MIS 205

Assignment

Submitted to:
Mahbubur Rahman
Lecturer
Department of Management
School of Business
North South University
Sec: 11
Submitted by:
Mezbha Uddin Abir
ID: 1610979030
Department: BBA

18, July,2018
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ETSY – A Social Oriented B2C Marketplace

Case Study

1. Explain why the company has been compared to a cross between Amazon.com, eBay, and a
grandma’s basement.
ETSY is an online market place where designers across the world sells unique handcrafted
jewelry, clothing, vintage item, arts, posters handmade goods and more. Amazon Handmade,
eBay and Craigslist are considered as its top competitors. It has few direct competitors like
DaWanda, ezebee.com, Bonanza etc.
All these company or some of them focuses on a specific thing like Amazon Handmade om
handmade products or Bonanza focusing on clothing and fashion. But ETSY is a place where all
these things are done in a single place be it handcraft item, clothing or jewelry. So it is compared
to a cross between Amazon.com, eBay and a grandma’s basement.
2. Examine the mission of the company, and explain what the company is doing to attain its
mission.
Etsy is the global marketplace for unique and creative goods. It’s home to a universe of special,
extraordinary items, from unique handcrafted pieces to vintage treasures. In a time of increasing
automation, it’s their mission to keep human connection at the heart of commerce. So they built a
place that is run or powered by people. In ETSY creativity thrives it is the perfect place for
creative minds to share their ideas view and by ETSY they can sell their ideas and views which
can turn into a successful business and reach millions of people across the world. It gives the
creative mind a platform to show case their talent and helps them to become successful.
Another thing in their mission is to solve social and environmental problems, for that they have
been certified as B Certified Corporation. A B Certified Corporation uses the power of their
business for solving social environmental problems for that ETSY did a lot of stuff like, Etsy has
already organically developed some conscientious practices, such as offering loaner bicycles to
employees, hiring local small food businesses that incorporate in-season ingredients, donating
office compost to a Brooklyn community farm, and regulating office energy consumption.
However, there is still much more to do. Utilizing independent third-party criteria for evaluating
Etsy’s success in these fields can give us a dose of pride.
3. The sellers in this case are mostly small businesses. As such, Etsy is considered a B2C
company. However, it can also be viewed as an enabler of P2P. Explain.
Yes, ETSY can also be viewed as a P2P e commerce. By P2P we mean person to person where
business is done through an intermediary which is ETSY here. They have even incorporated
PayPal for P2P transaction.
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ETSY is an online Marketplaces, peer-to-peer (P2P) e-commerce website that provides the
general products to sell and buy handmade items, clothing, jewelry, toys and vintage items. Etsy
is popular as side-business as well as a place to buy products made from recycled materials,
along with affordable prices, Etsy has grown significantly with full-fledged which covers all
processes. There is very few step to selling products on Etsy which has the following options:
 Seller has the option to create a shop name.
 Etsy did not charge any money for creating a shop,
 But Etsy makes money by charging a listing fee of 20 cents for each item and getting 3.5
percent of every sale, with the average sale of $10 to $15.

4. Enter storenvy.com and look at their markets. Compare this site with ETSY.
Both ETSY and storenv.com are same type of business with few exceptions which are listed as
pros and cons of both of the company.
ETSY
Pros
 Cheap Listing Fees - 20 cents net us a single item listing on their marketplace, which is
low cost, all things considered
 Direct Checkout - Etsy allows a variety of payment methods, including PayPal. They
also allow a user to pay via credit cards through their integrated direct checkout feature
so a customer never has to leave the site to checkout.
 Widgets - Etsy allows us to embed our items into your blog or websites, which is handy
if we'd rather keep people on our site to browse our items. They will have to go offsite to
the Etsy marketplace if they want to make a purchase, however.
 Pay Per Click Ads - This is a vast improvement over their old Showcase system. Etsy
now let’s sellers promote their items in the search engine, where they get priority
placement on the items sellers specifically choose to promote. We only have to pay for
ads if a customer clicks on your link, which is a vast improvement over paying a flat fee
and means you get more profit for our buck.
 Free Credit Card Reader - As a seller, we can sign up to receive a free credit card
swipe that allows us to take payments in person. The best thing about this swipe is that it
keeps track of our stock so if we sell an item from our shop at a show using the swipe, it
subtracts from the stock listed in our Etsy shop, which allows us to prevent the pesky
problem of an item selling online while we're out of town.

Cons
 High Competition - Etsy has really exploded as a presence with high market share now
that it has gone public and had a few years to expand its reputation. High competition
means it's more difficult to get seen and almost necessary to pay for ads to boost one’s
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views. Many also worry that because Etsy allows designers to outsource that the small
sellers will be quickly overwhelmed by others who can afford to charge less for their
items. This seems to affect 2D artists less than it does those who create jewelry and other
such items that can be replicated.
 Not Suited for Digital Sales - While we can sell digital items on Etsy, the file size limit
is pretty low at 20MB which means you'll have to break up larger files into multi-part .zip
files, but we can only have 5 total attached files, so this can be tricky
 Not Very Customizable – We get a header image, an avatar, and an About page that you
can somewhat customize. Otherwise, we are stuck with Etsy's very orange branding.

Storeny.com
PROS
 No Listing Fees - Completely free and unlimited amount of listings allowed
 Customizable Storefront - Getting access to CSS templates and the ability to create
custom html pages.
 Coupon Codes - Same as Etsy in that we can create simple percentage discounts (but no
free shipping coupon codes). We would need to purchase an add-on service in order to
create free shipping offers and other specialized coupons (i.e. buy one, get one free, etc.)
 Item Variations Allowed - We can create different size offerings with different price
points within a single item, rather than having to create multiple items. However, unlike
Etsy, variations are not very deep and only allow you to customize one level of options.

CONS
 Low Traffic - Compared to Etsy, the traffic we've gotten from within and outside of
Storenv.com has been very minimal.
 No Integrated Shipping - We have to buy an add-on with a monthly subscription fee in
order to create shipping labels. Otherwise, we're in charge of creating our own labels
with our preferred service.
 No Digital Sales - We have to purchase an add-on with a monthly subscription fee in
order to host digital files.
 No PayPal - Currently, marketplace shops do not allow PayPal,

5. What revenue model are they implementing? Give your suggestions on whether they should
stick to existing revenue model or change it.
Revenue Model
Just as Etsy is known for listing unique items on its platform, it is also known for a unique
revenue model. The major revenue models of Etsy comprise the following:
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 Etsy charges sellers to list items on its platform. However, the fee to list something on
Etsy is as low as $0.20, but it contributes a good amount to the overall, money that ETSY
makes. The amount of $0.20 is valid for 4 months
 Apart from the listing fee, ETSY also charges sellers a commission for every sale. The
commission fee has been fixed at 3.5%. Sellers have the option to set their own sale price
but Etsy cuts a commission of 3.5% from the sale price before paying the money to the
seller.
 Etsy has given some special features to sellers which they can avail by paying an extra
cost. These are basically advertising options like making a product as featured product
etc. Sellers can showcase their shops and hence have more sales.

They should stick to the same revenue model as it is helpful for any new comer to easily get
themselves into ETSY. And with the growth of the shops seller may want a flat charge for
listing. It’s true that initially it is cheap but with the growth of a shop and based on the large
number of product listing that is needed to be done this revenue model will give profitable
incomes.