The British Etsy Quietly Racks Up Millions In Sales(startupstats.com)
startupstats.com
The British Etsy Quietly Racks Up Millions In Sales
http://startupstats.com/the-british-etsy-quietly-racks-up-millions-in-sales-2012-03/
3 comments
Practically speaking, your average person does not want to deal with international shipping. It tends to be expensive and slow and tracking is not as good which leads to troubles for the site. It would be smart for a site to segregate people in their own country. When you don't do that, you get situations like this, where a competitor becomes you with a different TLD.
This reminds me of the latest Who's Hiring post, where the top commenter was complaining that he'd never heard of Etsy, and they should really explain who they are in their job posting.
Clearly, anyone reading this article is expected to know Etsy as well, so I wasn't off in my thinking that he picked a pretty poor example to make his point.
Clearly, anyone reading this article is expected to know Etsy as well, so I wasn't off in my thinking that he picked a pretty poor example to make his point.
The line between 'competitor' and 'clone' is right here: the site layout and elements are startlingly similar to Etsy.
I honestly had that thought as well going into this piece. But now that I've visited the site, I can say that I disagree. This is not a clone or a competitor, this is the same business idea executed in a different market, with a ( slightly )different focus, and yes with similar design stylings. A clone for me is a site that is pixel for pixel copied. Saying this is a clone is like saying Mountain Mikes Pizza is a clone of Round Table. and personally, I'd rather have Folksy in the US then etsy, Folksy was everything Etsy should have been.
You can clone a site, you can't clone execution. Last time I check having a site in the US does not give you the right to own the same business model elsewhere. Folksy has done a terrific job in attracting UK shops and buyers. Good for them.