Etsy San Francisco Meetup
Thanks to a heads-up from Brenda at Phydeaux Designs we got news of an Etsy meetup June 9 in San Francisco! I left work and hour early and Mike and I headed over to a very cool cafe (Crossroads) next to the Embarcadero — it had a nice open space, perfect for the large gathering. It had a great coffee and artisan tea menu, lot of food goodies, and Etsy graciously picked up the tab. There wasn’t a lot of other traffic, so we were not interrupted and everything ran quite smoothly.
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- Maria
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- Jesse
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- Sara
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- Chad
The meeting was very organized, but not stiff or stifling. Each speaker introduced themselves first — I know Maria (CEO), Chad (CTO), Carrington (Finance Guy) and Sara (VP of Products) were there, and Jesse, the business development lead*. It was a fairly large group so I didn’t always catch everything that was said. We also heard briefly from CB, the “database guy” who actually lives here in Marin.
Everyone did a lovely job, Maria really shone. She’s got a natural talent for running meetings, that’s for sure! She made a point to talk about not only handmade, but hand-selected — including the suppliers and vintage sellers in her discussions.
She said (I’m paraphrasing) that Etsy is definitely a global business, with 159 countries represented. A quarter of the business generated with at least one non-US party — and I have found that statistic matches my own store, of having approximately 25% of my sales to non-US customers.
At the top of their priority list is the buyer’s experience. We all know we want certain seller tools, and Ian at Etsy Hacks has sure done a fantastic job of picking up where Etsy’s lagging. But Maria stressed that we need to have the buyer experience as fluid as possible before we get our fun toys. I can agree with that (but I will not give up my hacks!!).
Related to this is continual work on the search results, and for optimizing Etsy itself for searches off of Etsy (namely, Google). Along those lines are features like “related searches” and spellcheck, which I think are fantastic. I often tag with mispellings to try to catch some of those searches.
She’d like to have us able to organize our favorites into lists, and refine checkout so that newly signed up buyers don’t have to stop and confirm their email during the purchase process (they would confirm it later I think).
Chad focused on how the tech side is going — he stressed that (and so did Carrington) people are working hard behind the scenes during down-time to really improve the stability of the site and improve the structure so that we can have all these fun tools in the future. The new “re-arrange your shop” tool that is in Beta is part of this. He said that there has been a 200-800% increase in the site’s stability, even as traffic has nearly doubled, in the last 9 months or so. He said they are also writing the software that helps them write future software for the site.
Maria talked then about advertising Etsy as a whole. They have no desire for TV ads (too expensive is what that boils down to), so they’re focusing on what I’d call more passive things like search engine optimization. They do sponsor on NPR (you get a little fifteen second segment when you do that) and she talked about the recent Good Morning America feature on Etsy and selected sellers. She is fond of email marketing tools such as Etsy Finds, social media (Facebook applications, handmade videos, etc). During questions, I asked if we could integrate our shop newsletters with our Etsy site to make it easier for people to sign up and for us to send them, and that idea seemed well received. The provider for their mailing lists might be able to offer something similar to store owners — but not in 2009, although hopefully in less than a year*.
They moved on to Paypal, and Carrington and CB both said that currently Paypal is simply the best solution — however, we’ll need an in-house payment system for things like site-wide gift cards. They tossed around an idea of having a pre-paid Etsy debit card (like a Starbucks card) but I think most sellers are underwhelemed with that idea (I definitely am not fond of it).
I don’t sign up for Etsy emails, but a couple people talked about that, with Maria and Sara. Some people don’t get the emails, so they’re going to chat with Chad to see if that’s a technical issue or what.
All the needed seller tools, like batch listing, scheduled listings, auto-relist, etc., are things that are in the works but need the stable background that they are building now.
There were a couple questions about wholesale and how to do that on Etsy (which I think is sort of dumb, I don’t want Etsy to have a cut of my wholesale, that changes my pricing structure!). But I DO want a fixed catelog of all my items so that shoppers and retailers can see my product lines even when something is not in stock. I want to be able to organize by scent, or product type, or whatever, so that people can see the full range of what I do. Searching through my sold items is not practical! Maybe have a password-protected area for retailers to visit to “shop” wholesale.
Someone brought up that it’s often difficult for buyers to know they are in one store, and to return to that store’s main page if they’re on an item listing (I say, keep the shop banner on all pages and have it clickable!). I think it was Jill from Scabby Robot. I definitely liked that idea, and Maria said the item pages do need a makeover.
Chad then took up the Etsy outside development issues — and stressed that they are welcoming third-party devs with open arms. There are two iPhone apps now, and of course Etsy Hacks and some others out there.
The issue of flagging was brought up, including that horrible item that was up the other day (not gonna rehash that one). Anyway — in a nutshell, they do their best. While they didn’t say this, I just think it’s a lack of staff for all the flagged items. Maria said instead of focusing on the after effects, they want to look at more ways of preventing resellers/forbidden stuff. Make it maybe a little more tedious to sign up? She said it was something that she personally has a renewed attention on at this time.
They briefly touched on some other areas, such as site personalization — ie, if you only buy jewelry on etsy, to sort of “block” the rest of the site if you wanted to customize your experience on the site.CB asked if people would use some kind of Etsy-hosted accounting interface, and I asked if it would be possible to integrate an inventory feature (the answer was, sounds good, maybe in a year).
It was a (long) and great meeting. I got to meet a bunch of great sellers too 
If you’ve made it this far (long post, sorry!) I’d love to hear from you especially if you’d like to talk about your experience as a buyer, and how this might be improved!
*made some edits, thanks, Maria! Clarified the last speaker’s name and the newsletter “hopeful” timeline
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Hi Lisa,
It was great to meet you this evening. The “other guy” was Jesse, our business development lead http://www.etsy.com/profile.php?user_id=7295651
You’ve captured well the spirit and substance of the meeting. Thank you.
One clarification: on the possibility of providing e-newsletter tools for sellers, we are evaluating options. I said it probably won’t happen in 2009, but I hope it will happen in less than a year!
Sincerely,
Maria Thomas
CEO, Etsy
Hi Savor, Thank You so much for sharing. I was unable to attend on that day.
I think that a lot of the ideas presented are good ones. Personally, as a buyer, I would also like to see “out of stock” inventory so that I can see what I missed out on, or get some sort of idea of what to look forward to when it comes back IN stock.
Another thing I would like to see from the Savor shop is a “new” category for when new scents are posted, or scents that haven’t been restocked for some time. Sometimes I’ll be browsing and I’ll see something I’ve never seen before and go, “oh! How long has that been there??”
But that’s personal preference, as well.
Overall it sounds like you had a great meeting!
[...] Etsy: Curious about the San Fransisco Etsy meetup yesterday? @savorsoap wrote a great recap here htt… [...]
Wow, GREAT re-cap! Thank you!
Thanks so much for the synopsis. I really don’t need a lot of bells and whistles, so I’m glad to hear site stability is the goal.
The rest is all gravy. I tried to tweet you, but it didn’t seem to work. http://twitter.com/sosherrytweets
so that was what you were doing with your computer! great job with the notes. i really appreciate it.
Maria, yay! Thanks for stopping by and thanks for the clarifications — I’ve made two edits to the text to reflect them
Definitely give yourself and your team a round of applause because I think everyone enjoyed themselves!
(Sherry: I am following you now, dunno what might have gone wrong w/ the twitter!)
Tizzrah: I love the idea of a new category. I remember I tried it out a little while, but then with new products I was running out of category space! (We have a limit of 10 categories). I’ll think about revamping them because I think that would make things easier!
Glad to see my post is useful, woohoo! Feel free to send it to friends or whatever, if people are curious about the event.
[...] Want more? Loads more info about the meet up over at Savor’s blog, The Cookbook. [...]
A catalog would be fantabulous!
Maybe in the meantime you could just make one here or do an album on flikr with every different flavor. that way i can do my research and study up on your lovely synopsis for each one ahead of time
lisa…
if you had a catalog of everything you make, my fiance would seize my laptop
i already have a list a mile long of every single thing i want to try from your shop
on a more serious note, i definitely agree that having some way of seeing everything a seller makes would really be wonderful and useful for almost all the shops i buy from on etsy
p.s. i nominate you for best seller on etsy
Fantastic job, Savor-Sav. Thanks for doing this. I posted a link in the CCCOE forum. xo
Julia, you’re a sweetheart! Katia and Julia I am really gonna work on a catelog, I think that would be the perfect thing to put up on my mostly empty webspace!
Wendy — thanks for the link!
wow.. that was SUPER informative!! i’m thrilled Etsy made it out West and i like the sound of how things are progessing.
thanks for posting!!
It really was a great meeting, with invaluable information. Thank you for summarizing so well! One of the key takeaways for me is that Maria et al very consistently said that they want to hear from us, and that they want our feedback as they think about ideas to pilot (and then pilot for feedback!). I also just think it is sooo invaluable to meet these folks in person (and vice versa), so that they’re no longer remote mythologized names, but living breathing human beings. I will definitely make an effort to go to future Bay Area meetings (and I’ll give you and Mike a heads up too!
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it was a great meeting & it was good to meet you savor. i definitely love the idea of having a ‘new category’ for sections and the ability to put an item into multiple sections.
Thank you so much Lisa for blogging about the awesome meeting last night! It really inspires and reassures me to know we have such a smart and dedicated Etsy Admin Management team! And I am thankful to be part of such a supportive Etsy community! Go Etsy! And I am so happy I finally got to meet you last night Lisa!
xo, Katy
And a shout out and thank you to CB who is the Etsy database guru!!!
Great read! We’re always interested in what’s going on in Etsyland.
Thanks so much for this thorough summary! I was so disappointed to miss the meeting and especially bummed not to be able to meet my online cronies..another time, I hope. This article did get me excited to see how Etsy will improve for us sellers and buyers. Thanks again! - Marianne
What a great summary! I’d really hoped to make it but wasn’t able to. Nice to know it was a good meeting. Thanks for posting this!
Thanks so much for posting this. I went to the meeting, but had to leave early. I’m glad to have been able to read what else was discussed.
Thank you. Great summary of a valuable and enjoyable evening. Maria was so clear explaining her vision; what’s important to her and to etsy; AND she really listened to buyers and sellers who were there. I like her spirit and enthusiasm for the site.
My one caveat is that when ebay decided to focus on the buyer while ignoring the seller perspective, things quickly went downhill for everyone.
I am impressed with etsy’s goals and I’d like to help them make more $$ while I do the same!
lisa! the meeting was pretty dense with info, so glad you took notes. thanks!!
Hey-thanks for the post. I was disappointed to miss the meeting. One question: what’s “flagging”?
Hi Angie!
By “flagging” we really mean reporting — reporting items that are tagged incorrectly, or made by “resellers” or other kinds of Etsy violations
Wow! I’m glad you were able to attend. Thank you so much for the detailed recap! Maybe some day they will come to Minnesota!
Thank you,
Michelle-
Hey Lisa, just came here from Quirkes… thanks for your write up as well!
Hey Abitabite! Nice to see you