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Comment by virmundi | Hacker News Reader

While aspects like 3rd party manufactures is disturbing, I'm surprised by the notion that successful companies move beyond Etsy.

Etsy seems like a small business incubator. It provides, at a reasonable fee, a working environment conducive to growth. You have forums and other communication mechanism to train with others. You get the ability to have the e-commerce headache serviced. You get a known location that customers arrive at looking for their special things. At some point all of this infrastructure is limiting. You leave the small business incubator for a more custom environment.

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I agree completely. I helped a store migrate from Etsy to a custom CMS because they had outgrown Etsy, and they did so in about a year. Etsy would do well to pivot their marketing from Handmade/Craft to Small Business Incubator. Or maybe they have and that's what all the butt hurt is about.

That is, in fact, Etsy's goal. But the DIY & handmade is a movement on its own with its own set of virtues, probably an heir to the Arts & Crafts movement as a reaction against mass production: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_and_Crafts_movement#Social...

So a whiff of mass production is seen as taint.

The question is how Etsy wants to position itself relative to Ebay.

Now, there's nothing wrong with being ebay! It's a fine way to find traders selling mass-produced items. But I was under the impression Etsy wasn't trying to compete with them directly.

Etsy could — however — as Kickstarter has done, particularly w/r/t to hardware products — limit itself to a more narrow and carefully regulated set of goods. Even as the crowdfunding world has grown, Kickstarter has maintained it's reputation and growth by sticking closely to a set of arts-oriented values. It leaves the drivel to platforms like IndieGoGo — and doesn't stray too far from it's creative core, by banning charitable projects.

I suppose you could say that that limits their growth — but it also keeps em' awesome.

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