Marketplaces have existed since the dawn of time. Every culture has them, from the bazaar to the bodega. They also exist today, thanks to ecommerce, which has democratized and globalised the selling and consumption of goods. This is a particularly significant change for small businesses: having a worldwide recognized brand no longer necessitates having a warehouse, a logistics coordinator, or even a physical presence.
Despite Amazon’s scale, Etsy already has a large audience and specialized in handmade things, making it difficult to compete. When a shopper is looking for a handcrafted item, Amazon is unlikely to be the first place that comes to mind. You should be wise enough before making decisions about selling on amazon or etsy. Although there are dozens of online marketplaces, Amazon Handmade and Etsy are two of the most famous and well-known.
What is Etsy?
Etsy is an online marketplace where you can buy vintage and handcrafted items from all over the world. Etsy began as a small Brooklyn shop in 2005 and has now evolved into a global ecommerce powerhouse with over 45 million products available for purchase. It had about 7.5 million active sellers and 96.3 million active buyers in 2021.
With its expansion, Etsy has maintained its alternative, community-based identity. The Etsy Uplift Initiative supports economically disadvantaged producers and promotes products manufactured by historically excluded communities, such as BIPOC, LGBTQ, and female-identifying merchants, with a goal of a 50% decrease in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
Etsy has a disproportionately young and female demographic. According to a 2017 survey, 81 percent of Etsy consumers identify as female, and the majority of them are between the ages of 25 and 40.
What is Amazon Handmade?
With yearly net sales of nearly $300 billion, Amazon is the largest online retailer in the United States. In the United States alone, Amazon receives approximately 213 million unique visitors per month, implying that over 65 percent of the population visits the site at least once a month.
Amazon Marketplace, the third-party seller platform incorporated into the primary Amazon commerce experience, has almost 2.5 million active vendors globally. Marketplace vendors accounted for more than 60% of Amazon sales in 2021.
Amazon created Amazon Handmade, a smaller market for small businesses that specialize in handcrafted goods, in 2015. Despite the fact that Amazon does not disclose total sales or the number of sellers that participate in Amazon Handmade, the company stated in September 2020 that over 100 of the market’s producers had exceeded $1 million in yearly sales.
Final thoughts
It is vital to understand the similarities and distinctions between these two popular and effective selling platforms before deciding which marketplace is ideal for your store.
Both of these sites are designed to give small company owners a simple and secure way to make money while sharing their items with a broad audience—neither a business license nor coding skills are required. Fee structures, support services, and start-up time are the most major variations between them.