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. With Handmade 2.0: Is the future of shopping all about the past?
Posted Under: DIYism
There’s no Consumed column in the New York Times Magazine this week, to make way for a feature story I’ve wanted to write for quite a while. “Handmade 2.0” is about the growth of the DIY/crafting phenomenon, and Etsy, and some thoughts as to what it’s all about.
Here is a short excerpt from the opening section:
Browsing Etsy is both exhilarating and exhausting. There is enough here to mount an astonishing museum exhibition. There is also plenty of junk. Most of all there is a dizzying amount of stuff, and it is similarly difficult to figure out how to characterize what it all represents: an art movement, a craft phenomenon or shopping trend. Whatever this is, it’s not something that Etsy created but rather something that it is trying to make bigger, more visible and more accessible — partly by mixing high-minded ideas about consumer responsibility with the unsentimental notion of the profit motive.
On July 29, Etsy registered its one-millionth sale and is expecting to hit two million items sold by mid-December. Shoppers spent $4.3 million buying 300,000 items from the site’s sellers in November alone — a 43 percent increase over the previous month. Thus far in December, the site has had record-breaking sales every day. Only about two years old, the company is not currently profitable but is somewhat unusual among Internet-based start-ups of the so-called Web 2.0 era in having a model that does not depend on advertising revenue. It depends on people buying things, in a manner that the founders position as a throwback to the way consumption ought to be: individuals buying from other individuals. “Our ties to the local and human sources of our goods have been lost,” the Handmade Pledge site asserts. “Buying handmade helps us reconnect.” The idea is a digital-age version of artisanal culture — that the future of shopping is all about the past.
The whole story is here (and of course in tomorrow’s issue of the Times Magazine, where it might be more pleasurable to read, given the length). I’m putting together some related links that I’ll post tomorrow.
[ PS: In answer to the question: Why does the online version of the story on the Times site not actually link to Etsy? Or to Getcrafty, or any of other things it might link to? My answer is: I have no idea. Please ask someone who works at the Times! ]
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Reader Comments
Great article. I love etsy. You might also like to check out craftzine.com and Make magazine’s site. They’re another branch of the trend.
Thanks.
As for those sites, I link to them all the time, and I believe I mentioned both Make and Craft in the piece. I agree they are important players in this.
When I put together my additional links list they’ll definitely be on there.
Thanks again, cheers! rw
Thanks for the nice NY Times article about Etsy.
Hey, this is a really nice story. I can’t believe you managed to cover practically the entire Craft Nation in it. The ideas the crafters support are especially resonant with me right now, as I’m living in a country where we must shop in what seems to be the crafters’ idea of a perfect marketplace: individual buyers and sellers meeting over their unique wares in an actual market. It’s, ahhh, slightly more of a pain when it’s not on the internet. Anyway, well done!
Very nice article. But I was surprised that you did not reference the whole arts and crafts movement from the previous century that developed from the very same impulses and needs. They faced the same questions of mass-production verses individualism of the product.
Cathy: I actually had that in an early draft (early is in, a draft my editors never saw), John Ruskin, and so on, but ultimately I cut it. While I agree with what you’re saying, it would have been something that I was kind of imposing into the story — it’s not something that, say, the crafters I interviewed tended to talk about.
It’s always a tough call to know where to draw the line between historical context, and just telling the story of people who are doing something now. I think there are a lot of interesting differences between the Arts & Crafts movement of 100 years ago, and this DIY movement, and those might have been interesting to explore, but I think it would have taken the piece off in a different direction.
But maybe it should have been in there. It’s part of the reality of writing any story, there’s always stuff I wish I could have included.
We’ve had a brief comment thread over on the Storque about your article. I think emotions are split, though majorly positive. I think it’s nice to see that the microbrands/indiepreneurism/DIY-scene is getting more attention thanks to media other than blogs and webzines (meaning your book and the indie movie, to name two).
I have to be curious – there was a mild disappointment at your usage of “peddling” in connection with Etsy users offering their products for sale. What was your intention when choosing “to peddle” over other, more positive, phrasing such as “offer for sale” or “pitch one’s goods”?
a.: Thanks, I hadn’t read that thread (though I’ve read at least one very long thread in the forums), so I appreciate the tip.
As for “peddle,” I don’t think it’s realistic for me to start getting into discussions of the use of one word in a 5,000 word story, but certainly I didn’t choose that word with the intention of insulting or offending anybody.
Rob, you unknowingly pinpointed me twice in your article. I am a (prototypical?) 34-year old customer who contributed to the $4.3 million in Etsy’s November sales. I purchased items from a Canadian knitter and an Italian knitter. It was the first time I had purchased anything from the site, having stumbled upon it just after Thanksgiving.
I have never purchased anything from eBay because of the large amounts of junk of dubious provenance. Etsy struck me as different. You can tell the quality of the goods from the photos that the creators place on their sites, and though I am normally skeptical about folks’ online claims about any product, I had no qualms about purchasing items from artists abroad whom I’d never met. Something about Etsy instills trust. Let’s hope the site continues to do so.