Etsy was founded in 2005 so that independent sellers could sell their handmade and vintage products over the Internet.
Today, the Brooklyn, New York-based marketplace, has about 7.4 million active sellers on the on the website, offering more than 120 million products ranging from art and craftworks to vintage clothing, to almost 90 million active buyers.
In 2020, UK Etsy sellers accounted for 30% of its international sellers, according to Veeqo, while the 2021, Global Etsy Seller Census said there were 960,000 active Etsy sellers in the UK that year, of whom 87% were single-person businesses and 96% operated from home.
Click here to view all coverage about Etsy
According to RetailX research, Etsy is now a leading UK trader, measured by web traffic.
In its latest financial year, to 31 December 2022, sellers sold goods to the value of $13.32 billion via the platform. That’s 1.3% down from $13.49 billion a year earlier.
Revenues came in at $2.6 billion, 10.2% up on the $2.3 billion it reported a year earlier. But at the bottom line, it reported a net loss of $694.3 million – 240.7% down on the previous year. In the first quarter of 2023, it reported a profit, with net income of $74.5 million of revenue of $640.8 million and gross merchandise sales of $3.1 billion.
“The Etsy marketplace’s strong holiday performance and accelerating year-over-three-year GMS in the fourth quarter enabled us to end the year on a high note,” says Rachel Glaser, Etsy’s chief financial officer, in Etsy’s full-year 2022 figures.
“We are now nearly three times the size we were pre-pandemic, and we’ve been careful about how we have grown our cost basis to catch up with the size of the business – visible in our sustained profitable growth and strong free cash flow.”
Its strategy is one of offering ‘best in class’ search and discovery while focusing on being a trusted brand.
During the year, the platform’s focus has also been on boosting trust in the Etsy brand and enabling shoppers to find products to buy more easily. To that end, it has invested in marketing campaigns and in ‘explore’ features, such as videos, on its website.
Recent innovations also include a wedding registry service to enable shoppers to ask for gifts sold on Etsy, while products from the most successful ‘star sellers’ and those with the best product reviews are prioritised in search.
Etsy says it was the first global ecommerce company to offset all of its carbon emissions from shipping, and it aims to reduce its emissions to zero by 2030.
Etsy also owns fashion resales marketplace Depop, musical instrument marketplace Reverb and Brazilian handmade goods marketplace Elo7.
Each marketplace operates independently while sharing product, marketing, technology and customer support resources.
This company profile originally featured in the 2023 RetailX United Kingdom Ecommerce Country report, click here to view.
