Today on the Craft Industry Alliance podcast we’re talking about Etsy with my guests Stephanie Schacht and Heather Jassy.
This episode is a little bit different from past episodes of the podcast. I’ve been an Etsy seller since July of 2005 when Etsy was still in its infancy. Over the past 10 years, I’ve ridden each wave of change to the site and experienced how those changes have affected the seller community.
Etsy’s office in Hudson, NY, where Heather is based.
There’s an ongoing tension as an Etsy seller between the individual and the marketplace. What do we give up and what do we gain by being part of Etsy?
Over the last few years, a significant portion of the seller community has really come to question some of Etsy’s decisions including allowing sellers to work with manufacturing partners and handling intellectual property violations, among other issues. There have been mistakes. There have been misunderstandings. To me, one way to work on resolving some of the mistrust that now exists is to sit down together and talk and that is my goal with this podcast.
Inside the Etsy offices in Brooklyn.
My first guest, Heather Jassy, is the Senior Vice President of Members and Community at Etsy. She came to Etsy in 2010. She grew up in south Georgia and has an undergraduate degree in English and a master’s degree in psychology. She had a therapy and consulting practice before shifting to working in the tech world, first at Lockerz and then Etsy. Heather is an avid reader of the Etsy forums and of blogs that talk about Etsy. She lives with her husband and daughter in Hudson, New York.
And my second guest is Stephanie Schacht. Stephanie is the Head of Responsible Seller Growth which means she oversees the vetting of Etsy sellers who want to work with manufacturing partners. She is a sociologist with a Ph.D. from Princeton. Prior to Etsy she worked in the local food movement and has a keen interest in community and sustainability. She lives in Brooklyn.
The Etsy homepage.
A few weeks ago I asked for your questions for Stephanie and Heather. I received a long list (thank you!) and read and considered every question carefully. I did my best to represent you in this conversation and to bring up the questions that appeared most frequently and seemed to be most pressing. I’m sure I didn’t do a perfect job, but I hope that after listening you feel like I brought up at least some of the issues you care about.
In this conversation we talk about:
- Why there aren’t separate categories on Etsy for handmade goods and manufactured goods.
- How Etsy defines the line between handmade and manufactured and the danger in trying to be the “creativity police.”
- The process by which a seller’s manufacturing partners are reviewed.
- How dissent in the Etsy forums was handled in the past, and how it’s being handled now.
- How Etsy handles intellectual property violations and the struggles of having an open marketplace.
Heather also reveals a forthcoming change regarding hyperlinking your blog or website from your Etsy shop. Exciting!
My hope is that this is the beginning of more open conversations with leaders at Etsy. The more we talk to each other, and the more we listen to one another, the better off we all are.
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Today’s episode is sponsored by ImagineGnats.
At Imagine Gnats you’ll find modern sewing patterns that include clever details and practical techniques, plus fabrics for your garment sewing needs. Check the Imagine Gnats blog daily for creative inspiration. Find it all at imaginegnats.com.
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Great podcast, Abby. I appreciated hearing the “Etsy” point of view on some of the controversy that surrounds the manufacturing issue.
I guess my biggest takeaway from this is that Etsy’s goal is to judge each applied for manufacturing situation on a case-by-case basis with the relationship between the designer and manufacturer. And if all other criteria are met, the relationship is paramount. Not sure I agree with this but I guess Etsy had to come up with some distinguishing characteristic.
Also interesting was the 168K number of shops closed last year due to non-IP violations. I’m sure many of these were non-approved shops using manufacturing and hopefully the flat out resellers.
Interesting podcast!
We heard about the shops with approved manufacturers. But the problem at Etsy is the NON-APPROVED manufacturers, the ones who are established factories who come in and write a bogus “about” page with a photo, some don’t even hide they are a factory posing as handmade/designed. WE all have seen it, Etsy denies it.
And the resellers. Every time someone makes a treasury showing the EXACT item with the same photos, Etsy shuts it down. Again, WE all see it, Etsy denies it.
I would love to hear a pod cast with Etsy about why they haven’t revamped search to eliminate the post-clumping, supposedly temporary patch that now has the quota before the clumping starts again. And to the comment recently that most of their search resources are going to help people find things they don’t know they want yet. (paraphrasing). Why can’t both those who know exactly what they want and those who are browsing be equally as important to etsy?
Hi Robin,
If I do get a chance to speak with folks from Etsy again on a future episode I will definitely post a Google Form on my blog in advance of the recording like I did this time so that members of the seller community will have a chance to submit questions for me to ask. The question of resellers and the question of search are two really good ones. Thank you for listening.
I just want to say that I love this reply. “Why can’t both those who know exactly what they want & those who are browsing be equally as important to Etsy?” That is KEY! I cannot tell you how many power sellers are in threads ALL over Facebook the past 2 months asking what’s going on and if something has changed because suddenly, their shops are TANKING. You would think us handmade shops that drive a great deal if revenue would be extremely important to Etsy. I browse Etsy all the time, and more people than not are there to BROWSE through a specific key phrase. Like, I search for “baby boy clothes”. I’m searching to see all baby boy clothes. I feel like Etsy is shutting out a lot of shops I would like to buy from if I could actually see them! That’s me as a seller AND a buyer. Not to mention, we still only have 20 characters in each tag we are allotted. How much more specific could someone be on an “I love my Aunt” baby bodysuit? I mean, I guess you could put, “Personalized ‘I love my Aunt baby bodysuit'”, but I only have 20 characters I’m working with. So I have to use “I love my Aunt” as one key tag and “baby clothes”, “baby girl outfit”, “I love my Aunt outfit”, etc. You definitely shouldn’t fix something that is not broken & Etsy was doing great. I’m seeing A LOT of disgruntled buyers and sellers all over the net. I apologize for any spelling errors as I am speaking this into my phone while working on my shop with my baby attached to me 🙂
You raise great points. I hope to talk with Etsy about search when we are able to record another conversation and I will do my best to express this question to them.
Thanks Abby for hosting this interview! A lot of my questions were answered and light was definitely shed on the manufacturing process.
I have been on Etsy since 2009 and am grateful for the success that I have had as a seller. However, I have never felt supported as a “community” by Etsy. My issues revolve around resellers of foreign goods by Americans and Chinese sellers posing as handmade + lack of support over people using my shop name in product descriptions and tags. However, I take the good with the bad.
Now with the advent of Amazon Handmade and Shopify , Etsy will not be as unique. Amazon also supports its sellers with phone access.
I am happy that they are putting our website links up live on the Shop Announcement! I am glad that you took the time to interview them as it does help open up the communication between sellers and admin.
Great job, Abby!
(I always look forward to your weekly newsletter).
The question of resellers is a big one and I hope to be able to engage in conversation with Etsy again and ask about it. Thank you for listening.
Of course, it is always a pleasure! I appreciate that you are tackling such a large topic for us– the sellers!
Best wishes
Sarah
Abby I would “vote” for a What About the Resellers? podcast/interview with the Etsy staff.
Many, including myself, feel that Etsy pays scant attention to policing resellers. Etsy cites the “too many to police” excuse in the forums but the excuse just doesn’t seem true. Off hand I can think of several ways to implement a verification procedure that wouldn’t be difficult or costly to implement. And it seems the loss of credibility would spur Etsy to undertake a house-cleaning effort. I’m baffled as to why they don’t address this.
You would think that it would motivate Etsy to do more housecleaning as it is a serious accusation. Also it is very hurtful to the integrity of the site to have massive resellers pervade the site with their products.
Abby~ has ThreeBirdNest left Etsy? I do not see them on Etsy anymore
Thank you~
I want answers too!!!
Excellent interview but I feel Etsy was able to skirt several items.
1. Etsy is not vetting the factories with any on site reviews.
2. Etsy does not state what the “Unfair Advantage” would be that Artisan Made shops would have by
being given separate notation. I really only see that this would be the transparency they keep speaking
of that Artisan Made shops should be given.
3. I do not see Etsy following through on enforcing the transparency required of shops using
manufacturers. The “About Page” was going to be a requirement to list all help a shop gets from
additional in house help to outside manufacturers. At this time I only see a vast majority of shops
using help trying to look like they are a small hand made shop.
Overall I see the large shops being allowed to operate with limited enforcement and no requirements that they be ” transparent ” in a way that a shopper can immediately identify that they are using help. The shops selling hand made that are using help have a “huge advantage” when they are allowed to not be transparent about the help, be it a few people or a factory.
Transparency means enforcing that shops selling Hand Made post the truth of their manufacturing help where it can be seen by the shopper in a place where the shopper would see it when they are making their buying decision.
The unfair advantage would happen if Etsy put the shops with approved manufacturing in their own category. Right now that category would have 5,000 shops versus the 1.5 million in the rest of Etsy. Those 5,000 shops would each get much for attention being in a small category on their own.
I don’t see that as an unfair advantage. I see that as an incentive for transparency.
Right, but searching through 5,000 listings is a really different experience than searching through several million. By isolating those shops they’d be featured in a way that handmade show wouldn’t and that would be quite unfair.
Sure, but the differentiation between handmade vs partner produced would be a search option. I for one would love to be able to eliminate that 5,000 from the several millions when browsing for specifically hand made items.
I think the issue has more to do with the proliferation of resellers than sorting out the manufactured assist shops.
There are an incredible amount of resellers and generally they are posing as approved manufactured shops – this makes us all think that the threat to handmade from manufactured is greater than it really is. There is no “seal of approval” when viewing a shop.
Etsy’s lax enforcement of the resellers and weak commitment to their seller base in this regard hurts everyone. It gives approved manufacturers a black eye and a guilt complex while small handmade shops struggle against a tidal wave of cheap goods.
If Etsy could just commit to policing the resellers this whole debate about manufactured vs “true” handmade wouldn’t even be happening; the real mix of small handmade and manufactured assist shops would be easily apparent. This interview makes it seem as though there’s nothing to be done yet I can think of several ways to remedy the problem that wouldn’t require a huge staff or financial commitment. Frustrating!
Hi Booth, I think you’re right that resellers are the real issue here. I have a second interview scheduled with Etsy for mid-February and I plan to make this one of the main topics we talk about. I agree with you that the issue of manufacturing partners has become muddled with the issue of resellers when in fact they are separate issues. I’m interested in your ideas for remedying the resellers problem in a way that wouldn’t be difficult or expensive. I can ask directly whether those ideas might work.
Thank you for tackling the hard questions with Etsy representatives on our behalf, Abby. I sure appreciate you!
I am trying to decide if I will open an Etsy shop. I noticed that you asked a very good question about manufactoring and gave the example of someone who buys knitted items and then sews a ribbon or button on and sells it as handmade by them. The Etsy lady didn’t answer this. And I really wanted her to! How can I compete, knitting beautiful things that take a dozen horurs to make with someone who buys in bulk from China and then sews a button on? I am very conflicted about proceeding.
My understanding from talking with Heather is that this would fall under “simple assembly” and that has always been allowed on Etsy. I could be wrong, but that’s what I think.
Yes this was a great podcast and answered some lingering questions about Etsy and policies. It is best to sit down and have real talk about what (we) sellers are concerned about.
p.s. never mind~ I see that ThreeBirdNest left Etsy.
No comment 🙂
Abby one of your BEST interviews. Respectful and yet specific with many difficult questions! Excellent, you should be nominated for a journalism award for this interview!
My one question for next interview with etsy.com. One of them stated that they don’t have the “price” as qualifier for product search. I went on today, Dec 21, 2015, and found lowest/highest price is a qualifier after “most recent” and “relevancy”. Maybe this is recent since interview?
Again, praise to you for an excellent interview.
Oh my goodness, Jane. Thank you!
yes, there is a price qualifier in product search. I’m not sure how I didn’t notice that before we talked.