San Francisco Etsy Meet Up: Recap

Last week, several sfetsians (including myself) headed to South Beach in San Francisco for the Etsy meet up. It was an informative night... 5 fearless leaders from Etsy headquarters in Brooklyn came to speak to us about all the latest and greatest happenings in Etsy land. The main speaker was Jesse, but many of the other folks chipped in regarding their expertise. Below is a recap of the event... the evening was a free form Q and A, so these bullet points are in no particular order!

Jesse from Etsy and Rick from Monkey and Seal

Treasury East Style is Here
Etsy has been changing the underlying capabilities of Treasuries. Thus far, they have been capped by some Flash capabilites, which has allowed them only to be able to host 256 treasuries at a time. This is no longer the case (since they are moving away from Flash.) They love the creativity, story telling, and energy treasuries bring to the Etsy community and want to encourage them to be created. There will not be a limit to the number of treasuries... so no more waiting for open spots-- just curate away!

Speaking of Flash
Many of the Flash based modules (say on the home page) are being phased out by different technology.

More Treasuries
The concept of treasuries is so important, that they are going to start to bring them down to lower levels in the UI-- not just the home page, but treasuries for top categories pages, etc.

Karen Or from Fabulry, Christine from Leaf and Tendril and Sandy from The Rows Garden

Etsy Office Opening in SF
One of the reasons the Etsians were in the Bay Area was to look for office space and recuiting. They are planning to open an office in SF that will be mainly engineering... They are definitely expanding in 2010... looking for many great engineers to create all the improvements we are hoping for! I think the SF office will have approximately 10-20 engineers all said and done. They do hope to also have etsy Labs in this office too, and open up to craft nights, etc.

Etsy Hosting a Craft Fair
Etsy's Renegade Handmade Crafty Bizarre?? No, not in Etsy's future. They love craft fairs... but will stay neutral on this front and let the other event planners take on this task!

2 Gals Enjoying a Snack on Etsy (I didn't get their names... :( )

We Want Robust Profile Pages
They would love to provide the capability for us to make splashy and informative Profile pages. Buyers love knowing who they are buying from... Look for some more features in this area in 2010-- picture capability, video... lists.

Big News from Brian-- Streamlining the Payment Process
OK-- I hope I got the etsian name right... I'm pretty sure it was Brian who let us know this is a TOP priority, and almost resolved... You know, the payment issue where a customer orders... (one email is sent to us) and then the customer pays (another email is sent to us.) This disjointed process has caused us many-an-email to our nice customers asking for them to hit the "Pay" button. This should be solved very shortly by Etsy. Yay! It will be a seamless process-- customer orders and pays all together, no delay... customer gets their order, we get paid. :)

Mike in Marketing -- So Many Themes, So Little Time
Mike has lots of great ideas on his plate. He organizes all the etsy Find emails and more.

A Gang of Sellers Including Jen from Mama's Magic Studio, Sandy and Christine.

Speaking of Email-- How 'bout Convos
It was agree'd that a more robust email system in etsy would be greatly desired. Perhaps a little more "imap" like... and possibly ways to us as sellers to create an email list to send our happy customers friendly upsale reminders to buy, buy, buy! This all sounds great, but it's not a 2010 thing... hopefully 2011??

We all Love a Little Support
There's a big emphasis on building up the technical support team over in etsy-land. They have beefed up their Technical suport team fro 14-23 people, and also added Forum folks: from 6 Full Time and 2 Part Time employees. They are also working on a "Live chat" technical support, and good old fashioned Telephone Support is in the works as well.

Nina K and Me, Betsy from B.Nute productions

Lists, lists and More Lists
Lists are worth a thousand words... The concept of lists: favorites, categories of items, groupings, etc is moving to your shop. Think of anything you'd like to group in a list to make your customers shopping experience better, and it sounds like that may be happening soon!

I Just Want to Be Found
With their search engine gurus working round the clock (making the search bring back results that are expected!) and their Taxonomy person coming up with categories that make sense... they are hoping these improvements will make those buyers find you easier. They are also thinking up better tools for promotions-- but also think of this promotion game as a 2 way street... We do work and they do work, and all our customers find us! :)

A Little Code at a Time Makes Happy Sellers
Instead of a common software company approach of releasing large upgrades less frequently... Etsy is moving on the trend of updating the software (the Etsy site) in small increments, more frequently. So, for instance, the most recent home page upgrades... or some of the batch processing features under "Your Etsy". They are proud of there "up time" record going on... and want to ensure us that they will be up and ready to go all holiday season-- thus they have a code freeze appx. November 1st to make sure the holiday rush can be handled!

Other Tidbits
- No More Team Tags: In the future with lists and improved profile features, you won't have to "waste" the precious 14 tags on adding your team affiliates.
- Gifts: Wouldn't it be nice for a seller to have the control to say, "I provide gift wrapping, and I provide gift cards" then in the customers UI, upon order, they can check, "gift wrap" and "gift card" and we will know what to do??!!
- One Address for Our Sellers: Esty is tidying up the 2 address issue (one for order, one for paypal payment.) We should only see one in the future.

Well, that's all for my notes! If I've missed anything, please add your comments! Also, if you are in one of the pictures, and I didn't identify you... Let me know!! :)

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If you're an Etsy seller in the San Francisco Bay Area, contact Jen from Mama's Magic Studio about joining SFEtsy!