Etsy Returning To Its Roots
Dec 29th, 2009 by admin
Listen and be amazed: After a phase of so-called professionalization, Etsy will make a radical about-face and go back to its roots (Etsy Is Not About Retail): “A day after announcing he would return as CEO, Etsy’s founder Rob Kalin said he would alter the company’s focus away from retail and more on “social commerce” when he replaces outgoing CEO Maria Thomas.
Picture of Social Commerce: Etsy Returning To Its Roots [source:excitingcommerce.com]
He will close down the site’s gift guides in early January, stating the guides are “a retail-oriented way of merchandising, and this isn’t what Etsy is about.”
“In social commerce, our focus is on people, not products,” he said, adding that the gift guides don’t reflect the values of the Etsy community.”
Mixing social and commerce is a delicate balancing act. And Etsy seems to have realized that in time, before falling into the same trap as eBay after the departure of former CEO Meg Whitman.
More on the exciting new, old Etsy, which will also be getting more airtime on Exciting Commerce in the future:
“I’ll be (re)focusing Etsy more on what we call “social commerce,” and less on retail.
To get an idea of what this means, let’s look at merchandising. For a retailer, merchandising means putting products on display that are likely to sell. In social commerce, our focus is on people, not products.
It’s our job to build tools for you to use, that help you promote items as you’d like to.
As the same time, Etsy wants to introduce new organisational structures:
“Right now, Etsy is structured in such a way that all the product people work in one area, the engineers in another, etc. People come together as needed for a project, and then move on. Customer support handles email q’s, and the community crew is in here.
This isn’t working well for us, in terms of building and supporting features. It’s too monolithic, requires lots of meetings, and makes it difficult for the community to see what we’re up to.
Instead, we will create teams inside Etsy around site features. There will be a team dedicated to seller tools, a team for community tools, a Showcase team, and so forth. These teams will support what they build (with extra help if needed), and iterate to improve things.”
And if Rob Kalins statements can be interpreted correctly, it seems that Etsy will in the future be more oriented around social networking aspects:
“In a way similar to the gift guides, Etsy’s job should be to build tools that help you make the site what you want it to be.
We need to create a thousand more forums for people to talk (i.e. groups), and of course we can’t moderate this.
We need to scale back moderation, and focus on making tools that empower people to moderate things for themselves.”
All in all, Rob Kalins answers to Etsys users questions form one of the best social commerce manifestos ever published:
“As a board, we believe that focusing on revenue is not what will make Etsy continue to grow.
We are focused on our service: building the best tools and supporting this community. If we do this well, revenue will follow.
Now that we are profitable, we can redouble our efforts here, and I’m really excited about this. Our success as a company follows your success as members.”
Rob Kalin goes more into some details in the second part of his post. And apparently, other founders have suddenly re-discovered interest in Etsy.
Sales Update: Etsy Doubles Monthly Revenues From Last Year Etsy Beats Revenue Record by 10% with $15 Million Etsy Investor Gives an Inside Peek
Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.[source:excitingcommerce.com]
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