Buy Handmade!
I've been doing a lot of holiday shopping on Etsy and it is fantastic. The sellers are the nicest people you can possibly imagine doing business with. The items are one of a kind handmade pieces and the prices are amazingly affordable.
In a world where everything is so commercial, mass produced, and lacking in feeling, I love the idea that you can purchase something that was made by hand, direcly from the person who made it.
So from now until Christmas, I will be running a "Buy Handmade" badge on the left sidebar above the fold. You should be able to see it now. If you click on it, you'll be taken to the Etsy showcase where Etsy sellers show off their top items.
In case you didn't know, Union Square Ventures is proud to be an investor in Etsy.
hey fred,
after you blogged on the new etsy site, i checked it out and made a few comments. since then i've made three sets of purchases with three different buyers. and you are correct--Very friendly and Very nice. I love this sort of etiquette. it's rare. i do stand by my earlier comment that some of the search methods are not so helpful. i used "suggestions" which uses my preferences based on my favorite sellers to recommend products. and actually, i thought the results were quite good...until i realized that most of the items had already been sold. however, i just repeated this process and clicked a few items and don't see the same problem. so maybe it was a bug.
Posted by: erin | December 04, 2006 at 02:56 PM
My sister is a jewelry designer. She won' sell nor and displays her designs online. She's extremely weary of people who will copy her work.
The result is that she sells very little via the web. Only through email, really.
I bet that there's a larger market that etsy could tap by offering a solution that would assuage my the fear of theft.
Posted by: Rick | December 04, 2006 at 06:18 PM
Etsy is one of my top 5 favorite sites on the web. I used to be a jewelry designer and I love the community they're building at Etsy.
Posted by: Susan Wu | December 16, 2006 at 02:31 PM
Etsy is one of the top 5 web apps in the eCommerce space. They do things incredibly well.
Posted by: Erik | December 28, 2006 at 11:24 AM