Etsy lays off 225 workers after ‘essentially flat’ sales, says CEO | Business
(www.theguardian.com)
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 14 Dec 2023 10:00
https://lemmy.world/post/9553608
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 14 Dec 2023 10:00
https://lemmy.world/post/9553608
Etsy lays off 225 workers after ‘essentially flat’ sales, says CEO | Business::Staff notified via livestream Wednesday by Josh Silverman, who acknowledged ‘unfortunate’ timing during holiday season
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
The online retail company will reduce its headcount by about 11% after deciding that a “leaner, more agile” workforce would help shore up growth.
Staff were notified in a livestream on Wednesday by Josh Silverman, its chief executive, who blamed the fact that gross merchandise sales on Etsy had remained “essentially flat” for two years.
“At the same time, employee expenses have grown, even as we have introduced significant cost-cutting measures and adjusted or paused hiring plans,” Silverman wrote in an internal email.
It comes after Hasbro, the toymaker, announced two weeks before Christmas that it would cut 1,100 employees as it grapples with lackluster sales.
Describing Wednesday as “one of the hardest [days] we’ve experienced at Etsy”, Silverman sought to rally the staff who were not cut.
“The waters may be rough right now,” he wrote, “but there’s no other ship I’d rather be on, and no other crew I’d rather be with, as we weather this cycle and emerge even stronger on the other side.”
The original article contains 280 words, the summary contains 167 words. Saved 40%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Sure, as you know that you can throw people overboard to save your own ass.
Notably, their stock is up 23% this quarter.
Well, this seems evil. I might sell my paltry investments to simply dissociate.
It’s so stupid how everything just be growth. Flat is fine. 23%+ stock gains, more than fine. Laying off people before the holidays, evil.
I mansure that seller profits have gone down sunstabtially
I don’t know why you’re downvoted - maybe your typos confused folks… But, as a seller on Etsy my sales have dropped off tremendously. All the Etsy fees we pay have only increased and it’s also now a wasteland of aliexpress dropshipped goods in their efforts to compete with Amazon instead of dialing up an alt to Amazon all because of shareholders.
Over a long while and several revisions, I prepared a 3D model of the time baton from the Loki series - complete with electronics, lights, etc. Almost immediately after I was done, Etsy raised their fees 30%. I never bothered trying to sell it because that destroyed my profit margin.
This is one of those sites I have a love-hate relationship with. It used to be much better when it started, with actual people selling actual homemade items.
These days, there’s a lot of dropshipping shit on there, sold for way higher prices. There’s also people who run their shop like a full on commercial business. All of this means that it’s harder to find the actual, honestly handmade stuff by individual users.
I’m also not a fan of the current tax hassle they’ve got going where they collect European sales tax in advance. It was a headache when I ordered a thing and got taxed twice (refunded by seller, thankfully).
“refunded by seller” is probably why the sales have flat lined.
Its really difficult to make money with all the charges and fees one has to pay in order to sell there besides being forced to refund or else threatened with bad reviews
My particular situation was: I bought some knife scales from a guy in Australia. I’m in the Netherlands. Etsy collects EU sales tax - 12 euros in this case. Now, Etsy is supposed to send that money to our customs people and the shipper puts a specific code on it to let them know that the taxes have been paid in advance.
Now, for whatever reason, Dutch customs taxed me AGAIN when the package arrived. Even though the seller had put the correct code on there and even highlighted it with a marker. So as far as I can tell, it wasn’t their fault that I got taxed twice.
But: Etsy specifically tells you to take things up with the seller first when there’s issues. And the seller refunded me the second tax payment (13 euros and change). Which was of course very nice of them. But I wasn’t about to take that double taxation lying down either. I’m very much in the ‘import taxes are theft and extortion’ camp, so I sure as shit wasn’t about to pay twice.
Whether he refunded it to avoid a bad review, I don’t know. But the whole thing annoyed me so much in general, I’ve stopped buying things on Etsy. God forbid I run into that issue if I ever buy anything actually expensive on there.
Knowing Etsy, its not worth taking up the fight with them. Even having your data deleted according to GDPR rights was almost impossible untill I Cc’ed my communication with the local data authorities.
I’m never even looking at that page again
I am sad for the workers but not sad for Etsy. Its just a milking company squeezing the most out of hard working and Creative individuals
My wife keeps bringing up Etsy to sell things I make in my hobby, but they take too much of the sale and nobody would (probably) pay for it if I marked up to make my take-home the same as cash sales.
Plus with the severe saturation of the site with metalwork… I’d probably never sell anything that way anyway.
I know a long-term seller
Site went to shit. No seller support. No actual new features that are requested, bugs that are known for years and nobody cares, increase in commission percentage, removal of product categories without explanation and absolutely zero willingness to stop drop shippers flooding the site
It’s basically a shittier Amazon marketplace now
Person I know just has whatever is left running there and doesn’t bother updating the catalogue
Are there any viable alternative sites you’re aware of?
That’s the problem, they’ve cornered the market.
Shopify & Big Cartel
there are a couple, but they are almost all US-only
artisans.coop is run by the actual people making the things being sold. It was started by a group of Etsy sellers who were tired of Etsy’s bullshit.
Nice tip! This has no right being as cute as it is: artisans.coop/products/curious-cat-cozy
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They need to work on their search feature. Did a search for “dad hat” and “five panel hat” with no results.
It’s entirely possible they don’t have either of those things. It’s a pretty new website, I only learned about it awhile back thanks to Lemmy.
Edit: yup, they need to work on their search. “Five panel hat” has no results while “5 panel hat” does. No dad hats, though.
That’s awesome! I hope something similar appears for UK/Europe
Yup and it’s riddled with counterfeit items too
The buyer protection on Etsy is pretty shit too. Tried to return a coat that was too small, seller ghosted me, Etsy requires it to be “completely different” from the expected product. So I’m out about a hundred bucks because I wanted a nice winter jacket.
So if the company is not doing well at all, how about assessing the CEO performance? If company direction isn’t good, fire the CEO, not the workers who ensure operations
But then who will feign sadness and remind everyone that while it’s unfortunate it was a button that needed to be pressed and that they’d do it again?
So many companies choosing the holidays for these layoffs. Very sad.
Fucking hate capitalism’s need for infinite growth, flat sales means you’re doing exactly the same as you were doing last year, if it was sustainable last year it’s sustainable this year
Especially for a company that is little more than a platform
LESS COMPLAINING MORE BREEDING AND BUYING (whip emoji)
COMPLAIN WHILE YOU FUCK SO WE CAN SELL YOUR CHILDREN HAND CRAFTED BABY BOTTLES.
FILLED WITH LEAD JUICE WATER SO THEY CAN BE MORE SMURT
Not always.
There is likely some development occurring that is assumed to be funded by future growth. If that growth doesn’t pan out, then the addition of features may not be economically viable.
As an example of a website who did it right, look at Craigslist. After their website was developed, there has been very little development outside of targeted areas meant to grow their revenue stream or make the site easier to manage.
I buy a lot of stuff off of Etsy. I hate using Etsy and un-installed the app after 1 day of use.