Etsy sounds a little like “itsy-bitsy” and a little like “Betsy.” Which is to say, it’s about as cute and homespun a name as you could think of for a website that traffics in all things cute and homespun.
It’s also helped create a cute, homespun revolution in the lives of crafters.
Folks who once had to settle for pottery, quilting or woodworking as a hobby — with perhaps the occasional sale at a crafts fair or consignment store — have in some cases become full-time artisans, thanks to the 5-year-old site that specializes in handmade and vintage items (etsy.com).
“It’s a whole different world right now,” says Andrea Cammarata of Wayne, N.J., one of a number of crafty folk who have gotten a new lease on life from the web in general — and from Etsy in particular.
Cammarata was able to quit her job and devote herself full time to her several Etsy web “shops.” Not that it was easy, she’s quick to add. “It’s serious, seven days a week,” she says. “You tend to it like you would a garden. I don’t eat if it doesn’t sell.”
What makes Etsy — along with other less-high-profile craft sites like ArtFire and DaWanda — a game-changer is that it removes the hit-and-miss quality that always made crafting such a perilous livelihood.
In the past, handcrafters had to rely on luck: their knickknack, in a booth or shop window, catching the eye of a browser with cash to burn. But Etsy can instantly connect the person who wants a hand-painted ceramic figurine of a zebra with the woman who happens to make hand-painted ceramic figurines of zebras.
“You might make something that’s not very mainstream, but if you come to Etsy, you have the potential to meet a worldwide audience,” says Etsy spokesman Adam Brown.
What Etsy offers — in theory, anyway — is the tantalizing promise of being able to quit a dull job in the filing department and live out a dream life as a fulltime jeweler, weaver or woodworker. It’s part of the Etsy mystique: There’s even a feature called “Quit Your Day Job” on its blog, though Brown is quick to add that it isn’t that easy. Most of the 400,000 sellers who have signed with Etsy still do it part time, he says.
“Running a business is not easy,” Brown says. “Etsy is a platform, a way to set up an online shop quickly and easily and inexpensively.”
The “shops” are the personal sites-within-the-site; many crafters have more than one. For instance, Cammarata has shops with names like Popalicious (hand-embellished mirrors, magnets, push pins), Popalicious Too (cabochons, a kind of polished gem or bead), The Cottage Market (tea towels, candles, chalkboards), On a Pretty Plate (decorative plates) and Doxie Doodles (dachshund art — don’t ask). Buyers, she says, come from as far away as Egypt, Europe and Australia.
“It completely takes over your life, but if you’re committed to it, and you really feel like you have something unique, it’s worth fighting for,” says Allison Clarke of Harrington Park, N.J., whose Funky Junk Co., on Etsy sells picture frames, corkboards and vintage mirrors, all made from “repurposed” wood.
She’s been on Etsy for a year; business has increased 20 to 30 percent, she says. “What I make can’t be mass-produced, and people really love that,” she says.
In two years, Etsy helped boost Janna Makaeva’s Mahwah, N.J., business, Cutting Edge Stencils (decorative stencils used for gilding walls, furniture and fabrics), to the point where she’s hired three assistants to keep up with the work she does with her husband, Greg Swisher. Etsy, she says, accounts for 30 to 40 percent of her business.
“As long as I can remember, I was always crafty — sewing, sculpting, embroidery,” Makaeva says. “Then somebody told me, ‘Why don’t you start selling on Etsy?’ I had no idea what Etsy was at the time.”
Etsy remains a bit mysterious even now, with sales figures topping $314 million yearly.
The name, for instance. Robert Kalin, who co-founded the site with Chris Maguire, Haim Schoppik and Jared Tarbell, is perpetually coy about just who or what an Etsy is. “He never gives a straight answer,” Brown says. “I think his favorite one is that it has to do with a Fellini film he liked when he was growing up. Or it’s something about a childhood pet.”
What’s not disputed is that Kalin, a web designer and amateur craftsman, could find no single website that specialized in handcrafted items, so he and his partners launched their own — charging a 20-cent listing fee for each item, and getting 3.5 percent of each sale. It’s proven so successful that it now commands a staff of 185 people (headquartered in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood).
“Obviously, we didn’t invent the idea of commerce on the Internet, but I think one thing Etsy has done well is making it personal and human,” Brown says.
Certainly, many Etsy clients feel that human connection. Cammarata credits the site with saving, not just her professional life, but her life.
In May, she says, she suffered a massive brain hemorrhage. After the ordeal of brain surgery, her brain and motor skills were “like molasses.” Etsy was her rehabilitation.
“I worked at it, I contacted everybody, I started listing items,” she says. “All of a sudden, I discovered I could hold a paint brush. I don’t think I would ever have gotten to that point that quickly doing anything else. Etsy was the best thing in the world for me.”
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ETSY AT A GLANCE
Total members: More than 7.2 million
Total sellers: More than 400,000
Items currently listed: 7.7 million
Page views per month: 971 million
Total sales (Gross merchandise sales)
2005: $166,000
2006: $3.8 million
2007: $26 million
2008: $87.5 million
2009: $180.6 million
2010: $314.3 million
Source: Etsy
