An analysis of the growth and change within a grassroots organization

In fact, businesses should embrace change. Change is important for any organization because, without change, businesses would likely lose their competitive edge and fail to meet the needs of what most hope to be a growing base of loyal customers. Technology Without change, business leaders still would be dictating correspondence to secretaries, editing their words and sending them back to the drawing board, wasting time for all involved.

SHARE Etsy provides a fascinating look at a company who found traction among a very passionate and idealistic group of people, rode that wave to massive growth and an IPO and now must find growth through decisions often at odds with the beliefs of its earliest members.

Her feedback and insights were invaluable in creating this growth study. It was nighttime and the lights were off. I was back in Brooklyn after a brief residence in Paris, and I was about to sketch the initial ideas that would become Etsy.

Working with three friends — Chris, Haim and Jared — Etsy went from these ideas to a site live on the Web in about two months. One project they worked on was a community forum for crafters.

After building the new forum, they began reading through what users were saying. Instantly, thousands and thousands of sellers registered for the site and started selling. They also told their friends at even larger crafting community forums about Etsy, which brought even more sellers.

Just like some digging can get you past the hand waving and to the early traction story of the company, you can also get to the origins of the name itself. Untilthe company declined to share where the name Etsy came from. Appealing to and connecting an online community and marketplace for the feminist crafter movement.

Leveraging organic, social and network effects powered by the feminist and alt culture crafters that drove massive word of mouth and SEO without spending money. Using engineering and product excellence to create a better shopping and selling experience for independent sellers and their customers.

Leveraging a low customer acquisition cost and high repeat buyer rate to fund and fuel growth. Growing mobile and international sales to expand into new markets and leverage changing consumer behavior. Ramping up paid acquisition spend to supplement its organic growth engine.

Controversially expanding the marketplace to allow for non-handmade goods. We got off the internet. In that cauldron of upheaval and rejection of Wall Street, feminism experienced a mainstream resurgence as an outlet and alternative to the corporate culture that pervaded at the time. That feminist movement was driving the crafting renaissance that was occurring around the country in the form of local art and craft fairs.

Indie craft shows had started popping up around the U. Most of the people who joined Etsy in those first few years were like me—independent crafters who were already at least somewhat established IRL—and the quality of the goods on the site was generally high. Powerful word of mouth sharing came from feminist bloggers who used crafting as a form of expression and rejection of mass produced culture.

Etsy facilitated—through hosted online message boards—and benefited from this movement as a way for these crafters to connect with one another and create new economic value for them at the same time. This suggests further that eBay continues to be vulnerable across other categories where 1 community is a core part of the selling-buying experience, and 2 the company has been unable to attract higher-end sellers.

Image via TechCrunch [38] This trend remained fairly consistent as the company continued to grow, as revealed in their recent S So what did Etsy do to drive such a high percentage of organic traffic?

As the company grew, it continued to provide support for sellers, who marketed their wares and, in turn, marketed the Etsy platform. They created a virtuous cycle through several touchpoints, all directed towards helping the seller first: While the long-tail of one-off sellers does provide product breadth and liquidity, power sellers will drive both volume and organic referrals to their own native product stores.

And as power sellers become smarter and empowered by better tools, I expect their average earnings to continue increasing. Etsy not only became the de facto destination for crafters to sell their goods online, it also became the place to buy hard-to-procure supplies for their original goods.

Etsy acted as a marketplace for factory alternative goods such as rare zippers, embellishments, fabrics, and more.

These suppliers could list and sell on Etsy outside of the factory-made goods exclusion more on that later and dramatically increased the amount and selection of craft-ready items that could be turned into finished goods by Etsy sellers.

Yet by using the unique motivations and networks of sellers to their advantage, Etsy has been able to encourage sustainable, organic growth.

As free, popular blog platforms began to pop up, private forum conversations began to spill over to more open forums like Blogger and Live Journal. The most outspoken and persuasive voices grew large followings and leveraged social media to grow their audience and further their beliefs.

This early sharing created massive traction for the platform and showed Etsy just how powerful these online networks of users can be. And while blogs are more passe today, new social networks like Pinterest have continued to send low-cost, high-value traffic to Esty.

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