Scale Like Etsy: Targeting Communities

Etsy has become the go-to marketplace for craftsmanship, hobbies, and small artisanal shops worldwide. How did their founders grow to such titanic proportions?

The idea for Etsy began from a web-design shop that was run by the founders. They were geared towards indie crafters when they realized that a marketplace for these same crafters left a huge hole in the virtual world- a hole they planned on filling.

As they were building Etsy, they reached out to various craft communities, utilizing their input, soft-selling their platform, and tailoring Etsy to fit the exact needs of their market.

For the Etsy founders, the market defined the product. This paid off extreme dividends, as inserting themselves into these communities meant that the moment they launched, these same communities were the first adopters, migrating en masse to the platform.

This basically hacked their growth from the start, boosting Etsy until it grew into the massive online marketplace it is today. What’s the lesson here? Know your market, and get in early. Spending months and precious pesos building a product only to find out the market is not responsive is a death knell.

Know and understand the communities you are targeting. Join them! Take it from Ice Cube:

Okay so there may be no need to find the supplier, but definitely infiltrate.