Today’s Town Hall meeting in the Treehouse of the Virtual Labs was attended by over 130 people. While a transcript will be available later in the Storque, here are a few notes in advance:
General notes:
-Etsy currently has 73,478 shops with at least one item
-There are currently 60 Etsy employees
-Engineering comprises ½ of the company
Rob said that they are developing 2 major changes for the near future and 6 other developments for further down the road.
The 6 future developments are:
-currency conversion
-shop stats for sellers
-dynamic Team sections
-“stuff with video”
-“real-time multi-user stuff” (like the virtual labs)
-an in-house payment system
The 2 upcoming changes are:
Changes to Listing Periods for Renewals – This change will mean that when you renew an item, instead of adding 4 months from the previous expiration date, the additional 4 months will start from the date of renewal.
Changes to Search/Categories – Top level categories will be clarified, and “filters” will be added, such as “who is it for?” and “what is it made of?”.
Other items of interest:
-revamping the forums is being looked at from a database perspective right now and remains under development
-the “first draft” of the separation of supplies/vintage from search is completed
-supplies/vintage will hopefully get their own place by the end of the year
-when shop stats are provided there will be different levels of stats available starting with free, and then more detailed stats costing “a few bucks”
A great many other smaller issues were discussed – we will link to the transcript once it appears in the Storque.
UPDATE April 15 by JB
The transcript of the town hall meeting is posted here
The Storque article summarizing the meeting is here
April 21st, 2008 at 6:23 pm
ahh that’s nice he cleared that up, ebb. I have noticed my name in bold in Etsy chat, I actually like that feature because sometimes the chat moves too fast to read everything and it helps me notice something directed to me. I don’t think there is any way to make bold or italic font in chat other than the names thing. I thought he might have used caplock, which is generally perceived as “yelling” on the internet.
April 21st, 2008 at 12:46 pm
oh duh!!!
bold font of your username in virtual labs only appears to you and happens automatically when another user types your name (it’s a means of getting your attention) and is most definitely NOT SHOUTING!
so i apologise to everyone i’ve typed boldy at (just in case they also thought i was shouting) and to matt who i falsely accused (and was gracious enough to be concerned and gently poke me in the direction of virtual labs etiquette, thank you sir!)
i am such a newbie! :)
April 19th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Oh geeze, thanks JB, I was completely overlooking one step. One more reason to be against this whole idea. Thank you.
April 19th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
right now you only pay the paypal fees because only paypal is involved. If Etsy was processing our payments then they’d take their own processing fee.
1. Buyer pays 10.00 for item, pays money directly to Etsy
2. etsy takes their selling fee (3.5%) plus their payment processing fee (?)
3. Etsy transfers remaining money to seller’s paypal account
4. Paypal deducts it’s processing fees (which you are paying now)
5. Now you have to manually transfer that money to your bank account, and if you are outside the US, your bank probably charges a fee for currency conversion from US dollars to whatever.
So yes, you already pay fees now but the Etsy fee will be in ADDITION to these existing fees, rather than replacing the paypal fees. It’s one more middleman between your money and your bank, and every middleman takes a bite.
April 19th, 2008 at 11:11 am
i’m assuming shouting since my name was in bold font - it looked that way! and i wasn’t the only one needling for more answers/explanations
i should be flattered i guess (woo) that my questions/comments were being noted
although it was short notice and relatively agenda- and answer- less, it was an impressive move toward addressing concerns.
but typically etsy - late, only appearing after speculation reaches fever pitch, but at least the truly unhelpful admin comments were kept to a minimum (’just because’ and ‘xyz noted’)
April 19th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Meringue, I’m not quite understanding this part: “I am assuming that our payments would be made to either our Paypal accounts or directly into our bank accounts.
If it’s into PP, then we incur more fees, which means having to raise prices just to cover it.”
Are you saying you don’t incur paypal fees when you accept payments via the customer directly as it is now? Because I do. Paypal fees are paypal fees whether you get it from etsy or you get it from the customer. The only added benefit I see to etsy doing it is they will remove their fees before they deposit it into your account, so therefore your fees would be less.
HOwever stating that does not mean I am in favor of it at all. I am currently waiting on payment for 3 sales from another website that should have been deposited on the 15th. I can’t get anyone to respond to me and now likely won’t until next week. I’m suspecting it has to do with a return/refund situation, as past months deposits were all done in a timely fashion. And I have no personal “psuedo community” involvement with this site so there are no personal feelings involved. I can just imagine if someone pulled admin’s hair once or twice and then wound u p having a similar situation take place that they wouldn’t gleefully screw with you just to piss you off. And even if they wouldn’t, how bad is it I think that way in the first place?
This situation has left a bad taste in my mouth for any IHPS except for my own website where I control the returns, refunds and Payments.
Elephant in the room, indeed.
April 19th, 2008 at 8:26 am
Good points about the squeaky wheel since that is the only explanation why an IHPS is on the agenda; probably it was also WHO was squeaking, since Etsy listens to only 2% of non-employee sellers. How do we know that?
Well, wheels have been squeaking so loud (I lost my hearing) about a crappy, full-of-holes buy process, about nepotism in all free promo areas, about lack of any promo opportunities, about fixation on handmade weddings, about the harassment and disgusting behavior of specific Etsy employees, of a flagging system that never worked ever, of allowing stores to open willy-nilly selling mass-produced goods, of tag abuse, of lack of definition for vintage, of complete unwillingness to separate supplies into its own section, of a broken View Counter component, of unfair mutings, closings and nasty treament of sellers, of interfering with customer service problems without warning, of making up new rules overnight to please 5 or 6 people, and of continuing to hold “town meetings” with no agenda and no purpose but a lot of Etsy Employees typing “Be nice!” furiously onto their keyboards. And then running right to the forums to post a topic about Forum Decorum.
What is this, Elementary School where you keep failing the 5th grade and have to repeat it???
Ah, such great respect for the selling community brings tears to my eyes.