Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Etsy CEO - Josh Silverman in, Chad Dickerson Out, Will Etsy Focus on Selling Again?

With the firing of Chad Dickerson as CEO of Etsy along with 80 of his employees, will new CEO Josh Silverman turn Etsy back into a site effectively connecting buyers to sellers' items they want?  I'm a pet portrait artist on Etsy and have to hope.

Pet Portrait Art, one of many at Etsy


Etsy sellers are reaching out to Josh Silverman to give our input.

https://www.etsy.com/teams/7722/discussions/discuss/18351569/page/1

Most etsy sellers are not etsy stockholders, but we do see the priority that Dickerson had that etsy be a "tech company" instead of the commerce site hurt both sellers and stockholders.

Under Dickerson's leadership, Etsy "re-defined" handmade to include factory made.  Search was manipulated to "spread the love" by showing buyers new shops in an artificial manner while older shops who built etsy were penalized for being...successful. And that's all that's been publicly disclosed, savvy sellers have seen huge drops in views, and suspect some kind of rolling blackout or shop rotation by geographic and even rotation by buyer's first names!
 https://www.etsy.com/teams/7722/discussions/discuss/18151710/page/1  Today's disclosure seemed to confirm.

Under his leadership, brand new Etsy's headquarters were built to the very highest standards to enable it to be a noble entity while its customers suffered.   While employees enjoy perks seen nowhere else, we sellers and buyers have no customer service telephone and search has been dismal.

For instance, under his leadership, Search glitched, putting whole shops ahead of any other sellers and the "temporary fix" was enacted in 2014, with a promise of fixing it in early 2015.  It's April, 2017 now. http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y14/m10/i30/s02

While I miss founder Rob Kalin, personally, and respect him for creating Etsy, really, we sellers are in it for the money just as much as stock holders are.  And when we are successful, so is Etsy.  So I hope the new CEO focuses again on making Etsy a place to connect buyers of art, handmade, vintage and supplies to shopkeepers who sell them.  Eleven years ago, sellers had little options to sell, and the site was built by unhappy handmade sellers leaving Ebay.

There are tons of options now, including very easy to start personal e-commerce sites.

I hope Josh Silverman recognizes that and am hopeful for leadership that benefits stockholders, buyers and sellers alike.

I'm pet portrait artist Robin Zebley.  My shop at etsy is customportraitart.etsy.com







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