According to the company’s website, Etsy’s vision is to “build a new economy and present a better choice: Buy, Sell, and Live Handmade.” While that goal isn’t realistic for everyone, it certainly appeals to many. The Etsy website is more than a website – it’s a community of people passionate about handcrafted items. The website is fun for shoppers to use, offering a multitude of unique ways to search for items to purchase. Conversely, the website is also easy for sellers to use and appealing to the lone artist with limited funds, yet awesome talent. Sellers without any other online store can create an Etsy storefront. The process is fairly straightforward, and the high rank of the Etsy website affords sellers tremendous exposure that may be otherwise unattainable on a limited marketing budget.
The Etsy Way of Thinking: Choose Handmade over Mass-Produced
Buying and selling on Etsy takes commerce back to a time before the Industrial Revolution when customers were intimately linked to the real live artisans that produced their goods. Commerce the Etsy way is an alternative to buying mass-produced, anonymous goods at retail giants such as Wal-Mart and Target.
What Artists Sell on Etsy: Handmade Jewelry and More
Artists from a multitude of mediums can sell through Etsy shops. Popular categories include handmade jewelry, ornaments, and baby- or wedding-related items. There are currently over 200,000 artists selling all things handmade on Etsy.
The Etsy Shopping Experience: Pounce, Search, Shop by Color
The people behind Etsy obviously recognize shoppers’ needs to search differently based on occasion. The site’s creators have also gone to great lengths to make the shopping experience fun and interactive by providing many ways to shop on Etsy. Shoppers have the ability to search for handmade products in multiple ways; for example, products can be narrowed down by geographic location, color, or even most recently sold items (through a tool appropriately called “Pounce”). Customers can also search for keywords in tags, titles, and descriptions, among other criteria. The homepage features seasonal and holiday-specific showcases at appropriate times of the year. A particularly helpful search application is organized by color; this is useful for shoppers searching for an item in a very specific hue or complementary color (think: home accessories or jewelry).
Unique Online Shopping: Custom Requests via the Alchemy Marketplace
Alchemy is where Etsy sellers can bid on the opportunity to make custom-designed handcrafted items. Potential customers list desired items as well as the ideal price they would like to pay and open the floor for bidding by Etsy sellers.
Taking the Online Shopping World by Storm
Handmade artists and shoppers, alike, are drawn to Etsy’s offerings and philosophy. Statistics published on the Etsy website in September 2008 indicate that sales have jumped from $166,000 annually in 2005 to $48.2 million to date in 2008, which indicates extraordinarily rapid growth over the past three years. This is one company to watch.
Resource: Etsy website
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