J’aime Etsy!

Last Friday I attended a really awesome meeting with the Etsy admin (yeah, I’m a slow blogger too). The Toronto visit was part of their international tour. Etsy started as a smallish project that has really exploded over the last 4 years, and the etsy admin is doing some research on how it can grow and keep the etsy “product” without losing the grassroots company and community that it was built on.

Etsy’s own description of what it is:

Etsy is an online marketplace for buying & selling all things handmade.

Our mission is to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers.

Our vision is to build a new economy and present a better choice:

Buy, Sell, and Live Handmade.

It was great to feel like they valued Canadians as a real part of this community (they even made pins in French for us!) and to see the faces behind the website. I was also really energized by meeting and talking to other etsians, especially Michelle and Ele, who I had only known online until then.

Big thanks to Ele (Minouette), who wrote a thorough description of the evening, and Karyn, who hosted the event at the workroom, and also posted her thoughts on the meeting.

My photos were all blurry because it was dark, and I was excited so my hands were shaking…