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Notes From Chad: Towards the New Year
Notes From Chad: Towards the New Year
https://blog.etsy.com/news/2014/notes-from-chad-towards-the-new-year/?ref=forums
--- H I G H L I G H T S ---
This time of year is also an opportune time to consider what the new year will bring. The editors at LinkedIn asked me and a group of fellow leaders, “What is the one big idea that will shape the next year?” Our answer is based in the simple fact that people want and expect a greater level of personal connection and demonstrated sense of social responsibility from the companies they support. In an era when people are more selective about the businesses they patronize, Etsy is proud to be a part of what I see as the defining trend of 2015 and beyond: an expectation that companies must articulate the social purpose of their businesses to retain customers. Head over to LinkedIn to read more about why I think 2015 will be an incredible year for Etsy, our community, and like-minded businesses.
Steering Etsy’s Future
How We Got Here
Since Etsy’s founding in 2005, we’ve grown from the sketch of an idea to a global community of more than 40 million members and 600-plus employees. At Etsy, our success is the direct result of the hard work and dedication of our seller community and everyone at Etsy who makes the company work every day.
We have also benefited tremendously from the contributions of Caterina Fake, an imaginative entrepreneur, and cofounder of Flickr and Hunch, who joined Etsy’s board in 2006 and recruited me to Etsy two years later. The early inspiration for Etsy’s community spirit and sense of design came largely from Caterina’s work. In Etsy’s earliest days, Rob Kalin, Etsy’s founder, wrote to Caterina inviting her to create one of the very first “treasuries,” and noting that many of Flickr’s principles inspired early Etsy. Caterina has been a mentor and a close friend since we first worked together at Salon.com back in the late 1990s. Caterina has recently co-founded Sesat School and joined the Rare Cancer Research Foundation. Her latest creation is an inspired app called Findery that allows people to share stories about places by leaving notes tagged to geographic locations. After serving eight years on Etsy’s board, she decided in July to step down to focus on family, cancer research, and doing what she does best: guiding startups and putting them on a solid path to success.
Caterina was instrumental in guiding Etsy from its early days to the present, starting when Etsy was just the four founders. She became Chairman of the Board in 2009, and in four years’ time gross merchandise sales grew from less than a couple hundred million in 2009 to $1.35 billion in 2013. During her tenure, Caterina recruited many executives and employees to the company, provided product guidance, and championed our work to maintain and expand on our commitment to being a values-based business, helping us to become a Certified B Corp in 2012.
We are grateful to Caterina for her service and her Etsy spirit. I can’t thank her enough for her contributions. Caterina will always be a friend of Etsy and we look forward to seeing her on her visits to Brooklyn.
In Caterina’s own words:
“In eight years I’ve seen how much the company has grown, how much art has been created, how many businesses have flourished. I’m happy and sad. Happy that we’ve come so far, and created so much that is good. And leaving the board means that, more often than not, the 100+ page documents I read will be written by Proust or Knausgaard, and will not contain spreadsheets. But not being Chairwoman of something so special, so vast and good? Sad. Nonetheless, at this point it’s impossible to get Etsy out of my life. I hang out with Etsy employees, wear Etsy clothes, eat from Etsy dishes, play an Etsy guitar, and wash my hair with Etsy shampoo.”
I’ll be succeeding Caterina in the position of Chairman.
Where We’re Headed
Just before Caterina stepped down, we were fortunate to welcome Michele Burns to Etsy’s Board. Michele has a long and impressive resume: she was previously the CEO of Mercer, the global human resources and financial services company, and before that was CFO of Delta Airlines and EVP/CFO of Marsh & McLennan. Michele is on the boards of Cisco Systems, Goldman Sachs Group, Alexion Pharmaceuticals and Circle Internet Financial, a digital currency company that makes it easy to use bitcoin.
Michele is a seasoned voice on Etsy’s board. The experience she brings to the table is well-suited for all of us at Etsy at this juncture for many reasons. Here are three:
•Michele is a strong female leader who understands our passion to build a people-powered economy that fosters small business growth and entrepreneurship. She identifies with the mission of economic empowerment at Etsy, where the majority of our sellers are women. Diversity is a core value at Etsy that applies to our Board as well as to the people who build our platform.
•Michele is a battle-tested leader. As CFO of Delta during 9/11 and the head of Mercer, Michele has immense practical experience running companies, and she knows a lot about how to lead and manage teams. That experience will be a big asset to Etsy.
•Michele understands both traditional and emerging commerce models. She was previously on the board of Walmart and has a keen sense of what lies ahead. That insight, and her interest in the marketplace as it evolves, is why she’s on the board of a company that’s helping to build a market for bitcoin, and now Etsy, a new kind of model and marketplace.
The other thing you should know about Michele is that in addition to being deeply accomplished, thoughtful and professional, she’s down to earth and fun to work with. I’m grateful to long-time Board member Jim Breyer for introducing us to Michele, and have already benefited from her insight.
“I’m excited to join Etsy’s Board and to help grow a company that brings together the collective creative forces of makers and merchants to create value and economic empowerment for many. I look forward to the days ahead,” Michele shared.
Preserving and Strengthening the Etsy Way
Etsy has come a long way from its humble roots in an apartment in Fort Greene. In 2009, we moved from our quirky office on three floors to a bigger space in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood. We hit another milestone this year when we announced a new commitment to growing Etsy here in Brooklyn, where we signed a lease to move to a new location in 2016 that will seat almost twice as many people as our current local staff of 350 employees.
Our leadership is evolving as well. I’m confident that Michele will be a wise steward for Etsy and a partner to me as we scale and grow, and as our community grows with us. I look forward to working with Michele in the coming year and beyond.
Notes From Chad: Creating an Etsy Economy Together
It’s been just over a year since we changed our policies to enable Etsy sellers to scale and enjoy their creative businesses in a way that’s consistent with the values we share. I’d like to pause for a moment to give you a sense of how those policy changes are playing out as we work to build an Etsy Economy.
Last year we introduced new guidelines to help sellers who want to hire staff, have someone else ship their goods, or work with outside manufacturing partners. We did this with the needs of the Etsy community in mind, motivated by the desire to help our sellers build and support responsible, independent creative businesses.
As we adjusted our policies, we knew that handmade goods are the heart of Etsy. We believe that “handmade” expresses a set of values: authorship, responsibility, and transparency. To us, authorship means that the idea for the item begins with the Etsy seller. Our sellers are deeply involved in how their items are made, and they take responsibility by being accountable for the entire production process and for their buyers’ experiences. Transparency ensures that the Etsy community knows the story and person behind an item.
When we made these changes, we knew that not everyone would embrace them, but we believed they were essential for Etsy to continue to thrive as a community and platform. The changes sparked a lively dialogue — we are grateful to have such open and spirited exchanges with our community — and we responded with additional clarity about our decisions. A year later, we’re excited to share some examples of the success we’re seeing. We think they’re promising illustrations of what’s possible for Etsy sellers, and we hope you find them as inspirational as we do. First, however, I’d like to share a little more context and detail about our vision and mission.
Our Vision for an Etsy Economy
Today, we’re more dedicated than ever to building an Etsy Economy. That’s synonymous with an economy that values and honors the people who design and make goods, is transparent about the way they are made, and connects the people who make, sell and buy them. It is an economy in which creative entrepreneurs find meaningful work and both global and local markets for their goods. We often say that we want to make the world more like Etsy, and that desire continues to drive our mission to reimagine commerce in ways that build a more lasting and fulfilling world. With a member community of 40 million people and sales over one billion dollars in 2013, consumers have made it clear that they are hungry for thoughtful alternatives to mass commerce and impersonal retail. They want goods with more individuality and meaning.
Our Policy Changes in Action, One Year Later
The desire for authentic goods is empowering sellers like Julie Nolan, who built a successful jewelry business on Etsy. Julie’s best-selling constellation line attracted wholesale orders from the get-go. But with overwhelming daily quotas, Julie found herself enlisting her husband’s off-tour musician friends to drill holes through brass in her drop-clothed kitchen. Julie had been fortunate to create such a popular design, but she felt she had created a monster — there was no escaping the hard slog of her signature process. Through a network of jewelry designers and suppliers, Julie finally discovered her salvation: a veteran-owned, family-run photo etching company a short drive away in Rhode Island. Gerry, Julie’s partner, has been in the business for over 45 years, and she is able to work closely with him to ensure quality control, finishing each piece herself with her lucky polishing machine in her studio.
“My days are no longer cleaning burrs off pieces of metal. I can actually create new things. I can create new collections,” said Julie.
Manufacturing doesn’t have to equal “big” or “foreign” or “mass-produced,” and “factory” doesn’t have to be a dirty word. Any maker can be a manufacturer. We put in place an application and approval process for anyone seeking to grow responsibly on Etsy by partnering with outside manufacturers, and we’ve seen sellers choose production facilities that are in line with their and our values. We created the Responsible Seller Growth team to be thoughtful about helping sellers scale, composed of Maker Specialists who are experts in and passionate about making processes, as well as a sociologist who has studied responsible, community-based economies. This gives us continued hope for the impact that Etsy sellers can have on the manufacturing industry, the economy and our culture — not just in the U.S., but around the world.
I’m proud to say that putting trust in sellers to choose local, responsible and sustainable production facilities has proven to be the right decision. In the last year, we’ve seen many Etsy sellers in addition to Julie Nolan who have discovered new ways to partner with other creative entrepreneurs to grow meaningful, sustainable businesses on Etsy with more flexibility and independence. Sellers who want to scale are choosing outside partners ranging from solo makers to fellow Etsy sellers to established businesses, and 86 percent of manufacturing relationships we’ve approved are with partners in the same country as the designer. Sellers approved to work with manufacturers have consistently told us they want to stay very hands-on in the production process, retaining their authorship and control as they work with partners.
Keeping It Local
We know that location is one of the most important criteria our sellers consider in sourcing manufacturing partners, and time and time again, we’re seeing our sellers choose to partner with local manufacturers. Shana Luther is a case in point. A passionate handbag designer, Shana created a booming business in Brooklyn. But when her success led to an overcrowded studio and she found herself stepping on her cat, she knew it was time to find help with production. Working with a local manufacturer was crucial to her.
“Keeping manufacturing local is something I always sought to do, and it only ensures impeccable quality on all of my designs. I work with local leather craftsmen who take pride in their work, and I spend time with the manufacturer during the production process, seeing firsthand the craftsmanship that goes into each step. I source all materials from U.S.-based vendors and make sure every bag that gets shipped out meets my quality expectations,” said Shana.
Every Seller Matters
As dedicated as we are to our vision of responsible manufacturing and an Etsy Economy, it’s important to note that we are just as dedicated to solo makers who are satisfied with the size of their shops or aren’t ready to scale up. The one-person shop is still the heart of Etsy, and one-of-a-kind items, vintage treasures, and craft supplies all have a place in our marketplace. We want our community to build businesses that they love and enjoy, and we’re always working on ways to support sellers of all kinds.
It’s important to us that items listed on Etsy meet our guidelines for what can be sold regardless of the size of the seller. As always, resold items are not allowed on Etsy. We continue to strengthen the methods we have for tracking and removing unqualified goods so that sellers who create beautiful, unique products can shine.
Where We’re Going
In an Etsy Economy, people come first. We want to help makers source responsible manufacturing at any stage of business growth, and we hope to tap the power of our community to create a global and local distributed production network.
We know our plans are ambitious, and the past year has shown us that it’s possible. This is just the beginning of our work. We’re thrilled by the ways this vision has come to life this year, and excited to continue to help creative business owners flourish on Etsy.
https://blog.etsy.com/news/2014/notes-from-chad-towards-the-new-year/?ref=forums
--- H I G H L I G H T S ---
This time of year is also an opportune time to consider what the new year will bring. The editors at LinkedIn asked me and a group of fellow leaders, “What is the one big idea that will shape the next year?” Our answer is based in the simple fact that people want and expect a greater level of personal connection and demonstrated sense of social responsibility from the companies they support. In an era when people are more selective about the businesses they patronize, Etsy is proud to be a part of what I see as the defining trend of 2015 and beyond: an expectation that companies must articulate the social purpose of their businesses to retain customers. Head over to LinkedIn to read more about why I think 2015 will be an incredible year for Etsy, our community, and like-minded businesses.
Steering Etsy’s Future
How We Got Here
Since Etsy’s founding in 2005, we’ve grown from the sketch of an idea to a global community of more than 40 million members and 600-plus employees. At Etsy, our success is the direct result of the hard work and dedication of our seller community and everyone at Etsy who makes the company work every day.
We have also benefited tremendously from the contributions of Caterina Fake, an imaginative entrepreneur, and cofounder of Flickr and Hunch, who joined Etsy’s board in 2006 and recruited me to Etsy two years later. The early inspiration for Etsy’s community spirit and sense of design came largely from Caterina’s work. In Etsy’s earliest days, Rob Kalin, Etsy’s founder, wrote to Caterina inviting her to create one of the very first “treasuries,” and noting that many of Flickr’s principles inspired early Etsy. Caterina has been a mentor and a close friend since we first worked together at Salon.com back in the late 1990s. Caterina has recently co-founded Sesat School and joined the Rare Cancer Research Foundation. Her latest creation is an inspired app called Findery that allows people to share stories about places by leaving notes tagged to geographic locations. After serving eight years on Etsy’s board, she decided in July to step down to focus on family, cancer research, and doing what she does best: guiding startups and putting them on a solid path to success.
Caterina was instrumental in guiding Etsy from its early days to the present, starting when Etsy was just the four founders. She became Chairman of the Board in 2009, and in four years’ time gross merchandise sales grew from less than a couple hundred million in 2009 to $1.35 billion in 2013. During her tenure, Caterina recruited many executives and employees to the company, provided product guidance, and championed our work to maintain and expand on our commitment to being a values-based business, helping us to become a Certified B Corp in 2012.
We are grateful to Caterina for her service and her Etsy spirit. I can’t thank her enough for her contributions. Caterina will always be a friend of Etsy and we look forward to seeing her on her visits to Brooklyn.
In Caterina’s own words:
“In eight years I’ve seen how much the company has grown, how much art has been created, how many businesses have flourished. I’m happy and sad. Happy that we’ve come so far, and created so much that is good. And leaving the board means that, more often than not, the 100+ page documents I read will be written by Proust or Knausgaard, and will not contain spreadsheets. But not being Chairwoman of something so special, so vast and good? Sad. Nonetheless, at this point it’s impossible to get Etsy out of my life. I hang out with Etsy employees, wear Etsy clothes, eat from Etsy dishes, play an Etsy guitar, and wash my hair with Etsy shampoo.”
I’ll be succeeding Caterina in the position of Chairman.
Where We’re Headed
Just before Caterina stepped down, we were fortunate to welcome Michele Burns to Etsy’s Board. Michele has a long and impressive resume: she was previously the CEO of Mercer, the global human resources and financial services company, and before that was CFO of Delta Airlines and EVP/CFO of Marsh & McLennan. Michele is on the boards of Cisco Systems, Goldman Sachs Group, Alexion Pharmaceuticals and Circle Internet Financial, a digital currency company that makes it easy to use bitcoin.
Michele is a seasoned voice on Etsy’s board. The experience she brings to the table is well-suited for all of us at Etsy at this juncture for many reasons. Here are three:
•Michele is a strong female leader who understands our passion to build a people-powered economy that fosters small business growth and entrepreneurship. She identifies with the mission of economic empowerment at Etsy, where the majority of our sellers are women. Diversity is a core value at Etsy that applies to our Board as well as to the people who build our platform.
•Michele is a battle-tested leader. As CFO of Delta during 9/11 and the head of Mercer, Michele has immense practical experience running companies, and she knows a lot about how to lead and manage teams. That experience will be a big asset to Etsy.
•Michele understands both traditional and emerging commerce models. She was previously on the board of Walmart and has a keen sense of what lies ahead. That insight, and her interest in the marketplace as it evolves, is why she’s on the board of a company that’s helping to build a market for bitcoin, and now Etsy, a new kind of model and marketplace.
The other thing you should know about Michele is that in addition to being deeply accomplished, thoughtful and professional, she’s down to earth and fun to work with. I’m grateful to long-time Board member Jim Breyer for introducing us to Michele, and have already benefited from her insight.
“I’m excited to join Etsy’s Board and to help grow a company that brings together the collective creative forces of makers and merchants to create value and economic empowerment for many. I look forward to the days ahead,” Michele shared.
Preserving and Strengthening the Etsy Way
Etsy has come a long way from its humble roots in an apartment in Fort Greene. In 2009, we moved from our quirky office on three floors to a bigger space in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood. We hit another milestone this year when we announced a new commitment to growing Etsy here in Brooklyn, where we signed a lease to move to a new location in 2016 that will seat almost twice as many people as our current local staff of 350 employees.
Our leadership is evolving as well. I’m confident that Michele will be a wise steward for Etsy and a partner to me as we scale and grow, and as our community grows with us. I look forward to working with Michele in the coming year and beyond.
Notes From Chad: Creating an Etsy Economy Together
It’s been just over a year since we changed our policies to enable Etsy sellers to scale and enjoy their creative businesses in a way that’s consistent with the values we share. I’d like to pause for a moment to give you a sense of how those policy changes are playing out as we work to build an Etsy Economy.
Last year we introduced new guidelines to help sellers who want to hire staff, have someone else ship their goods, or work with outside manufacturing partners. We did this with the needs of the Etsy community in mind, motivated by the desire to help our sellers build and support responsible, independent creative businesses.
As we adjusted our policies, we knew that handmade goods are the heart of Etsy. We believe that “handmade” expresses a set of values: authorship, responsibility, and transparency. To us, authorship means that the idea for the item begins with the Etsy seller. Our sellers are deeply involved in how their items are made, and they take responsibility by being accountable for the entire production process and for their buyers’ experiences. Transparency ensures that the Etsy community knows the story and person behind an item.
When we made these changes, we knew that not everyone would embrace them, but we believed they were essential for Etsy to continue to thrive as a community and platform. The changes sparked a lively dialogue — we are grateful to have such open and spirited exchanges with our community — and we responded with additional clarity about our decisions. A year later, we’re excited to share some examples of the success we’re seeing. We think they’re promising illustrations of what’s possible for Etsy sellers, and we hope you find them as inspirational as we do. First, however, I’d like to share a little more context and detail about our vision and mission.
Our Vision for an Etsy Economy
Today, we’re more dedicated than ever to building an Etsy Economy. That’s synonymous with an economy that values and honors the people who design and make goods, is transparent about the way they are made, and connects the people who make, sell and buy them. It is an economy in which creative entrepreneurs find meaningful work and both global and local markets for their goods. We often say that we want to make the world more like Etsy, and that desire continues to drive our mission to reimagine commerce in ways that build a more lasting and fulfilling world. With a member community of 40 million people and sales over one billion dollars in 2013, consumers have made it clear that they are hungry for thoughtful alternatives to mass commerce and impersonal retail. They want goods with more individuality and meaning.
Our Policy Changes in Action, One Year Later
The desire for authentic goods is empowering sellers like Julie Nolan, who built a successful jewelry business on Etsy. Julie’s best-selling constellation line attracted wholesale orders from the get-go. But with overwhelming daily quotas, Julie found herself enlisting her husband’s off-tour musician friends to drill holes through brass in her drop-clothed kitchen. Julie had been fortunate to create such a popular design, but she felt she had created a monster — there was no escaping the hard slog of her signature process. Through a network of jewelry designers and suppliers, Julie finally discovered her salvation: a veteran-owned, family-run photo etching company a short drive away in Rhode Island. Gerry, Julie’s partner, has been in the business for over 45 years, and she is able to work closely with him to ensure quality control, finishing each piece herself with her lucky polishing machine in her studio.
“My days are no longer cleaning burrs off pieces of metal. I can actually create new things. I can create new collections,” said Julie.
Manufacturing doesn’t have to equal “big” or “foreign” or “mass-produced,” and “factory” doesn’t have to be a dirty word. Any maker can be a manufacturer. We put in place an application and approval process for anyone seeking to grow responsibly on Etsy by partnering with outside manufacturers, and we’ve seen sellers choose production facilities that are in line with their and our values. We created the Responsible Seller Growth team to be thoughtful about helping sellers scale, composed of Maker Specialists who are experts in and passionate about making processes, as well as a sociologist who has studied responsible, community-based economies. This gives us continued hope for the impact that Etsy sellers can have on the manufacturing industry, the economy and our culture — not just in the U.S., but around the world.
I’m proud to say that putting trust in sellers to choose local, responsible and sustainable production facilities has proven to be the right decision. In the last year, we’ve seen many Etsy sellers in addition to Julie Nolan who have discovered new ways to partner with other creative entrepreneurs to grow meaningful, sustainable businesses on Etsy with more flexibility and independence. Sellers who want to scale are choosing outside partners ranging from solo makers to fellow Etsy sellers to established businesses, and 86 percent of manufacturing relationships we’ve approved are with partners in the same country as the designer. Sellers approved to work with manufacturers have consistently told us they want to stay very hands-on in the production process, retaining their authorship and control as they work with partners.
Keeping It Local
We know that location is one of the most important criteria our sellers consider in sourcing manufacturing partners, and time and time again, we’re seeing our sellers choose to partner with local manufacturers. Shana Luther is a case in point. A passionate handbag designer, Shana created a booming business in Brooklyn. But when her success led to an overcrowded studio and she found herself stepping on her cat, she knew it was time to find help with production. Working with a local manufacturer was crucial to her.
“Keeping manufacturing local is something I always sought to do, and it only ensures impeccable quality on all of my designs. I work with local leather craftsmen who take pride in their work, and I spend time with the manufacturer during the production process, seeing firsthand the craftsmanship that goes into each step. I source all materials from U.S.-based vendors and make sure every bag that gets shipped out meets my quality expectations,” said Shana.
Every Seller Matters
As dedicated as we are to our vision of responsible manufacturing and an Etsy Economy, it’s important to note that we are just as dedicated to solo makers who are satisfied with the size of their shops or aren’t ready to scale up. The one-person shop is still the heart of Etsy, and one-of-a-kind items, vintage treasures, and craft supplies all have a place in our marketplace. We want our community to build businesses that they love and enjoy, and we’re always working on ways to support sellers of all kinds.
It’s important to us that items listed on Etsy meet our guidelines for what can be sold regardless of the size of the seller. As always, resold items are not allowed on Etsy. We continue to strengthen the methods we have for tracking and removing unqualified goods so that sellers who create beautiful, unique products can shine.
Where We’re Going
In an Etsy Economy, people come first. We want to help makers source responsible manufacturing at any stage of business growth, and we hope to tap the power of our community to create a global and local distributed production network.
We know our plans are ambitious, and the past year has shown us that it’s possible. This is just the beginning of our work. We’re thrilled by the ways this vision has come to life this year, and excited to continue to help creative business owners flourish on Etsy.
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Re: Notes From Chad: Towards the New Year
Please note this is a one week plus thread post for information. After that time it is planned to be deleted.
Thank you,
Mike
Thank you,
Mike
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Re: Notes From Chad: Towards the New Year
thanks for sharing this Mike..hope you had a Merry Christmas
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