Attention, shoppers: There aren’t many places online where an actual person sells you something—let alone something they made themselves. Blame automation and mass production.
One big exception is Etsy, the global marketplace for handmade, vintage, and craft goods.
People want what it’s offering. CEO Josh Silverman tells me that since he took over in 2017, Etsy has grown from 2 million to 7 million sellers—and from 30 million to 90 million buyers.
Silverman casts it as an essential service. “There’s 7 million sellers who wake up every single day counting on Etsy to bring its A game,” says the former CEO of Skype and Shopping.com.
And all those buyers of jewelry, clothing, housewares, and other work by independent creators? They “need a choice in a world that is so much about commoditized commerce, about junk that’s going to arrive quick, be cheap, and end up in a landfill just as fast.”
That gives the platform a sense of purpose summed up by its brief mission statement: Keep commerce human.
“Behind every item you buy on Etsy is a real person with a real human touch,” Silverman says. “That is a differentiator for Etsy.” It also squares with a recent survey showing that two-thirds of consumers want more human interaction from companies online.
Silverman sees a broader pivot away from products and toward experiences, as people look for things that have more meaning in their lives.
In his view, Etsy caters to that desire by making human connections. After war broke out in Ukraine, Silverman and his wife started reordering flatware from sellers there. Other Etsy buyers have been stocking up on Ukrainian goods, too—to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
“People feel really great about the fact that they’re able to support sellers that are in such need,” Silverman says, “and give hard currency to Ukraine at a time when they need it.”
Buying on Etsy is a huge act of trust, he admits: “We’re asking you to reach into your pocket and spend some of your precious, hard-earned money to buy a product you’ve never seen, from a seller you’ve never met—that probably hasn’t even been made until you bought it.”
While Etsy works to earn that trust by doing things like offering purchase protection, its sellers follow through by providing delightful experiences, Silverman says: “We build a brand that stands for trust, and we lend that brand to our sellers to allow them to compete and win when fighting against so many other mass-produced competitors.”
Etsy just took steps to clarify what it allows on the site—with new “creativity standards” that highlight the human element. In short, an item must be made, designed, handpicked, or sourced by its seller. Those details now appear on listing pages.
Sellers must also disclose if they created an item with AI, the use of which to churn out the kind of junk Silverman decries sparked a backlash against Etsy.
“Being very transparent about what role exactly did the seller play in this is, we think, important to building trust,” he says.
To drive home the message that it’s no Amazon or Shein, Etsy has also launched an ad campaign celebrating sellers. It kicks off every all-hands meeting with a seller story, Silverman says: “We always begin with a video of a seller showing us her life, her workspace, and what we mean for her.” For him, it’s about understanding Etsy’s responsibility to the people it serves.
“Making that very specific and very human is very helpful to our team,” Silverman says. “And by centering our team very much around that mission, I think they then do a better job communicating that to both our sellers and our buyers.”
I’ll buy that.
Nick Rockel
nick.rockel@consultant.fortune.com
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