ETSY MEETING

It was brought to my attention last week, by D’Andrea that some of the etsy team was making a trip to Toronto and Montreal to meet up with Canadian etsy sellers to talk about their future plans for etsy and to get feedback from them in person. They didn’t have a set location for Toronto, so I was more than delighted to offer up the workroom as a meeting point.

Just under fifty people showed up for the meeting Friday night and somehow I had wrangled just about enough chairs and stools for everyone. Chad, Sara and Liz were the enthusiastic etsy representatives who came to meet with us. Not surprising they had some flight delays with Air Canada, but everybody just mingled and introduced themselves as we waited for them to show up.

I’m not an etsy seller, yet. But, it’s something I’ve really been thinking about for a while. (I’ve also been wondering if I should start twittering?) So, the meeting was really interesting for me to hear about some of the features that etsy is focusing on improving such as better search engines (such as being able to search local AND with key words), clearly stating that prices are listed in USD, being able to rearrange the items in your shop, and easy currency conversion.

The attending etsy sellers each introduced themselves by real name and etsy shop name and gave really great feedback. It was fun putting faces to products and when many people introduced themselves there were shout outs of ‘Hey, I love your stuff!’. Things like having the option for local pickup, support for coupons or gift certificates, batch editing of listed items, being able to change your etsy name (especially when you chose the name ages ago without thinking that it might be a future shop name), and better support and tools for the street teams were brought up with group consensus. There were lots of great ideas bounced around for creating applications that would allow bloggers and sellers to promote their favourite etsy items or shops easily. There is a hope that developers will begin to create these tools outside of etsy, similar to facebook or the iphone.

A brief discussion was also held concerning creating a wholesale platform that would assist potential retail buyers to find and interact with etsy sellers. This could potentially help sellers move to the next step with their business of doing bigger volume.

It’s clear that etsy is a huge and dynamic community and it was impressive to meet some of the people from etsy headquarters and to hear how dedicated and excited they are about the future of etsy. I can’t wait to see the changes that come about in the next little while.

Were you at the meeting? Did anything stand out for you? Does anyone else have points about etsy they think need improvement?

I didn’t take good photos at the meeting, but hopefully etsy will post up the video or group photos they shot! {NOTE : the group photo is here!}

Local etsy sellers are having an event at the Gladstone Hotel on Saturday May 16, 11am – 4pm. Drop by the ‘A Spring Handmade Market’ event to shop local etsy in person!

{ADDED NOTE : Minouette posted very detailed notes on the meeting here!}

{ANOTHER ADDED NOTE : Liz from etsy posted her report on the Canadian meet ups here!}