I realize that snappy pages help, as an engineer myself (who often depended on Etsy's API responses...). I appreciate the great job they did taking Etsy from the substandard heap it was circa 2009 to where it is now. My point is that Etsy needed more of a guiding light than their engineering department providing effective technology.
Rob Kalin was not an artist - what was his art, Swimmy? BS? A couple wooden computer cases? In my perception he was a con-man hipster who dabbled in craft. I have no praise for him or anything he did, and am not suggesting his vision, whatever it was, or certainly his management, would have been better. I believe he is the one who imbued Etsy with a toxic culture from which that they are still suffering. One inept conman doesn't disprove 'artists' being management, and that's not what I called for - someone with retail experience would be nice, ideally online as well as the typical setting where Etsy members sell their wares offline like art galleries, craft fairs, jewelry stores, boutiques, and so forth.
All the time I've dealt with Etsy, I've heard the excuse that it's impossible for them to police their market place in any sort of pro-active way. But the sellers in each category have no problem finding obvious violations in their categories every day, and reports have never been dealt with logically and promptly. I, and others, gave up reporting mass production and resellers after it seemed futile due to lack of response, or even Etsy would claim items that seemed like clear violations were not violations.
I don't have a preference for Etsy's future, as I gave up attempting to use it years ago and have recommended to my friends and clients for years that they buy a domain and set up a shop they actually control, using shopify or big cartel to make it simple.
Rob Kalin was not an artist - what was his art, Swimmy? BS? A couple wooden computer cases? In my perception he was a con-man hipster who dabbled in craft. I have no praise for him or anything he did, and am not suggesting his vision, whatever it was, or certainly his management, would have been better. I believe he is the one who imbued Etsy with a toxic culture from which that they are still suffering. One inept conman doesn't disprove 'artists' being management, and that's not what I called for - someone with retail experience would be nice, ideally online as well as the typical setting where Etsy members sell their wares offline like art galleries, craft fairs, jewelry stores, boutiques, and so forth.
All the time I've dealt with Etsy, I've heard the excuse that it's impossible for them to police their market place in any sort of pro-active way. But the sellers in each category have no problem finding obvious violations in their categories every day, and reports have never been dealt with logically and promptly. I, and others, gave up reporting mass production and resellers after it seemed futile due to lack of response, or even Etsy would claim items that seemed like clear violations were not violations.
I don't have a preference for Etsy's future, as I gave up attempting to use it years ago and have recommended to my friends and clients for years that they buy a domain and set up a shop they actually control, using shopify or big cartel to make it simple.