I think it's time to start an etsy store | Page 5 | General Homesteading Discussion | Forums

well good luck with whatever you choose

wow, I didn't know they changed their business model

ETSY LOST ITS SOUL, BUT THAT DOESN’T MATTER TO ITS IPO

ETSY WILL SOON be a ticker symbol on the NASDAQ stock exchange.

On Wednesday, 10 years after launching a website for buying and selling all sorts of handmade goods, Etsy filed for its initial public offering. With its filing, the Brooklyn, New York-based company revealed that’s its ticker symbol is identical to its name. The symbol isn’t ETY or ESY or ES or ET. It’s ETSY.

And it’s a symbol in more ways than one. A name that once stood for crafts handmade by real, live, individual people is now a way of, well, making lots and lots of money. This was the case well before the company filed to go public. But its IPO casts this reality in stark relief. While some people are very upset that Etsy has sold its artisanal soul, their sorrow doesn’t really make a difference to its capitalistic goals.

In the end, the sellers stayed for the money, and Etsy reaped the benefits.
In the fall of 2013, you see, Etsy changed its terms of service, letting people sell stuff made not by hands but by massive manufacturing operations. Many of the site’s earliest users, including Grace Dobush, were not pleased. “They fundamentally changed the purpose of Etsy,” Dobush says. “To stay true to my handmade ethos, I had to move my business elsewhere.”

Some like Dobush quit the site. But that hasn’t really mattered to Etsy. In the end, the change increased the number of people using the site and increased revenues—as it was designed to do. According to the company’s IPO filing, revenues reached $74.6 million in 2012 and $125 million in 2013. Last year, after the change in policy, they topped $195 million.

http://www.wired.com.....atter-ipo/