Etsy has made a name for itself as the internet’s answer to Michaels. But the e-commerce giant wants to be more than just a one-stop shop for craft supplies and jewelry. That’s why at a press event at Etsy’s Brooklyn, New York headquarters on Tuesday morning, the company announced Etsy Studio, a new website for the craft-inclined.
It’s hardly a half-hearted effort. Etsy Studio will consolidate the roughly 8 million craft supply kits available on Etsy’s website in a single portal and launch a seller dashboard called Shop Manager. Etsy says the new products aim to eliminate longtime impediments to the creative process.
“One of the things that we kept hearing while interviewing different customers was, ‘there’s this gap. I see beautiful things that I want to be able to make, and I can’t find the things to make them,” Tim Holley, Etsy’s director of product management, told CNET.
To that end, Etsy Studio will launch with tutorials to make personalized gifts. New filters, meanwhile, will help professionals find artists and materials they need.
The filters are extremely specific. A category like “knitting” can easily have dozens of subcategories, Holley told TechCrunch. And the results pages include photos of the product, details about how it was made, its color and size, and more.
Shop Manager, the commercial element of Etsy’s relaunch, adds a new hub for sellers to run their businesses. “[It’s] one of the biggest, most significant improvements to the seller experience that we’ve ever launched,” Chief Operating Officer Findley Kozlowksi told TechCrunch, “because it means there’s ‘no more clicking from menu to menu’ to get all the data [you] need.'”
Shop Manager provides easy access to information about orders, active listings, shop stats, recent conversations with shoppers, and details about shop finances. And it sports new tools for inventory management that allow sellers to add quantity and price to each variation of a listing they offer.
Over the next few weeks, Etsy will invite select sellers to join Studio ahead of an April launch.
Etsy’s going after a lucrative market. The annual U.S. crafts supply industry is valued at about $44 billion, Etsy noted — a huge potential growth area. But CEO Chad Dickerson sees the launch of Etsy Studio and Shop Manager as a boost to what he called “the Etsy” economy: The 1.7 million sellers who use the craft site’s resources on a daily basis. He believes it’ll play an “important role” in a future where creative entrepreneurs “[can] make a living and a life built around human connection and creativity.”
