Etsy
Transcript: Pros: Can serve as a platform for small businesses and up and coming designers to start out - cheap and widely known. It is great for people who are after items that are a little bit different. You can pick up some great bargains whilst supporting smaller businesses Serves as a community for lovers of handmade and vintage Cons: ‘Resellers’ - There are shops that buy mass-produced items for a cheap price and sell them for sometimes ten times the original price, labelling them as ‘handmade’. ‘Other’ retailing turnover is increasing (This includes online shopping), whilst department store turnover is decreasing . While this is a good thing for Etsy and other companies like it, it is not a good thing for local retailers or jobs. There is also talk of putting taxes on online goods, meaning that Etsy could become more expensive. With more and more local businesses losing money from online shopping, Etsy’s future could go two ways: More and more people could get online, and internet shopping could take over retail shopping almost completely. This would mean that Etsy could grow even bigger. It may even change its policy to allow mass produced goods to try and compete in the expanding market of internet retailers. Traditional retail could “fight back” and taxes could be put on online goods. This would mean that prices would go up, and less people would buy from Etsy. There are many people who rely on their Etsy store as their full time job, and for them this could mean being forced to shut down. Etsy is fairly simple to use. To register, you just need an email address, and you are ready to shop. If you would also like to sell, you need to have a credit card, then you are able to create your own shop and list items. There are many different ways to shop. You can shop by: Categories, and within that, sub categories, Treasuries - lists of favourite items created by other users Local - put in your location and find items close by Shops - search by stores that you like. People - a Facebook-style option where you are able to search others who have an Etsy account, Colours - you can click on whatever colour you are after and it will show items that match. Etsy has changed and developed greatly since it first began in 2005. It has grown to over 800,000 sellers and 15 million members. New tools are added frequently; members are constantly given more specific search options, and more recently, flash based visual searches like the Colour search. There is also a relatively new addition to Etsy; People Search. It is a search tool that is quite similar to Facebook in the way that you can search for someone’s profile even if they don’t have a shop. You can view their profile, see some of their favourite items and add them to your circle (which is a sort of friends list) and keep up with their activity. How else could Etsy be used? What sort of features could be added in the future? How has it grown and changed? What could happen to Etsy in the future? How could it be influenced by our culture? How does it work? There are many different sorts of features that could be added to Etsy in the future. With the way technologies are advancing, the possibilities are almost endless. For example: Search options could advance so that you wouldn’t even have to search for things - Etsy would tailor search options to suit you, and even know what you want before you do. Some kind of “personal shopper” that chooses items specifically for you, or scheduled updates where it sends you new items every so often Customised sizing – you may have an avatar that would be specific to your size and be able to virtually try on clothing. Etsy is an online shopping website known as “Your place to buy and sell all things handmade”. It is a lot like eBay or Amazon, but it is aimed at more of a ‘niche’ market – “young and hip” people who prefer to buy unique and vintage items, and want to support smaller businesses. On Etsy, you can find items that are handmade and vintage, as well as craft supplies. You can find practically anything from fashion to furniture, beauty products to toys. You are also able to list and sell your own items. Pros & Cons What is Etsy?