A well-known American e-commerce platform announced layoffs!

Recently, Etsy , the largest handmade e-commerce platform in the United States , announced that the company will lay off 225 employees, accounting for about 11% of the total number of employees. What surprised many people was that this decision was announced during the holiday peak season.

According to the company's CEO Josh Silverman in a statement, the layoffs are an update to the company's internal structure and are for the company's better development so that it can better serve customers.

The statement also mentioned that the platform more than doubled in size between 2019 and 2020. But in 2021, growth began to stagnate.

During the pandemic, consumers in many markets, including the United States, turned to online shopping, so online platforms such as Etsy also saw significant growth in sales. To support this expansion, these platforms have chosen to expand their staff size.

However, as the epidemic subsided, many consumers resumed their offline shopping habits, which caused the growth of these online platforms to stagnate or even regress. For this reason, many platforms have chosen to reduce their staff size to reduce unnecessary operating expenses.

In fact, in addition to the stagnant market growth, Etsy also faces many other crises.

In recent years, Etsy has been in constant friction with third-party sellers. On the one hand, it is because of the ever-increasing commissions, and on the other hand, because the platform forces sellers to invest in advertising, so more and more sellers choose to leave the platform.

At the same time, more and more similar platforms are emerging, giving sellers more choices.

For example , in October last year, Etsy sellers joined forces with many peers to launch an alternative platform, Artisans Cooperative, in protest. It is reported that this platform is now in the second testing phase and currently has more than 70 stores and 1,200 products.

For example, in November this year, Novica launched Handmade.com, a handicraft e-commerce platform, which currently has 3,000 sellers. Michaels also launched a similar platform, ArtisansMakerPlace.

However, in terms of strength, Etsy's huge audience and perfect marketing tools are still something that these new platforms cannot catch up with in a short time. Data shows that as of 2023, Etsy will have more than 6 million active sellers and more than 100 million active buyers worldwide.

Etsy

Layoffs

USA