products offered are unique… and sometimes extremely strange, but then again, there’s a market for everything…

Posted by Brent on February 25th, 2008 at 2:02 am

I love Etsy. I’ve bought most of my Christmas presents there and a custom present for my mom’s 50th.

Posted by Tabz on February 25th, 2008 at 6:50 pm

The NY Times had a brilliant piece on etsy and the whole handmade-movement: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/magazine/16Crafts-t.html

Posted by Johannes Kleske on February 25th, 2008 at 11:10 pm

[...] Etsy, eCommerce With a Focus On The Unique All of the products are hand made and are unique, unlike the mass produced commercial products are sold. Think back a few years, this wasn’t possible, hand made items would be generally limited in distribution to local stores, craft shows, or maybe some type of catalog. [...]

Posted by Etsy, and what it might mean to you | ChillyCool Web Digger on February 29th, 2008 at 10:54 am

I’ve had an Etsy shop for a couple of years. My specialty is primitive folk art dolls — i.e., cloth dolls that look like they’ve been around since the Gold Rush (I live in California so it’s a good comparison).

Thus far, I’ve had better luck selling from my web site than from Etsy, and I mostly sell my “destash” supplies on Etsy these days. I’m thinking about doing a little “Christmas in July” on Etsy with some Santa dolls and snowfolk, but in the meantime (or if I don’t get this done), everything’s available on my web site!