When shopping for handmade goods online, those in the know head directly to Etsy.com. Etsy brings together thousands of sellers from around the world, offering original art, jewelry, clothing, knick knacks, pottery, toys, pet accessories, bath products and even edibles. It’s also one of the best places on the web to find handmade goods made from upcycled and recycled materials.
The genius behind this extremely popular online shopping site isn’t some Silicon Valley techie, but a former classics major and carpenter in Brooklyn. 28-year-old Rob Kalin launched Etsy in June of 2005, and since then it’s gone nowhere but up. Kalin was able to raise $5 million in three rounds of funding from angel investors including the founders of Flickr and Delicious. Kalin repeatedly turned down big money funding offers from venture capitalists who wanted a 20% stake in the company, and he hasn’t looked back since.
Tens of thousands of sellers proffer an amazing variety of goods ranging in quality from the kind of country crafts you’d see on eBay to high end gallery-worthy art, design and fashion. And, hundreds of thousands of buyers eagerly snatch up crafts of all sorts. In 2008, Etsy sold $100 million worth of handmade goods.
Kalin was able to take eBay’s concept of a massive online person-to-person marketplace and improve upon it in a variety of ways, finding a thread of humanity in the often cold and impersonal nature of online interaction. At the basis of Etsy is the idea of walking through a physical marketplace, marveling at all of the wonderful things you see and meeting new people along the way.
Kalin and Etsy have helped put handmade goods into the spotlight, and his fingerprints remain on the site despite the fact that the company has grown to 60 employees, with former NPR executive Maria Thomas serving as CEO.
In an interview with Lindsay Campbell of Wallstrip, Kalin explains the value of handmade versus mass-produced.
“What I see Etsy as tapping into is this desire to buy things that have this other layer of meaning on them. If your house was burning down, what five items would you take? Your TV? Who cares? It’s mass-produced… the bunny that your grandmother made you when you were a kid? You’re taking that. You’re taking things that have this story behind them because somebody made them for you.”
Rob Kalin’s Green Score: 48,301
