It Ain’t Easy Being Etsy
And, indeed, Etsy has seen the rise of seller disgruntlement as it’s struggled to keep pace with the site’s rapid growth. A trip through the user forums reveals thousands of complaints about everything from slowing sales to dysfunctional search engines to the capitalization of listing headings. Sites mocking or attacking the company (such as aforementioned EtsyBitch) have sprouted across the web. In a sense, this is a tribute to the company’s great success, an unavoidable byproduct of rocketing from a handful of members to almost half a million in a little over five years. Nonetheless, Maguire says, it was a strange ride going from being an anonymous college student to someone responsible for the hopes and dreams of several hundred thousand people—many of whom at any given time seemed none too happy with the job he was doing.
“I can only imagine that it’s a little taste of what it must be like to be a politician,” he says. “Everything you do is out in this little public place, and everything you say is scrutinized. While I was there, I only heard complaints. It kind of felt like we were just barely holding it together. It wasn’t really until I left that I understood that people still liked the site.”
In a community Etsy’s size, it’s inevitable that there will be complainers, but the company has made its share of missteps as well. In 2009, for instance, it changed its search engine optimization to add the site name to the front of every listing. Done without consulting users, the move made some items essentially invisible on Google, killing off a significant source of traffic to many shops. After several months of seller outcry, it reversed course and moved the site name to the end of listing titles, but for many the episode was indicative of what they perceived as the company’s careless attitude toward its members.
“My sales went from an easy five or six per week to two or three a month to nothing,” says Less Herger, a former Etsy seller who left in the wake of what she calls “the SEO debacle of 2009.” Herger, who makes Moleskine-style notebooks using Whole Foods signs for covers, joined the site in 2006 and was, by her account, a fairly active member, participating in the company’s promotional street teams and recommending it to her artist friends. After seeing her business dry up, though, and getting little to no response to her inquiries about the changes, she decided to shut down her shop.
More recently, Etsy sparked controversy with its somewhat ungainly lurch toward social networking. In June 2008, Kalin stepped down from his position as CEO, giving over control to then-COO Maria Thomas, whom the company had recruited from NPR that April. By late 2009, though, Kalin (who declined to be interviewed for this story) wanted back in, and he convinced the board to reinstate him as head of the company partially on the basis of his plan to add Facebook-style functions to the site.
This March, as part of that initiative, the company launched its new Friend Finder feature, which allows users to search other members’ purchase feedback. Feedback has long been public on Etsy, but much of it is done pseudonymously. Friend Finder let members ID the real names behind the pseudonyms, exposing what had effectively been private records. It also caused members’ names to show up with their Etsy purchases in Google, resulting in at least one unfortunate user whose sex-toy purchase, according to a report by Boing Boing, now appears in searches just below her online resume.
And then there are the resellers—perhaps the site’s deepest source of discontent. Complaining about resellers on Etsy has become so pervasive that there are now user forums complaining about all the other user forums complaining about resellers.
Three categories of goods are approved for sale on Etsy—handmade, vintage (meaning anything more than 20 years old), and supplies. Mass-produced or corporately produced items aren’t allowed. This is in keeping, of course, with the site’s mission of serving small-scale crafters and artisans. More pragmatically, it keeps sellers who, for instance, work 20 hours sewing a handmade dress from being undercut by knock-offs produced for pennies by garment workers somewhere in the developing world.