Since including Etsy data in August we have been working hard on understanding how this marketplace functions and what insights we could uncover.
Starting today we have enabled everyone to see how many products a seller has sold and how much feedback ratings they have received during the last month.
More than 400,000 shops have sold at least one product in a month, while over 1.7 million have lifetime sales.
BohemianFindings continues to be #1 seller, with almost 900 charms, jewelry findings, beads and buttons sold every day. But sellers like OneSourceStore selling supplies cannot be ignored as they sell 300 products a day at much higher prices, generating higher monthly revenue than BohemianFindings.
Many sellers with the most lifetime sales have been selling for a long time, but that doesn’t mean they are performing as well as some newcomers. We found some very interesting shops when looking at sellers by sales in the last month. For example OnceMoreWithLove selling hand-drawn stickers is currently #2 top seller based on last month’s performance, but only 117th based on lifetime sales.
What we found unique about Etsy is that there is very few sellers with large amount of inventory. 500LEVEL has 38,232 products in stock, more than any other seller - most sellers have 50 or less products. Compared to marketplaces like Amazon.com this sounds like a very small number, but keep in mind that most products on Etsy are hand-made or limited production, while Amazon sellers tend to source products from many manufacturers.
Most of the interesting products on Etsy can be found in smaller seller shops, some very unique hand-made or rare items. While biggest shops on Etsy are selling easily mass-produced products. This means that the most interesting shops are likely not the top 10%, but the middle of the pack.
On many marketplaces most sellers have the same goal - sell as much as possible. However on Etsy it’s much harder when selling paintings, or woodwork made on order. We are working on uncovering interesting sellers beyond looking at top sellers, because while impressive sellers like OneSourceStore are not representative of what Etsy marketplace is about.
