The New Etsy
A year and a half ago, four guys; Rob, Jared, Haim, and Chris, built a website called Etsy.
In the past year it has grown and grown, almost entirely by word of mouth, into the community for handmade goods on the web.
The website that the four of them built was popular beyond what they had imagined and it started to bog down under the load.
So at the beginning of this year, they started planning for V2 as they call it. It was a complete rebuild from scratch to the back end, the front end, and the middle layer.
This past weekend they shut down etsy.com and migrated the database and on Monday the new etsy.com was open for business. It hasn’t been smooth and they are still squashing bugs and probably will be for another couple days.
But the new etsy is as beautiful as the old etsy (probably more so) and much faster and easier to use.
If you love crafts, artistic things, and buying handmade one of a kind items, then etsy is the place for you. I am going to try to buy as much of my holiday gifts as I can on etsy this year.
If you’ve never been to etsy, the new etsy is a great reason to do that today.
Full disclosure: Union Square Ventures is proud to be an investor in etsy.