In this Storque article, Marymary describes the long-anticipated separation of vintage and supplies from handmade items in the Etsy search function, as well as other important changes to categories and search. An excerpt from the article:
Hello Etsians!
On Monday, May 5, 2008, some important and exciting changes are happening with searching and categories. These changes are in response to feedback from all around the Etsy community, and were first introduced back in February with Rob’s Focus on Handmade Storque article. Here’s a rundown of what is to come:
We’ll be separating item search into three new searches: Handmade, Vintage, and Supplies.
Handmade Items – This is the default search. This searches all items on Etsy that are not tagged with “commercial” and do not have “vintage” as the first tag. Handmade supplies will still appear in this search. You can search tags and titles or tags, titles, and descriptions.
Supplies – This will search all of the supplies on Etsy, both handmade and commercial. Any item tagged “supplies” will show up in the results.
Vintage – This special vintage search returns only items within the Vintage category. This means items with vintage as their first tag (selected from the dropdown menu in the listing process).
The existing search will also remain available. Just select “All items” from the search bar to search handmade, supplies, and vintage all at once.
We’ll also be making changes to the category browser. Currently a top-level category such as Jewelry shows only items within the Jewelry category. The subcategories and sub-subcategories contain any items that have the tag “jewelry,” but are not necessarily in the Jewelry category. We call this “category bleed.”
The changes on May 5 will eliminate category bleed. All subcategories will only show items from within that category. Meaning the subcategories of “jewelry” will no longer pull up jewelry supplies.
The Patterns category is also gearing up for change, although this will not be part of the May 5 update. In order to help keep things organized, Patterns will be moving into the supplies category. A new drop-down will appear in the listing process for Patterns, prompting you to select handmade (if it’s your own pattern) or commercial (if it’s someone else’s pattern)
There is an accompanying forum thread here.
May 2nd, 2008 at 6:40 pm
I’m betting that if they separated the site into 3 such as was suggested, Etsy Handmade would fall behind the other two sites, fairly quickly.
There really is no handmade revolution, it’s just a very small section of society trying to capitalize on something that won’t ever get a strong foothold.
Every single person I know values handmade as long as they can’t get a similar item cheaper elsewhere. You will never get them to see it any different, thanks, in part to our sinking economy.
Handmade is only ever going to be on the fringes of society.
May 2nd, 2008 at 4:14 am
lowwattage, I totally agree. I really wish they would branch out into EtsyVintage and EtsySupplies. I buy both, and I would love to see them separated properly. It would make shopping so much easier.
May 1st, 2008 at 9:29 am
While I now know that this may help re-elevate handmade to the top of the heap, and that this change was promised a long time ago - what difference will it make? Will buyers and frequent visitors (not sellers) know there has been a re-focus on handmade? Will it improve sales of handmade?
I read that there is a sense that supplies and vintage feel marginalized, supplies sellers are the biggest sellers - so, for Etsy to leave that as “the best known secret” by tweeking the Search function, it still doesn’t really address the major issues. Handmade has faded as the main focus, and leaving all these categories together still does not emphasize handmade to the general public who look at the site. Maybe I just do not get it. How is changing Search going to be seen by the visitors to the site? Will they even notice?
I would have thought Etsy would be eager to set up a second site with supplies since that portion of the site is not only the most popular, it brings in the most money. If they had a separate supplies site, they could make a big deal of Etsy Supplies being the destination for hard-to-find, decently priced craft supplies that are gone from the now-defunct crafts retailers/B&M stores. Take advantage of how the site has developed - don’t try to squeeze everything into one size fits all.
May 1st, 2008 at 9:06 am
I’m a bit surprised that people are so upset. I guess some people just didn’t believe Etsy would ever get around to doing this separation. I’m not saying it’s necessarily fair to pay the same amount and not be part of the default search, but i guess i’m a bit irritated that this was announced months ago and people are still acting shocked and surprised.
I don’t think this is some magical panacea but i think that it will go along way toward moving Etsy back toward it’s original plan to be “all things handmade”. The current site looks so little like handmade that i’m certain it drives a certain number of customers away.