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She has to be to say crap like this:
On the technical end, scaling swiftly and keeping pace with consumer expectations and demand can sometimes feel overwhelming for a company with limited resources. Acknowledging that this problem exists regardless of stage, Thomas recommended the following tactics:
- Hire the best CTO you can find. Do not settle on this one!
- Make clear who is in charge of and responsible for development sprints
- Be deliberate in deciding upon and building a collective mindset around development methodology
Has she been in the forums lately? And then there's the admittance of what we always thought. Etsy's marketing plan is simply to get it for free, from their own customers:
Etsy is known for its loyal and enthusiastic community, and accordingly, uses a customer driven approach to marketing. Thomas suggested the following strategies to develop community and enhance engagement:
- Create methods for consumers to engage one another. Etsy, for example, has forums, internal email, chat, and teams.
- Get to know, in person, some of your customers in order to really understand them
- If necessary, use a service like Get Satisfaction to ensure customers needs are adequately noted and addressed
- Measure loyalty through metrics like net promoter scores and repeat customers
- Take advantage of high quality, enthusiastic interns
We assume that the customers they get to know are the faves, or maybe the celebrities they show off (and try to ignore when they go crazy), or maybe she doesn't know who Etsy's customers are! Does she or any of the admin really get that the sellers are their customers?
And their customers bring them new customers. But grassroots works both ways. The negative word about how Etsy treats its customers can be spread just as quickly and easily as the positive words that built the site. If everyone were to suddenly spread the word that Etsy is awful to its customers, but the sellers on the site need help because of that, there will gradually be fewer new sellers and the current sellers won't go sale-less as they move off to other horizons.
Etsy's ship is sinking, and the CEO is out blowing air up the public's ass. Why are they inviting her?! She has done nothing to help Etsy, as far as it's actual customers go. But maybe she's done exactly what she was brought in to do - pretend it's ok so investors will still pay.
I think I see what Etsy has become. You have to sort of squint to see it. But first you have to erase everything we used to know Etsy to be. It's no longer a close knit community, admin are no longer one of us, the founders are no longer struggling to help their customers. Etsy is a corporation, now known as Etsy Corp. And they are doing exactly what they once stood against - promoting mainstream, in the box, mass produced, disposable and unnecessary crap that is a detriment to handmade and to the values of helping one another ("take advantage of enthusiastic interns" = "these people will do anything if you tell them it's good for handmade")
They are no longer about helping artists make a living. They are all about Etsy Corp making another dime. And the corporate world loves the fact that they can learn from Etsy - learn how to take advantage of their customers.
If you want to tell Etsy what you think, there's currently a forum thread where the link was posted and launchbox has commenting available at the bottom of the article. Edit: on 6/29 the thread was closed after anti-Maria sentiment caused HeyMichelle to remind the community to treat other members with respect. Also, it has been brought to our attention that Launchbox is not posting comments on the article and that some who contacted them have been muted by Etsy for older threads. There is also Twitter talk of at least 1 shop closure of a previous anti-Etsy voice. If you are muted, shutdown, or otherwise harrassed for flimsy or inappropriate reasons, send us an email or twitter.
(Thank you to the readers who brought the article to our attention)
