Etsy has given thousands of crafters both small and large a community that is supportive, open and beautiful. I foresee plenty of positive changes in the future and will be sticking around to see how they unfold.

Bitter much?

Etsy does in fact listen to the sellers through countless forum exchanges, Storque articles and comments, and email correspondence to Etsy admin. themselves. They might not be able to implement things in the time frame you might envision but you can’t possibly know what goes on behind the scenes. (And no, the UEN isn’t a great way of finding out the skinny….)

As for stores being closed and what not I think it’s a kin to the high school gym locker room where no one really knows what really happened since no one ever hears both sides. For those not directly involved it should be treated as such.

Look, Etsy has laid out a plan for the next 2.5 years and now have quite a bit of capital to attain both their own goals and the goals of the community as a whole. I say put a little bit more faith in them.

But that’s just the opinion of another Etsy seller….

Etsy is a great idea, but is currently a lot less than great in practice. As many experienced sellers on the site know, it’s very badly managed, new projects are almost always poorly thought through, it’s over-staffed (many of whom offer no value to the vast majority of customers), much of the technology aside from the Flash toys is poorly designed and built, and the business is run in a way that seems highly unprofessional and even spiteful towards many customers.

For the sake of the thousands of people who now rely on the services Etsy provides, I hope radical changes to this sad state of affairs happen very soon.

I’m not holding my breath on these huge changes. They’ve already banned 5 people permanently from the forums (Etsy 5), and have started closing stores with an iron fist lately. If they were trying to clean Etsy up for the investors, well guys, you have your money.

I hope that this huge step only furthers the best things about Etsy and that the site as an entity is able to maintain and enhance it’s uniqueness and commitment to being all about “everything handmade.”