On Thursday, May 29 at 4PMish Eastern U.S. time, Etsy will be adding Collectibles as a top-level category.
The Collectibles category is for handmade items, and is intended to include dolls and doll accoutrements, figurines, miniatures, plush animals, and other “toys” for adult collectors. As well, some items of non-functional home decoration, such as ornaments, or a tole-painted teakettle that is for decoration only, will fit into this category.
source: this Storque article
Discuss the new category in this forum thread.
UPDATE:
The Collectibles category has been withdrawn for reconsideration.
May 22nd, 2008 at 5:43 pm
If this categorization update made any sense, then I might pay attention to it, but it doesn’t. While this issue is duked out amongst those who know a lot more about “collectibles” - if Etsy broke itself into 3 major sections and set up the entire site to MAKE IT VERY EASY for shoppers and buyers to find what they want when they want and easily - then all this other re-categorization might not even be necessary.
Make the site 3 major sections, state that on the Front Page, set up headings/sections for each section and let people find what they want and have a pleasant shopping experience.
And, to de-clutter, put all the social parts (now a huge part of the site) on PAGE 2 and let people go there when they want to. Adding categories, collapsing them, making new ones up ———– is that really going to improve sales NOW?? Or will more layers of information upon layers and layers drive shoppers away from the site?
May 26th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
*sigh*
Dollhouse miniaturists have been begging for a category for 2 years now.
We shall see…….
June 2nd, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Etsy made a good call on this. As the site has grown to 150,000 stores (Etsy’s number) the truth is clear. For buyers to find what they want, the site needs to be SIMPLER.
Adding layers of newish-categories to the now-3-pronged Search is only going to add to the confusion.
While Etsy continues to focus on recruiting new stores and sellers, touting 1 million items, where the heck is the poor shopper and buyer in all this massive growth?
It’s nice to have 1 million items, but can the buyers find what they want when they want without spending 10 hours trying to figure out how to find anything anymore?