Etsy
New York Times Magazine gives some love to Etsy and the handmade movement they are built around. Etsy are like an eBay for unique products crafted by artsy folks.
The analogy in my own mind is that they are like an online version of the Young Designers Markets nearby where I live in New York.
Initially I dug the products and thought the site was beautifully designed and one of the best examples of usability on the web.
That low bar was the reason I decided to see Rob Kalin, their founder, speak at the Future of Web Apps conference in London a month or two ago.
Wow. I wasn’t expecting what I heard. Rob’s talk was philosophical, passionate and completely bizarre. But unlike 99% of ’smart people’ who espouse on such things, the kid had purpose.
His talk included a Japanese childrens story about little fish aligning to emulate a bigger fish and his aim in being the ‘eye’ of the fish (he told the same story to the NY Times mag reporter). He talked about Walmart, the industrial revolution and seemingly everything other than his given topic (web design).
The funny thing is that I believed in him. As in, even though he had bizarre reasoning around certain things, what he is doing is utterly admirable and fantastic.
Rob is like a smarter, more worldly and likable version of Mark Zuckerberg. That is, he is swinging for the fences and the ball is already high in the air, sailing toward the seats in the upper deck.
Union Square Ventures may get a lot of street cred because of investments in Delicious and Twitter but this investment more than any other will deliver a huge return for their first fund.
Aside from the Japanese kids stories, the site itself is beautiful to interact with (I bought a few Christmas presents from it). They have a fantastic approach to storefronts and helping build the brand of the sellers. This may be a ‘niche site’ or in the words of Meg Whitman “a cute little business” but I have no doubt they will rip away a huge part of eBay’s business and be one of the most successful Internet companies to come out of New York.
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I saw that guy at FOWA as well, and I can tell you, if I was an investor I’d be reaching for my address book to find a CEO that I could put in front of investors a la Google. I know this thing might sound a bit like craiglist in terms of its radical approach (and its hard to get more radical than saying the profit motive does not drive this business), but without some frameworks this guy will drive the whole company off a cliff. I am sure, in his heart of hearts, that he knows it too. They just have to find the right framework for him to operate within. Just an opinion.
Honestly Paul, having seen the ‘value’ added by adult supervision like Eric Schmidt at Google, that is the worst thing the company can do.
By driving off a cliff, what exactly are you faulting him for? Costs seem under control, revenue and usage are growing like a hockey stick, etc.
“one of the best examples of usability on the web” - Etsy? What’s in that glass you’re drinking from Niki?
Steve, how about the truth?
Etsy really dug their own pit by ever putting Etsy into the same sentence with eBay. But at that time, Etsy were pioneers, the online handmade/indie designers scene just barely out of the basements (in regards to better designed websites and blogging), and no one would have gotten the concept if worded different.
I think your own analogy fits better with what Etsy really is (that’s the way they should have considered). For once, because eBay is an auction site, Etsy isn’t; for another, handmade products are sold by the artists themselves, not by third party retailers.
I have the feeling that people often prefer the eBay analogy over using words such as “retail classifieds” (which Etsy is, and much more in addition, only that it doesn’t look like a conventional classifieds site). Honestly, I don’t know what’s better or worse. The internet is reshaping ways to shop, and often our standardized marketing terms hardly manage to make facts and expectations meet.
Usability - this certainly lies in the eyes of the beholder. Could you give some examples for why Etsy is one of the best sites in regards to usability? What are they doing better than others, when we keep an average internet shopper in mind with average internet skills and an averagely good computer?
[…] readers know that I am in love with Etsy, a marketplace for handmade goods. The CEO, Rob Kalin, is even more […]