Etsy was founded in 2005, by Iospace, a small company composed of Robert Kalin, Chris Maguire, and Haim Schoppik. Economic newspapers have described Etsy as a an e-commerce website focused on handmade or vintage items. To be considered vintage in Etsy an item should be at least 20 years old. Etsy passed 1.7 million in sales in 2007. In November 2007, buyers spent $4.3 million purchasing 300,000 items for sale on Etsy, an increase of 43 percent from October 2007. By 2009 Etsy had sales of 10 to 13 million per month. In 2017 Etsy generated 3.3 billion in sales for 1.9 million active sellers around the world. Etsy sellers contributed to 4.7 billion in economic activity in the US in 2017, according to ECONNORTHWEST. In 2015 Etsy had more than 1 million active sellers, and nearly 20 million active buyers and online aisles stocked with more than 26 million vintage trinkets and handmade crafts. In 2015, the company's revenue was 200 million USD. Etsy was founded on the renewed enthusiasm among women for crafting during the 1990's and 2000's. embodying the Do-It-Yourself spirit where women took to making things by hand. It is noteworthy that in 2007, of the 70,000 people who had set up Etsy stores, 90 per cent are women, an article titled Handmade 2.0 published in The NewYork Times said. Partly it was a resurgence of traditional crafts like sewing and knitting which were deemed unfashionable until then and partly it was a reaction against the commercialism of the mass produced, factory manufactured, shopping system that was prevalent in the United States, an article in the NewYork Times said. It was in this background that Etsy came into being as a place where crafters could sell their handmade goods. "Etsy found a lucrative marketplace among the more than 50 million American freelancers seeking to sell their wares and about 1.3 billion in merchandise was sold through the site in 2013." Soon, some of the crafters and hobbyists who flocked to Etsy in order to make money out of their crafting skills or hobbies became successful enough that they had to quit their day job and spend their entire day working on their hobby. Most people who start selling their products on Etsy start out with the intention of earning some extra money to supplement their main source of revenue. But many have seen their business grow in income generation to such an extent that it is possible for them to quit their day job. Instead Etsy became their main source of income with them earning even six figure salaries from their Etsy business. The attraction for Etsy for most hobbyists and crafters is that the start up costs are much lower than with any other business initiative. The site charges .20 cents for each item listed and 3.5 per cent of each sale. That means there is virtually no investment to have a store in Etsy, except the investment on crafting supplies but then if you consider that the business is an extension of a hobby, then the money for the supplies would be invested anyway. . Etsy also has an "in-house advertising program called the Showcase," Robert kalin, founder of Etsy said in an interview. The Showcase is also a source of revenue for Etsy. A possible reason for the popularity of Etsy is the opportunity to not only turn a hobby into a source of income but also the opportunity to work flexible hours, and work from home, outside of a formal structure of an office. According to an article in the New York Times, "what Etsy is really peddling is not only handicrafts, but also the feminist promise that you can have a family and create hip arts and crafts from home during flexible, reasonable hours while still having a remunerative and fulfilling career." An ideal that is at the core of Etsy is to keep the "human connection at the heart of commerce," the Etsy website said. The creators of Etsy wanted a way out of the anonymity, uniformity, and commercialism of the mall culture that pervaded the United States. At the Etsy store, the consumer and the producer connect as human beings as opposed to connecting as economic entities. According to the Etsy management, behind every Etsy handmade product is a story. When a buyer buys from the Etsy seller, he or she is in a way connecting to the story behind the product. The Etsy website says that the platform provided by Etsy enables sellers to "do what they love," and buyers to "buy what they love." This opportunity to purchase unique and personalized goods from a creative entrepreneur is a "shopping experience that helps foster an extremely loyal customer base, an article in Forbes.com quoted Etsy management as saying.
Due to the large number of Etsy stores and items for sale displayed in those stores, "browsing etsy is exhilarating and exhausting. There is enough here to mount an exhausting museum exhibition." (Handmade 2.0) Probably due to this reason, many magazines and blogs have regular features highlighting specific Etsy finds which work like shopping guides for the consumer looking to buy handmade or vintage items from Etsy. A lifestyle blog titled Censational Style features posts titled Etsy Art I Heart", showcasing the author's favorite Etsy shops and items of art in those shops. Magazines like Better Homes and Gardens, as well as Real Simple, also feature shopping guides that include Etsy finds. Also, Etsy management is working on technology to make the shopping experience of individual buyers easier, an article published in Forbes.com titled What you don't know about Etsy and its 2017 strategy said.
The majority of Etsy shoppers are women and the majority of items sold on Etsy tend to be art or hand made jewelry. The Etsy website functions like an "online craft fair or art show where the idea is that individuals can sell things they have made." Etsy has no warehouse unlike other online stores like ebay or amazon. "There is no etsy warehouse—It is just a community of millions of "people selling the things they love." The items sold could be made by hand or collected because of their love for the item.
The Etsy office is located in Brooklyn. The name Etsy was chosen by the founder of the company Robert Kalin, who "wanted a nonsense word because he wanted to build the brand from scratch. I was watching Fellini's 8 and ½ and writing down what I was hearing. In Italian you say Etsi a lot. It means oh yes. Actually it is Eh Si. And in Latin and French it means what if," an article in wikipedia said.
Etsy continuously holds entrepreneurial seminars describing steps to build your brand or featuring best practices of successful Etsy sellers or offering shop critiques. A few of the best Etsy sellers have been hired by Etsy to teach their success skills to as many sellers as possible. More than half of Etsy's revenue comes from key services Etsy offers to the Etsy sellers, to "start, scale and manage their businesses," a Forbes article said. Etsy is unconventional in that it uses post industrialization era technology to market pre industrial handmade goods. Etsy stimulates the economy by providing an outlet for individual creativity and the entrepreneurial spirit of women and artists providing employment and revenue with minimum investment even while upholding the values of environmental protection, and humane commerce. Reposting after changing *. I earlier wrote newspaper. I got all the facts and figures and quotes from the internet.
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