Etsy has a huge UI challenge right now: as the volume of listings increase, it becomes harder to find things that I'm interested in. Even text search is quickly overwhelming, because it's hard to describe new and quirky objects that are Etsy's biggest draw (for me).<p>If Etsy could create a good "we see you've bought quirky post-industrial greeting cards, maybe you'd be interested in ____" function (much like Netflix, Amazon, etc) then it would be greatly improved. It's a much harder problem to sovle than Netflix and Amazon because many items are one-of-a-kind (nobody else bought exactly what you bought), but comparisons of trends across sellers, across keywords, and across image features might work.<p>Etsy has an experimental "pick the object you like most" feature that leads to some results, but it doesn't allow narrow enough focusing yet: <a href="http://tastetest.etsy.com/" rel="nofollow">http://tastetest.etsy.com/</a><p>Same for the "explorer" view: <a href="http://www.etsy.com/explorer" rel="nofollow">http://www.etsy.com/explorer</a>
Can a business ever just reach a natural size and say to themselves, "this is as large as we're going to get, we're profitable, having a good time, and everyone is happy."<p>I realize they have funding and thus a responsibility to maximize their investments, but I'd love to build a company that feels like it has a natural size.
I learned last week that one of the founders of Etsy is Jared Tarbell, the excellent computational artist (<a href="http://complexification.net/gallery/" rel="nofollow">http://complexification.net/gallery/</a>, <a href="http://www.levitated.net/" rel="nofollow">http://www.levitated.net/</a>). He wasn't mentioned in the article though, I wonder why.
I guess the answer is maybe. One person non-software businesses run into all kinds of scaling problems that sellers ran into trying the quit your day job thing. I'm not sure the quit your day job is the right approach for most sellers. After reading the book E-Myth I realized that every Etsy seller should read it immediately if only to realize that they'd be better off doing something else. It seems like it's a good way to make some extra money if you make something nice. There's nothing wrong with that approach but it's less exciting than quiting your job to make cool things to sell on the internet. The people I've met who sell their crafts on Etsy typically have no money to do anything fun and no time to do it anyway.<p>I think the basic problem is that by taking all that money the expectations are far different. If they had bootstrapped then they'd be looking at a great business that could grow organically without the pressure to big a billion dollar business. It seems like (to put it in Joel Spolsky's framework) they are a Ben & Jerry's business playing with an Amazon model.
Etsy really has the potential to become a major player in the micro-vendor market if it can take design considerations seriously - it may be at the vanguard of the industry at the moment but without actual design consideration for the future may be exactly the problem. I sometimes frequent the site and get the craigslist-this-will-probably-stay-the-same-forever feeling.
I love etsy but this article brings up many good points. I wonder if etsy needs to look at related but new businesses in order to truly scale. Perhaps they need to look more at the physical side of their business, e.g. running custom manufacturing for their clients, supply chain mgmt for their more successful clients who have outgrown the etsy marketplace, etc.
Wait, what? Why the hell would anyone WANT Etsy to scale? Their brand is synonymous with the worst sort of tasteless kitsch known to man. What really needs to happen is someone needs to reboot the concept but include istockphoto.com's vetting process for potential vendors.
Etsy has John Allspaw, the guy who scaled Flickr. The man breathes scaling. He wrote the book on it! I realize he's an ops guy, but when you've got someone like him working for you, I'd say you've got a good chance of success.<p><a href="http://www.etsy.com/storque/etsy-news/john-allspaw-joins-the-etsy-team-6183/" rel="nofollow">http://www.etsy.com/storque/etsy-news/john-allspaw-joins-the...</a>
As someone who's spent time scaling sites, the problem isn't going to be if they can scale, its going to be will the management make it happen. Developers rarely do it right, and they'll need good management and oversight to pull it off. The ETSY devs I've met were pretty sharp, so I get the feeling they'll do better than most, but everyone needs a shove in the right direction.