Etsy expanding to Germany

There have been rumors for the past couple months, since it was slipped in the forums that Etsy admin Matt would be leaving the U.S. to visit Germany on Etsy business, that he might be moving there (first people were afraid he was leaving Etsy, but he denied that). Well, according to sellers in Berlin who met with admin they are expanding Etsy to Germany, with Matt moving there in the coming few weeks.

An Etsy office in Germany, to compete with Dawanda perhaps?

They can't even manage their one office in Brooklyn, what the fuck are they doing expanding? Does this mean they'll finally have 24-hour support...an 800 number perhaps? And why haven't they announced this?

Putting the horse before the cart again it seems.

State of the Etsy

Maria has been in charge of Etsy now for 7 months. It's been that long since she replaced dear Rokali as the CEO (because of course she wears coral nail polish). But what has really been changing?

Rob left to pursue Etsy.org, a site he said was to help artisans sell or something. We're not really sure. It's just a Pink parachute on a page and has been since he announced it almost a year ago. (hrmm "Has-been" is a good word isn't it?) Etsy.org I think was just a card trick.

But so is Rob's OTHER venture - Parachute.org, a site to ... well we're not entirely sure about it either but it's something to do with internet learning and classrooms. We've read how much he despises traditional educational standards like classrooms and paying for college, what makes this all the more confusing is that it shares the same logo and font as Parachute HiFi - Rob's high-end audio equipment dealership. (Creative ain't he? Etsy's logo is the same font as well. He's nothing if not predictable) To me those parachutes aren't hot pink – they're golden.

We did get Chad, and that seems to be the best move of all in bringing Etsy into the land of technical responsibility and internet goodneighborship with the API that is being developed. But when Etsy starts officially welcoming developers to make tools, how many of them will Etsy itself utilize? Will we do what we are forced to now, using a series of other sites and third party scripts to give us the mere shadows of the features we want and need? Will Etsy ever integrate the tools to provide them to everyone, not the ones brave enough.

Maria, our once great white hope, hasn't made any difference at all as Etsy's CEO of seven months. She still lives in DC!

She might poke her head into Brooklyn occasionally, but don't let them fool you she's working from home. It's hard to keep an eye on the kid's running the shop when you are hours away. You can't even really monitor hiring incoming employees since you are out of the loop. She doesn't have a grasp on what's going on since she's not in the stinking diesel scented air of Brooklyn - so how effective can she be? Maria came on board with a lofty and voluminous "mission statement" that has been all but forgotten. Not much has changed, and when sellers ask about those old promises, Etsy just cuts and pastes little tidbits from the original bloated treatise.

Matt has been demoted to revamping Teams, with a new incoming marketing person (who granted, might actually have experience). But we pity him that he's he latest to have DanielleXO foisted on thier department.

So many changes in seven months, but in all, not much has really different. And that's the saddest part of all this.

Followup: Good doggie, but no biscuit!

So Etsy dug Matt out of demoted obscurity to try to calm the most recent implosion of faith in Etsy regarding changes to the way renewals work.

Why Matt? He's the only one there who can string more than two words together in any cognizant and moderately sincere-sounding way that also doesn't manage to insult or infuriate large portions of the user base while simultaneously looking like a moron.

(We like Matt. We believe that he believes what he's saying - but you'd think after this many times he'd start to get wise that nothing is going to change and he'll be back fighting for his life after being thrown to the wolves again in a couple weeks.)

In this Dorque post he tries to talk sellers off the Cliffs of Insanity by admitting:

1: Their communication with customers (sellers) lags significantly behind other more successful methods like smoke signals, Morse Code, and pictographs written in Elk blood with a stick.

2: Plead guilty to changing how they are batch loaded now that every one has noticed, and that it gets you NOTHING for your money.

3: They thought no one would care when they admitted that had been fleecing sellers with their prolific advocating of renewals all this time then change it up on them when no one was looking. Oops.

So we'll give them a biscuit for admitting they fucked up and feigning like they want to improve - but they don't get to eat it. No, they have to stand there and look at it, dying to eat the sweet rewards of success but unable to. Just like we sellers have to when we deal with Etsy.

That fucking biscuit is gritty and bitter anyway, Matt, you're not missing much. (We've tried to eat them and never could keep them down.)

Matt writes Members

Since I know many people do not get Etsy emails, I am posting this, hot off the presses as it were:

Dear Friends,

Etsy Teams are part of Etsy’s foundation, and we are committed to working more closely with all of you to help promote our joint goals. Since I created the Teams idea three years ago, over 450 Teams with 20,000 members have formed around the globe. It’s time for Etsy to take a closer look at how we can better support Teams and your needs.

Over the past few weeks, I have spent a great deal of time speaking with Teams and working with Maria to look at what Etsy is and isn’t doing with the Teams program. As part of this examination, I recently made the difficult decision to discontinue the role that Sara Selepouchin currently holds at Etsy. (For those of you who do not know Sara, she is the friendly lady who has been running the Teams program.) This decision is in no way a reflection of our commitment to the Teams program.

On the contrary, I see it as a first step to better aligning Etsy’s resources to meet growing needs of Teams. I will be creating a new Brooklyn-based position to work closely with me to develop and implement new tools, collaborative promotional, and branding opportunities for Etsy Teams. New Team profile pages, private forums, and more are among the top priorities for the first part of 2009 as mentioned in Maria's Storque article.

Sara will continue working with Etsy until the end of the year. She will be meeting with a couple other admin, including me, to pass on her tasks, information and ideas so we can continue to provide support to Teams without any interruption. In the new year, Danielle (Etsy admin daniellexo) and I will be available and actively involved in handling Team page changes, questions, and content. We now share the teams@etsy inbox and are committed to keeping your Team information up to date and helping to facilitate your Etsy Teams in any way possible.

Organizational change is part of the natural, sometimes painful, process of building a great and lasting business, and with it comes great potential but also some hard choices. It is never easy when someone loses her job, and I can assure you that this decision was not made capriciously. We are all very grateful for Sara’s contributions to Etsy. I thank Sara for her one and a half years at Etsy, and I wish her the very, very best luck in her future endeavors.

I remain more committed to Etsy Teams than ever. I see the incredible role they play in our communities and want to make sure that Etsy Teams receive the attention and resources they deserve.

I appreciate your understanding and compassion in this matter.

As always, I am available at matt@etsy.com

Please address all Teams related inquiries to teams@etsy.com

Thanks,

Matt Stinchcomb, VP, Communications- Etsy.com

So they are eliminating Sara's job to replace her with... the same job... only in Brooklyn. Where was she? Etsy has 27 million but too cheap to pay relocation? And more importantly WHY THE FUCK DOES DANIELLEXO HAVE A FUCKING JOB??? WHY does the CLUELESS NIMROD that many many sellers despise still manage to keep her job and the one most seemed to like, one that seemed to try at least to be helpful, gets cut?

Showcasing Etsy's Diversity

Admin Matt has started a thread in the forums asking for opinions on displaying Etsy's diversity, primarily in regards to the front page. Is it a coincidence that they ask this after a discussion about the marketing campaign?

Add your voice...

Etsy's Holiday Marketing Plan

There have been questions as to whether Etsy would follow through and actually have a marketing plan for the holidays. Well, it's up. But there's no timeline! In today's chatt with Matt it was mentioned that there may be a meeting about it on Sept 26. Is that really enough time? All of this needs to be out before November to be effective. This is an international online venue - things need to be shipped!

I guess we'll all just have to wait and see. Full page ads positioned to target buyers would be really, really nice. (Yes, they DID mention those!) Along with better SEO. Two topics that have been hot in the forums in the past.

May we suggest the addition of something to the list though? Fix the search. Please! It's great to advertise, but it only works if people can find things.

Kudos to Etsy on following through on a promise, but the timeline is a big part of it that's missing(a November/December contest doesn't count). You're getting there, kids.

Edit: Based on a reader's comment from the chat, he did state a potential, and soon, timeline for the ads (October through December)...which was only known to those in the chat at that time. Better, but not quite there yet on the whole communication and timeline thing.

Resellers - Etsy is listening

Etsy is directly addressing the concerns over resellers in the Storque.

Some highlights from the article:

• A better flagging system is in the works
• They have doubled the employees dedicated to sorting through the flags, and they are trained in properly identifying resellers
• They are addressing new shop evaluation policies and tactics

There will be a chatt with Matt regarding this issue tomorrow, September 12, at 1 pm Eastern time. Be sure to stop by if you can!

I wish I could insert some snazzy snark about how it's only because of the past weekend's issues, but I'm in shock that they've publicly ackowledged a problem.

For Shame: Updated

Storque article

CCCOE Team Thread

To buy raffle tickets (Drawing is tomorrow Aug 9th)

Matt posted the following in the comments section for the Dorque article (yes I know it's called Storque - but Dorque just feels so much more accurate).

In recognition of a worthy cause, Etsy today donated $250 directly to the New Directions charity (http://www.ndvets.com). The SoCal Bench Project Etsy Team is holding an event this weekend to support veterans through this organization.

Etsy previously announced that the SoCal Bench Project Etsy team would receive a $200 grant to help offset the printing costs associated with this event. The Grant was not ultimately funded because deadlines were missed. We apologize for the poor timing of these announcements.

Etsy Grants is a new program designed to help Etsy Teams hold events and promote their shops and Etsy. It’s important that Etsy diligently adhere to the rules and deadlines associated with the Grants Program so that we can be responsible stewards of our funds and so that we can offer monies in a timely way.

We understand that our communication around this specific Grant could have been better. And, while we remain committed to enforcing the rules and deadlines associated with the Grants Program, we don’t want the New Directions charity to miss out on this opportunity to positively interact with Etsy sellers and Etsy.

To avoid this type of confusion in the future, Team Grant winners will now be announced after the Grant funds have been submitted to the Team.

Thank you.

Word is donations and raffle tickets are flying in after the news of this debauchle broke, and many of the 'Bitches' have made personal donations as have many of our readers as well other Etsy folk to the point they are "overwhelmed" by the response and processing. That is fantastic!

Being that EB Never misses a chance to make Etsy look as bad as they truly are we've also donated (as a group) the amount of $50.00 to the team itself to try to help cover the intital costs they originally applied for. Use it in good health folks - from us to you.

Office Hours today!

You can chat with Matt today at 11am EDT, or with RobWhite at 7pm, in the Virtual Labs Treehouse!

We encourage you all to go and ask uncomfortable questions about shoddy copyright policies and be generally bitchy.

Rage Against the Machine

The past couple days Etsy has been starting to feel a sudden increase in heat from its customers regarding its opacity and general non-openness.

We started off the morning Wednesday with calls for Etsy to fix what is broken and unlike the post like it the day before it actually lived longer than 2 pages.

Then later was the 3-part thread that started with accusations of a bead seller reselling other beadmakers work and that it appeared Etsy had edited some sold pages since there were statements that were now missing from the original listings, yet the seller was still selling. After that was shut down, Quirke asked for clarification that Etsy wasn't/was editing sold listings. That took only two pages to be shut down with a non-helpful SarahSays lock of death. (Kind of like a blue screen of death, only less informative.)

Not taking a non-answer as an answer, Quirke once again poked the admin by simply asking for the same answer in another thread, but this time Matt replied with an honest-to-god actual informational reply of more than one paragraph, and without locking it and referring readers to another useless and locked thread that they also never answered those questions. Matt is good and sets off no BS sirens in our heads, and for that reason we love Matt in an almost warm and tingly way. (We love Quirke too, because we like people who like pointy sticks and demand answers to hard questions as much as we do.)

Some good came out of the last one, as many suggested that while things might have been removed to suit DCMA rules, no one was notified of the deletions, and no deletion notation was made on the listings to keep things in the open and on the up and up. (I want to know why the shop in question wasn't shut down personally.) You can still chime in, as of this moment it's still open.

I would like to think EtsyBitch has helped inspire this rash of rampant surliness, but that would be cocky (and my name isn't "The Cocky One").

Bullying, Stalking and General Asshattery

In this thread:

http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5650490&page=1

An Etsy member talks about being stalked and bullied on the forums. Apparently, she has reported it to Admin, and Admin has told said instigator to back the frack off. The bully doesn't and the OP is forced to report her again, and the cycle repeats itself, but there's no permanent solution.

Why isn't there a permanent solution?? Because Etsy condones said bad behavior by doing it to other people! Let's not forget the soul-less eyed admin who followed a prolific buyer around the internet, and the hot admin who convo'ed many sellers who posted things she did not agree with, and the top level admin who openly insulted another seller with a flash toy.

Then there's the countless number of sellers and buyers who have been harassed via the chat room and via convo by other members, and there are no repercussions. You see it happen all the time when there's a dissenting opinion on Etsy policy.

I think that Etsy secretly gets off on watching these things happen, because it's all an human experiment to them. We're like little rats in a maze, fighting over a piece of cheese. That's why they don't shut these people down, because they find it funny! Another fail at good customer service, Etsy!

PS- Matt just closed the thread. I sincerely hope that Matt takes care of the problem for the OP.

Let's take a trip back into the time machine!! Etsy and the Consumerist.

I hate to scare everyone with the remembrance of DanielleXO and her romp of destruction through the forums.. but I just have to bring this up as a monumental failure on Etsy's part. Thank goodness Matt was there to pick up the pieces. The Consumerist article here.

The article brought up some very valid points, and so did the comments thereafter. There's the lack of experienced customer service (which is still an issue), the wildly running narcissism and nepotism that comes straight from the top, and the "shoot first and ask questions later" mentality of most of the staff. Oh, and let's not forget the lone appearance from brepettis calling anyone who spoke out about the problems "grumpy haters." Well, we may be grumpy, and I'd rather be called bitchy, but we're anything but haters.

Let's face it, if it weren't for Matt working to repair the damage done by these petulant brats, the site would be hopeless.

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