Etsy started out as an e-commerce platform that allowed crafty types to sell homemade goods. While Etsy’s base is small merchants, the company has grown to become a major online marketplace with more than 800,000 sellers and $895 million in sales last year. Today, you can buy Etsy-curated products in stores such as Nordstrom and West Elm. Also, the company has loosened the rules to include items that are not strictly “handmade.”
Will Etsy remain a champion of small merchants even as it tries to scale up? Scott Gillum thinks the company will need to stay true to its roots as it grows.
“Etsy offers all the things you loved about doing business with a small proprietor or craftsman in your local community without the geographic limitations,” Scott Gillum writes in MediaPost. “It’s an opportunity to reconnect to humanity and to the small merchants that built the downtown you knew as a kid.”
You can read Gillum’s full commentary at mediapost.com.
