Etsy lays off 225 workers after ‘essentially flat’ sales, says CEO | Business::Staff notified via livestream Wednesday by Josh Silverman, who acknowledged ‘unfortunate’ timing during holiday season
Fucking hate capitalism’s need for infinite growth, flat sales means you’re doing exactly the same as you were doing last year, if it was sustainable last year it’s sustainable this year
Especially for a company that is little more than a platform
COMPLAIN WHILE YOU FUCK SO WE CAN SELL YOUR CHILDREN HAND CRAFTED BABY BOTTLES.
Not always.
There is likely some development occurring that is assumed to be funded by future growth. If that growth doesn’t pan out, then the addition of features may not be economically viable.
As an example of a website who did it right, look at Craigslist. After their website was developed, there has been very little development outside of targeted areas meant to grow their revenue stream or make the site easier to manage.
I know a long-term seller
Site went to shit. No seller support. No actual new features that are requested, bugs that are known for years and nobody cares, increase in commission percentage, removal of product categories without explanation and absolutely zero willingness to stop drop shippers flooding the site
It’s basically a shittier Amazon marketplace now
Person I know just has whatever is left running there and doesn’t bother updating the catalogue
https://artisans.coop/ is run by the actual people making the things being sold. It was started by a group of Etsy sellers who were tired of Etsy’s bullshit.
Nice tip! This has no right being as cute as it is: https://artisans.coop/products/curious-cat-cozy
They need to work on their search feature. Did a search for “dad hat” and “five panel hat” with no results.
So if the company is not doing well at all, how about assessing the CEO performance? If company direction isn’t good, fire the CEO, not the workers who ensure operations
It’s so stupid how everything just be growth. Flat is fine. 23%+ stock gains, more than fine. Laying off people before the holidays, evil.
I don’t know why you’re downvoted - maybe your typos confused folks… But, as a seller on Etsy my sales have dropped off tremendously. All the Etsy fees we pay have only increased and it’s also now a wasteland of aliexpress dropshipped goods in their efforts to compete with Amazon instead of dialing up an alt to Amazon all because of shareholders.
Over a long while and several revisions, I prepared a 3D model of the time baton from the Loki series - complete with electronics, lights, etc. Almost immediately after I was done, Etsy raised their fees 30%. I never bothered trying to sell it because that destroyed my profit margin.
This is one of those sites I have a love-hate relationship with. It used to be much better when it started, with actual people selling actual homemade items.
These days, there’s a lot of dropshipping shit on there, sold for way higher prices. There’s also people who run their shop like a full on commercial business. All of this means that it’s harder to find the actual, honestly handmade stuff by individual users.
I’m also not a fan of the current tax hassle they’ve got going where they collect European sales tax in advance. It was a headache when I ordered a thing and got taxed twice (refunded by seller, thankfully).
“refunded by seller” is probably why the sales have flat lined.
Its really difficult to make money with all the charges and fees one has to pay in order to sell there besides being forced to refund or else threatened with bad reviews
My particular situation was: I bought some knife scales from a guy in Australia. I’m in the Netherlands. Etsy collects EU sales tax - 12 euros in this case. Now, Etsy is supposed to send that money to our customs people and the shipper puts a specific code on it to let them know that the taxes have been paid in advance.
Now, for whatever reason, Dutch customs taxed me AGAIN when the package arrived. Even though the seller had put the correct code on there and even highlighted it with a marker. So as far as I can tell, it wasn’t their fault that I got taxed twice.
But: Etsy specifically tells you to take things up with the seller first when there’s issues. And the seller refunded me the second tax payment (13 euros and change). Which was of course very nice of them. But I wasn’t about to take that double taxation lying down either. I’m very much in the ‘import taxes are theft and extortion’ camp, so I sure as shit wasn’t about to pay twice.
Whether he refunded it to avoid a bad review, I don’t know. But the whole thing annoyed me so much in general, I’ve stopped buying things on Etsy. God forbid I run into that issue if I ever buy anything actually expensive on there.
