Whilst winter was having a leaving party at the end of February, Etsy was celebrating its first ever quarter with over $1,000,000,000 in sales and if that wasn’t enough, their other financials were pretty impressive too.
Growing In A Sea of Sameness
This is a huge milestone for creative marketplace Etsy, who demonstrated strong growth across each of their core markets. They reported a 17.8% increase in year-on-year sales, as well as a 33%1.9 million and were accompanied by over 50 million item listings.
Whilst a stellar holiday season definitely helped, CEO Josh Silverman explained how beginning 2017 with four key initiatives, helped to focus their efforts and contribute to the champagne-popping growth.
2017 – Four Key Initiatives
Etsy began 2017 with a dedication to:
1. Improving trust and reliability;
2. Enhancing search and discovery;
3. Building world-class marketing capabilities; and
4. Providing best-in-class seller tools and services.
And they delivered, introducing features and investments in Best Seller badges, returns policies, guided search, scarcity badges, SEO, promotion tools and the first ever site-wide sale (on Labor Day and Cyber Week), to name but a few.
2018 – Looking Forward
Silverman didn’t hang about in declaring that they were “looking forward to a great year” for 2018. Top of the agenda for helping maintain this winning streak:
1. Tools – Etsy will continue to provide sellers with new tools and functions that enable them to achieve outstanding sales. These include insights, marketing/brand-building tools and key performance indicator features.
2. Audience – Etsy already has a community of over 33 million global buyers (growing 16.8% from last year) but it wants more. Creating an enhanced shopping experience, running different sales events and improving the search functionality will be key to helping them achieve this.
3. Focus – Etsy is going to cease Etsy Studio and Etsy Manufacturing so that it can concentrate on the marketplace itself. Too many cooks and all that. Affected sellers will be contacted shortly.
Etsy forecast an increase in overall sales from 14-16% (to $3.8 billion), with an increase in its own revenue to nearly $543 million; that’s a lot of zeros.
What Do Etsy’s Q4 Results Mean For eCommerce Sellers
Etsy continues to demonstrate its commitment to providing variety in the mix of marketplaces available to eCommerce sellers. Their passion for helping sellers to grow their business and build their brand is reflected in their investments, strategies and numbers.
Ultimate, Etsy want to help you succeed and if you’re not already taking advantage, you should be.
Which Marketplace To Choose?
We’ve already reported the great results of Shopify, eBay and Amazon and it is great to see that Etsy is following suit but this makes it all the harder for eCommerce entrepreneurs to decide which marketplace to pick. Why pick one when you can have them all? Multichannel management providers, such as Expandly, allow you to ride the waves of all four, with little extra time or effort on your behalf.
About Expandly
Expandly is multichannel management software that is all about saving you time and effort.
From the moment you login in the morning to the moment you ship your orders, Expandly aims to reduce your workload. It is simple, easy to use and focussed on helping small eCommerce businesses go from home-office or unit to warehouse and beyond.