02/27/2007 09:45:00 PM 
Tell our readers about the inception of Etsy?
Our Presidents, Rob Kalin & Chris Maguire built Get Crafty. Back then people were using forums to showcase work, yet with no venue for selling handmade goods- which is exactly what fledgling artists need.
Define the Etsy brand?
We're an ecommerce site but we don't have auctions. We?re really about our sellers and the things they make. Etsy is one brand made up from 200,000 individual members and 40,000 new sellers, plus about 1,000 new members everyday.
So how do you define your consumer community?
Active visual artists, musicians, making a living selling things they make. Etsy provides a tool for them. Not an "us and them" mentality, it's all about show-n-tell.
Sounds like the PR spin is inadequate?
Exactly, you can't say we're the Ebay of craft. There's room for music, film, fine art. Even high tech items like handmade keyboards.
How do artists find Etsy?
We are all really active and we deploy street teams. We started a program called micro-helping (loans and donations for goods, services and funding) and a craft fair subsidies which supplies funding for tradeshows in exchange for donated time on our site. Our goal was getting people off line, talking and meeting up.
How do you see the role of marketing?
We have a few different approaches. We don't rely on what I call "Capital M" mktg. Instead of traditional PR and advertising, we use a co-op online ad system with Etsy ads only. We rejected traditional advertising as a conflict of interest, instead steering everything back to site and nurturing our own artist community.
How effective was integrating a formal PR firm?
As we grew, it just became too much work for me. I liked the help and support, but for the amount of money we were paying, we realized we could hire another fulltime in-house employee to work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. The PR firm was cool and attentive but didn't totally get our company. All our press kits are homemade, limited edition art objects. Each one is a manifesto, a hand printed statement of what Etsy is. They are designed and signed by a different artist each month.
How do media outlets respond?
A press release that reaches 1000 people is like spam to me. Instead we look for meaningful collaborations. When Craft launched we asked artists to reinterpret the logo in any way they wanted. They got a 2-paged ad in the magazine showing the work, we gave a subscription discount to Etsy members and in return the fledgling magazine got 1000 new subscribers.
What are some other opportunities to think off the grid?
We?re starting a new multi-media blog slash online magazine. All about the creative community, not just Etsy. We can profile people, news and events from and about the community. We are creating real estate for our business partners. A simple quid pro quo arrangement. Like with Make Magazine. Phil from Make will do a monthly HOW TO feature here, this is in lieu of advertising.
So is this what you mean by marketing becoming making?
Yes, I've become a voracious reader, I'm not traditionally trained, this is honest marketing. Marketing sounds so crass. We made it our policy to be honest and openly discuss things like site stats.
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