Started in 2005, Etsy is the online marketplace for everything hand made from A as in autumn crochet pattern set to Z as in zzzzz clutch.

Seemingly, the developers of Etsy’s design and features had three goals: unclutter, organize, simplify – probably one of its success factors.  The site is very structured, easy and fun to use. Items can be searched by tag, material, color etc. With the “Time Machine 2” you can see the items that have just been listed or sold – very tempting!

According to a recent Business Week article, Etsy “boasts more than 300,000 registered members. Some 50,000 are sellers, moving more than $12 million in goods and netting the company just over $1 million.”  I guess, you can call that a comfortable niche. Etsy makes money by charging a listing fee (20 cents) and a commission (3.5%) on items sold. There is no end of growth in sight: According to Etsy founder Rob Kalin, 80% of its new members join due to word-of-mouth of existing ones, creating a nice snowballing effect. And since an Etsy application for the social networking site Facebook has been created, you can just sit and wait for that snowball to become an avalanche.

And here’s a look into the future: Etsy’s going to add audio and video files and a connection to the offline world: Etsy lab is going to be a real place were people can borrow books about crafting, rent sewing machines or use screen-printing machines and much more. The rationale behind: to create an even more concise brand around the vision: “to enable people to make a living making things”

Just recently, Burda invested in Etsy – a nice move (and a smart one), after Rob Kalin served as a consultant for Burda`s open source sewing community burdastyle.com.

Crafts are a big trend and communities like Etsy make it even bigger!