Etsy, a site for buying and selling hand-made crafts, has raised $27 million in a round led by Accel Partners, with Accel’s Jim Breyer joining the company’s board of directors.
Think eBay’s e-commerce site, but for arts and crafts, and also more tastefully designed. Etsy’s crafts range from handmade furniture to bracelets (sample below).
The vision behind the company is that it can help small-time craftspeople find customers and make a living, while reducing society’s reliance on mass-produced consumer goods. “We believe that the world cannot keep consuming the way it does now, and that buying handmade is part of the solution,” founder Rob Kalin writes in this post about the funding, and the company’s future plans.
Etsy charges sellers a $0.02 listing fee per item and 3.5 percent commission on any sale, as well as letting sellers pay a small fee to showcase their goods in prominent locations on the site. It is making money and at break-even.
The site also offers a feedback system, a Paypal payment option, online forums, online sessions on craftsmaking aired live from the company’s headquarters, and even street teams that help reach out to local users.
It has around 650,000 registered members, including 120,000 craft sellers, and lists nearly 1 million items. Most site visitors are in the US, Europe and down under, by the looks of this map (pictured) on the company’s site, although it has sellers in more than 127 countries. The site had more than a million unique visitors in December, according to Comscore.
Previous investors Union Square Ventures and Hubert Burda Media joined in this round. The company received angel funding from Flickr co-founder Catarina Fake and other individuals. Previous funding totaled $5 million. Note: Investors have apparently been drooling over the company for years.
9 Comments
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michele bango said:
Great artical! I am a vendor and a buyer on Etsy…I joined a few months after they started..I have seen it change and get better and better…it is a great way to support Indie artists across the country.You would be amazed at the quality of the items offered.
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mary morgan said:
I just learned about etsy recently. I have already forwarded it to friends who are potential vendors, bookmarked it for my own use, & though retired w/o much money to spend, am going to look at investing. Mary Morgan
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Linda Y. said:
I have been an Etsy seller/buyer since 2005. It was great in the beginning, but now it is being bombarded with sellers who carry mass-produced items in their shops because Etsy’s fees are much lower than eBay’s. Those of us who make handcrafted items try constantly to alert the Etsy staff, but nothing is being done. Why would they shut down a user that brings in money? It’s sad but Etsy has lost the DIY spirit for me.
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Finding_Angel_Investor said:
Hello, I also will launch my BETA in next two month, needing quite a mall amount of funding from an angel investor. Strong software background and small low cost techncal team. Anyone out there? please send email to John at hth_999@yahoo.com
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Tom Thumb said:
While things can be very annoying with the inexperienced management team, it’s equally interesting to see how much of the complaining users seem to have no idea about VC strategies (and business in general). Which leads to one insight: while users should be given the feeling that they’re heard and respected, it’s very wrong to give them the feeling that they virtually own the company. They don’t, and they are not in the place to act up as if they had shares sitting in their wallets.
Had the Etsy management had a proper business plan and experience, or rather, had Robert Kalin cared to do his homework first instead of continuing his lifestyle of muddling himself around hurdles (Robert, it’s not a good idea to make this fact a media goodie), then problems like these wouldn’t have surfaced in the first place.
Because what was the trouble good for? Nothing, except for to prove that even a niche product needs to rely on classic economics and appropriate experience in order to be successful and to minimize risk. Of course, the illiterati wouldn’t guess that.
Have fun, Jim, cleaning up the mess.
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Scott Carr said:
Artery Gallery also strongly support handmade craft over mass produced goods.
With 2 contemporary art galleries and a secure website that attracts 50,000 visitors a month, Artery Gallery are aiming to make original artworks more affordable and accessible.
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Ahna said:
Fashionspace.com is a great option for selling of handmade, as well as ready-to-wear garments and accessories. It also has a strong system in place to help new designers or sellers build a solid brand identity. It’s free to list items, but Fashionspace takes a commission of each item sold. The marriage of the sales platform and the social networking platform make for a superior site to any that I’ve seen.
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Rusty said:
Another site that brings together all the handmade sellers, whether they are in India or the USA, and whether they sell on etsy, ebay, or their own store front and makes it all searchable is http://www.handmadebyhand.com
Free to use, and even free to list you items. Does not take care of the sale though.
Check it out especially if you sell handmade goods
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