| Etsy is an American e-commerce site focused on handmade or vintage items and art supplies. These items fall under a wide range of categories, including jewelry, bags, clothing, home décor and furniture, toys, art, just as craft supplies and tools. All vintage items should be least 20 years old. The site follows in the tradition of open art fairs, giving sellers personal storefronts where they list their products for a fee of US$0.20 per item.
The site was launched in 2005 by iospace, a small company made out of Robert Kalin, Chris Maguire, and Haim Schoppik. The initial version had required more than two months to build. Later Jared Tarbell joined the group. Previous NPR leader Maria Thomas joined as COO in 2008, was promoted to CEO and left Etsy in December 2009. Robert Kalin continued his role as CEO from December 2009 until July 2011. Investors include Sean Meenan,[41] Albert Wenger, Spencer and Judson Ain, Union Square Ventures, and founders of Flickr and Delicious.
On October 1, 2013, Dickerson held an online Town Hall Meeting to declare that Etsy would now allow factory-made goods and and drop shipping, provided the dealer either designed or hired designers of the items, disclosed to Etsy their factory, uncovered that they used factories and took "ownership" of the process. In that meeting and a while later, Etsy claimed the meaning of the word "handmade" should be redefined to encompass factory made.
In June 2014, Etsy bought A Little Market, a French e-commerce website for handmade products, foods, and wine, for a mix of cash and stock valued at less than $100 million. At the time the acquisition was the company's largest. In November 2016, Etsy unveiled that it paid US$32.5 million to buy Blackbird Technologies, a startup that created AI software used for shopping context/search applications.
In 2018, Etsy accumulated an income of US$603.7 million and registered a net income of US$41.25 million. The platform generates income principally from three streams: its Marketplace income includes a fee of 5% of final sale value, which an Etsy seller pays for each completed transaction, on top of a posting fee of 20 cents per item; Seller Services, Etsy's fastest growing income stream, includes fees for services, for example, "Promoted Listings", payment processing, and purchases of shipping labels through the platform; while Other income includes fees received from third-party payment processors.
As of December 31, 2018, Etsy had more than 60 million items in its marketplace, and the online marketplace for handmade and vintage products connected 2.1 million sellers with 39.4 million buyers. At the end of 2018, Etsy had 874 employees. In 2018, Etsy had total sales, or Gross Merchandise Sales (GMS), of US$3.93 billion on the platform.
|
