“Arts and Crafts Find New Life Online” describes the growing popularity of crafting, starting with a snapshot in the life of Etsy admin Anda Lewis Corrie (a.k.a. simply “Anda” around here).
It’s an overcast December afternoon, but the Pop Up Community Center in downtown Manhattan is buzzing. Spread along a white wooden table, a half-dozen people are ironing plastic bags together to create a fabric made of recycled material. Others are bent over sewing machines, turning the plastic into colorful tote bags, wallets, even pillows. Occasionally they turn for advice to Anda Lewis Corrie, who is leading this workshop on transforming old plastic bags into useful objects.
This article compares Etsy to Ebay and does give some profit estimations:
Etsy won’t reveal its revenues but expects to turn a profit early next year on what it takes in from a 20 cents-per-item listing fee and the 3.5% commission on goods that merchants sell through the site. In 2007 those merchants sold 1.92 million items worth a total of $26.5 million, according to Etsy. The 2 1/2-year-old startup produces online videos, hosts virtual town halls, and runs workshops with the goal of persuading more folks to teach each other to create and sell crafts on Etsy. Since it’s a sort of eBay (EBAY) for handmade crafts, the more people who sign up to sell their handiworks on the site, the better the company does. Says Corrie: “We want to help people make a living making things.”
Etsy’s revenues have been reported in other articles, so you can read our press coverage archives for that information.
January 10th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
relocating employees to CA
I am not sure they need to relocate them, I get the feeling they opened the second office in SF because that is where so many engineers already are, and they were having trouble getting people to relocate to NY. We have a huge pool of qualified developers out here in the Bay Area so I don’t think it would be necessary to relocate someone here from elsewhere.
Revolving Dork did relocate to Berkeley but that was for personal reasons I think, not to be at the Etsy west coast office.
January 10th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
I can understand why they aren’t profitable yet… It seems as though the need to grow is always a few steps ahead of profitability.
“expenses:
>rent/mortgage, utilities on the giant ‘lab’
>bandwidth, electricity, rental (?) and other costs on their servers
>employee and owner salaries”
don’t forget:
office in San Francisco, CA (which we’ve never seen pictures of?)
relocating employees to CA
need to entice engineers with salaries/bonuses/benefits (wasn’t there a contest too?)
flying those engineers to NYC for whatever reason
That can’t be cheap either
January 8th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
I think a lot of that work they do making the promo materials is wasted too. I have heard about craft fairs where the Etsy booth is often abandoned, no one is manning it to hand out or sell things. Then near the end of the fair, they have extra promo materials to get rid of, so they give them to Etsy members to use as freebies in their sales. i.e., give them away to their customers who are already registered and buying ON ETSY. This is kind of illogical. Why promote Etsy The Site to people who are already registered there? Isn’t the point to promote to gain new members? And wouldn’t individual sellers rather promote their own store, not a bunch of competing stores?
I have a sinking feeling that most of that lovingly handmade promo material is just thrown away. :(
January 8th, 2008 at 10:20 am
I gave up on commenting on that problem months ago Simone. As far as i can tell, in the end, the labs are a money waster for a variety of reasons. I understand that Etsy wants handmade promotional materials, however, what i look at in the labs store is not necessarily professional looking. A company, selling handmade items or not, should present ITSELF professionally. Additionaly the obvious issue that I and other people world wide are paying for “lab” space that we will never EVER have access to. This is a problem of course. While it could be interesting, they are simply having other sellers (many of whom are quite good at what they do but not necessarily experts) teach whatever classes are taught. They could hire master artisans to come in and teach classes, in which case, even i might make a long LONG trip to take a class from the right spinner.
January 8th, 2008 at 5:13 am
“Personally, I think Etsy labs are a waste”
Yep. It’s a nice idea in theory, but right now is not the time to be doing it. Etsy.com - the only thing which is of huge importance and potential value to every single buyer and seller on Etsy - should be priority number one. Until that is running perfectly, projects like the labs should be shelved, especially given the enormous amount of capacity they eat up.
January 7th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Personally, I think Etsy labs are a waste. Not only are they probably money sinks as you point out, rita, but physically they are only available to a very teeny, tiny number of Etsians, and thus useless to the greater community. Nor have I seen that the online lab events teach much in the way of real marketable skills. So in my opinion, a tremendous potential has been squandered.
January 7th, 2008 at 10:00 am
I know it’s probably NOT the average. I was lowballing, just to point out where all the money is going. A company this size cannot afford 8 people for “community and labs”. It just can’t. The labs are NOT breaking even as far as i can figure out. I would personally doubt they are making enough to pay rent for the huge amount of extra space that is being rented so they can exist. I cannot even imagine what they are really paying 17 people in engineering. If those people are competent, i’d guess, $60,000 is the absolute bare minimum. And i live somewhere that cost of living is MUCH lower than Brooklyn. Hiring an attorney rather than putting one on retainer? insanely expensive even if they pay almost nothing.
January 7th, 2008 at 3:23 am
Rita that is about the ballpark I guessed for the community or lower level CS staff. Developers make a lot more.