Etsy is a website which provides the general public with a way to buy and sell handmade items, including art, photography, clothing, jewelry, and toys. The site follows in the tradition of open craft fairs, giving sellers personal storefronts where they list their goods for a fee.

History

The site was launched on June 18, 2005 by iospace, a small company composed of Robert Kalin, Chris Maguire and Haim Schoppik. Later Jared Tarbell joined the team. Noteworthy employees include Matthew Stinchcomb (formerly of the French Kicks) and Bre Pettis (a video blogger known for his work with MAKE). Former NPR executive Maria Thomas joined as COO in 2008 and is now CEO . Investors include Union Square Ventures and founders of Flickr and Delicious .

Etsy has grown significantly to tens of thousands of sellers and five times that in buyer accounts. The engineers frequently add new tools and functionality to the site to help sellers gain exposure and traffic, including Adobe Flash-based visualizations and a taxonomy of categories with tags . Etsy passed $1.7M in sales in May 2007. On July 29, Etsy had its one-millionth sale and anticipated its two-millionth sale would occur mid-December 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. In June 2007 it expected to be profitable by the fall, but in December 2007 it was not a profitable company . In January 2008, Etsy received an additional $27 million in funding from Union Square Ventures, Hubert Burda Media, and Jim Breyer .

In February 2008, trouble at eBay, including a strike by some dissatisfied sellers, brought speculation that Etsy could be an increasing competitor. At the same time, however, some Etsy sellers expressed unhappiness with how Etsy was handling complaints about stores. A comparison of the two websites included complaints that on Etsy, items are difficult to find, the interface "feels slow", and the buying and selling process is United States-centric .

In July 2008, Rob Kalin ceded the position of CEO to Maria Thomas. Since then, a number of longtime Etsy employees have left the company, including founders Haim Schoppik and Chris Maguire.

Operations

Etsy has a permanent office called the "Etsy Labs" in Brooklyn, New York. The site's customer support, marketing/PR, business and communications teams operate out of this office. Additionally, Etsy Labs has a community workspace that provides equipment and donated materials where Labs members gather to make items, take and teach workshops, and attend special events. Etsy also supports "street teams", groups of Etsy sellers affiliated by location or interest that work together to promote their team members. Etsy is one of the main members of the Handmade Consortium, a 2007 effort to encourage buying handmade holiday gifts.