Fund on Etsy — Crowdfunding for creative handmade products

@rrhoover I agree that it's a brilliant move; however, I'm curious to see how Etsy converges/competes with Teespring as they expand into a broader e-commerce service.

@rrhoover Good insight. If they can deliver on craftsmanship AND storytelling, Etsy's creators can take my money all day.

@rrhoover agreed about doing more around building that interaction and community. I think Etsy has started to make some great inroads here recently (shop about pages [i.e., https://www.etsy.com/shop/quietc...], buyer photos [https://www.etsy.com/seller-hand...]), but there's still a bunch to be done!

@rrhoover Definitely interested in how they differentiate and position this new feature in the market compared to the other crowdsourcing sites. From my experience (my mother is an Etsy shop seller of vintage items), they do an extremely good job at building community and humanizing the transaction process. I have suggested to her that she diversity and sell her products on Amazon and Ebay but for her the communication is what adds value. An incredible story that might shed light the type of humanization that is taking place. A few months ago she was messaged through Etsy inquiring about a signed Roy Acuff manuscript of lyrics she had listed. The buyer told her that she was buying it as a present for someone and she needed it the next day. She looked up the buyers name and found she worked for the event company managing the Country Music Awards. She could overnight it so she responded yes and out of curiosity asked who it was for. The buyer responded back that she was giving it to Garth Brooks as a gift at a charity Gala night beffore the primary event. (Roy Acuff is one of Brooks idols/mentors) My mother being a huge Garth Brooks fan was ecstatic. The women that worked at the event company was even kind enough to get her tickets to the Gala (held in Dallas) the next day so she could be there and see Garth Brooks preform. Thats not something you'll hear happen on Ebay. This type of communication between buyers and sellers in the marketplace significantly enhances the value for both parties. One area where I think Etsy can improve is educating sellers on how to market their offerings and effectively utilize social media. With all marketplaces one of the key metics is time to first sale. From what I hear Etsy's time to first sale is around 90 days which is higher than both Ebay and Amazon. This window of time is where most of the loss on the seller side happens.

@rrhoover Hey Ryan - Thanks for the encouraging words. Our team worked really hard on Fund on Etsy, and it definitely is focused around creating deeper connections between our buyers and sellers. We're also trying to humanize and create transparency in the production process through great storytelling.

@jackdweck Thanks for sharing! Happy to answer any questions.

@ryanstubbs We're running this pilot in the U.S. at first so that we can learn as much as we can about how buyers and sellers use it. We do <3 the U.K. though.