Etsy, Your Place to Buy and Sell --- Whatever the New Tag Line Says When They Revamp It.

Of all the the things Rob Kalin has stated so far, this new little piece of news has me the most concerned.  He states:  " We'll be changing our tagline next month. But this is a small change. We need to make the marketplace more flexible."  For 4 1/2 years the tagline has always been 'Etsy your place to buy and sell all things handmade'.  I got the impression that there were already places to sell commercially made things, but a very short supply of truly handmade selling sites.  Now, I know businesses have to grow, expand and change with the times, and I also know I don't do well with change so perhaps I am feeling more trepidation regarding this than I should.

It concerns me because back when the search dropdown was arranged to include vintage and supplies, Rob stated then that the focus was always going to be on handmade first.  That was the original vision.  The inclusion of vintage and commercial supplies was supposed to augment that slowly growing handmade community, and they complement each other, but as I understood it (or wished it) handmade was still the point of the site.

Remember too, that at one time Rob was of the mind to remove vintage and commercial supplies from the site so that the focus remained handmade.  The hue and cry from the community apparently made him change his mind, for better or for worse, so they remain, and have grown considerably since then. 

Little by little the little niche handmade was starting to carve out for itself began eroding away, with vintage sellers, especially, making demands to be more visible on the site. and commercial supply sellers popping up like freckles on a redheads's nose in the summer.

Maybe it is time to change the focus and the tagline, but then, who will build that site for handmade and stick to that vision that Etsy had early on, that gave so many of us handcrafters a haven from selling next to commercially made items?

That petulant little kid in me wants to tell them,'you go find a site devoted to vintage in categories and advertising, have them allow a handmade category to round out and increase the community and complement it, too.  Watch the handmade numbers grow and grow and the handmade sellers become more vocal about what they think they should be entitled to since they pay the same fees.  And then one day the CEO comes in and says that the site really needs to have a more flexible marketplace and that the tagline that once stated Vetsy your  place to buy and sell vintage is going to be changing.  Tell me you would be perfectly fine with that, even though you came to the site in it's early days specifically because it filled the vintage niche. lf you can acept it with no problems, more power to you.  I know that isn't my strong suit.
maybe with some discusion, and a look at what the tagline is going to be will change the way I feel, I don't know. But as always, I'm open,