Yeah... that may seem naive (to value the "niche" over actual revenue numbers), but once etsy loses its original niche, I'm not sure what differentiates them from Amazon/eBay/etc. => their brand dries up => revenue eventually dwindles? What stops this?
Nothing really. Most people do not pay attention to how the sausage is made. They don't care if the car service they use was a total toxic fratbro culture using unsustainable pricing to lure in users. They just wanted "cheap" rides without caring about why they were cheap. Just as another comment on this topic suggested they don't care about original as long as the thing they want is cheaper.
So no, I don't really think that educated populace will stop supporting shit practices because they can't be bothered.
Well I'm not talking about people supporting Etsy though, I'm talking about Etsy itself.
Like one possible story is that Etsy does this and it's shitty for sellers and maybe a lot of buyers too, but it ends up making Etsy successful in the long-run so they don't care.
That's not the story I'm telling though, it's one where Etsy chases medium-term revenue at the cost of their long-term niche and thus their long-term success. If me and GP are right, in theory Etsy itself ought to not want this to happen.
But the only way that Etsy can measure any decision they make is with the number of transactions from which they receive a cut. If they allow mass produced items to be sold that increases the number of transactions, then that's the bottom line numbers they care about. If they force a rule that it has to be small batch hand crafted type of items to be sold, then the per transaction numbers go way down. Bean counters and stock analysts don't like those numbers, and they are after all the people any public corp are most concerned.
Yes, but the interesting question I think is why the bean counters are given free reign to make decisions that ultimately lead to the company's downfall[0].
Like what if you had a fine dining restaurant where things are going okay, and someone comes in and is like "Hey guys, I noticed we're spending a lot of time washing plates. We'd be able to serve X% more customers if we just like scraped off the food and did a quick rinse." The restaurant tries it, it works for a bit until diners see specs of old food on their plates, the restaurant's reputation tanks, they lose all their customers, and they go out of business.
I think most restaurants are structured such that this does not happen. The restaurants correctly see that even though it seems like doing this might make some graphs go up in the short-term, it will actually make everything terrible in the long-term, and so they don't do it.
And again, this isn't about like, benevolent restaurant owners valuing the custom experience even if it's bad for the bottom line. Washing the plates thoroughly is good for the bottom line; any sufficiently intelligent restaurant owner shouldn't listen to the bean counter even if the owner's just a greedy capitalist.
(This reads enough like a Scott Alexander post that I'm pretty sure I might just actually be copying one; I think he wrote something along these lines once.)
[0]: Again, all of this is precipitated on the idea that actually Etsy will fail once it loses its niche, since it'll just get beaten by Amazon/eBay/etc. when it's just like any other seller of goods. If what's really going to happen is that Etsy will do fine as a company, then this becomes a totally different shape of problem: "the market rewards things that we actually maybe don't want for society".
Did Amazon fail when it opened the flood gates to the mass market? Did eBay? Did Walmart? No. I don't accept your premise that a company switching from handmade to low price mass produced will fail.
Fail means different things to different people, but to the stockholders that the bean counters are beholden to determine fail/success by stock price and profits. What definition the original users of the site expecting handmade/small batch type of items have of fail/success means nothing to those in charge. It's not really a hard subject to understand is it? You have to accept that the "leadership" of Etsy is different now than when it was created. Their ethos has changed. It happens. You are the one that is having problems accepting it, but it will not change reality. People still use Google now that "don't be evil" is no longer their ethos.
> Did Amazon fail when it opened the flood gates to the mass market? Did eBay? Did Walmart? No.
If Etsy can fit in just becoming another giant generic undifferentiated seller of things, then yeah, this all checks out.[0] But my question is how much room the market has for those kinds of businesses. If Etsy does become just another big generic seller of things, why keep using them over Amazon, eBay, or Walmart? What are they going to compete with them on?
It's true Amazon used to be more niche (books), but I think they were early enough that they didn't have to worry too much about someone crushing them.
Walmart was always a giant seller of things, just a physical one that went online, but I don't think they were ever really niche.
Did eBay have a niche? I thought they were also pretty much just selling generic stuff from the beginning.
[0]:
> You are the one that is having problems accepting it, but it will not change reality.
I think you're confusing not thinking this is likely with some kind of denialism/not wanting it to be true. I don't especially care a whole lot if Etsy ends up being a giant generic seller of things, I'm just not sure that'll work. At the point where Etsy is just re-skinned Amazon, what stops Amazon from crushing them?
What stops that is the incumbents destroying or acquiring upstarts in their space. Etsy has already purchased Depop, Elo7, A Little Market, Trunkt, Reverb...
Why does Depop, A Little Market, Trunkt etc not get blamed for "selling out"? Because at the end of the day, people start businesses to make money. In fact, it is a tried and true model to create a start with the specific purpose of getting acquired.
What's their unique gimmick? Paying for mass produced quality weekend project items?.. Tie dyed tees at 3x the price?
I bought from Etsy once, but even then the items were recommended to me via Instagram. Etsy in 2014 was already filled with poorly made "artsy" crap at double the price.
