Etsy

How good are you at giving gifts? According to a national survey commissioned by Etsy, 75% of Americans believe that being a good gift giver is important and shows someone how much they mean to you, but 64% feel it takes a lot of effort to find the perfect gift.Now the $8.4 billion market cap e-commerce company is launching a new product called Gift Mode, to make narrowing down the more than 100 million things for sale on its platform a lot easier. It’s also a strategy to differentiate itself in a world where virtually…

Junkification and fierce competition paint a tough path ahead Remember when we wrote that Spotify’s latest layoffs make sense? Well, we feel the same about Etsy’s announcement that it would lay off 11% of its workforce. This is not us being callous with employees affected by these layoffs, or making excuses for what led the NASDAQ-listed marketplace to that point and could perhaps have been prevented. We are just saying that this isn’t much of a surprise. The Exchange explores…

Prominent conspiracy theorists — including Gen. Michael Flynn — are promoting an unfounded theory that pedophiles have been using Etsy to distribute child porn, sold under the guise of wildly expensive digital downloads of images of pizza. This new conspiracy theory has emerged from the fecund muck of QAnon and Pizzagate — both of which hold that the world is run by an unaccountable cabal of satanic child sex traffickers, and both of which thrive on decoding of supposed secret messages. The fixation with pizza…

Etsy is the latest company to lay off staff in 2023. CEO Josh Silverman confirmed the marketplace is letting go of 11 percent of its staff (around 225 employees) in its first significant staffing cut in recent years. It’s also reshuffling its leadership, including announcing two executives’ departures at the beginning of 2024.“After deep discussion and careful consideration, we are reorganizing our internal structure to more closely align our resources with our most important business priorities and better serve our…

Etsy is laying off 11% of its workforce at the height of the holiday season as the e-commerce giant looks to restructure its business and streamline costs against a "very challenging" macro and competitive environment, the company announced Wednesday. Approximately 225 employees will be cut from Etsy's workforce, which will bring the headcount for the core Etsy marketplace to about 1,770 people, similar to the company's headcount in early 2022 and above 2020 levels. Etsy CEO Josh Silverman noted in a letter to employees…

Who doesn’t want a pair of Chrome Dino socks? Photo: Google Merchandise StoreFor those in the northern hemisphere, it is officially the season to bust out the box of holiday-themed sweaters. I used to have a couple I’d cycle through, but then my house got crowded, and I had to find them new homes. Now, I live vicariously through press releases and my coworkers who try on these sweaters to get the effect.Holiday sweaters are also the perfect time to make a statement. So why not remind everyone of who you are? You’re a…

Welcome to the TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. We won’t be getting our hands on a Shein filing just yet, but we can’t wait to — especially to understand the logic and math behind its ubiquitous ads. But in the meantime, we landed on some unexpected tidbits from Molten Ventures, which will be of interest to both VCs and founders. By the way, if you plan to be in San…

Listen to article(1 minute)Artificial intelligence could upend the way we shop for loved ones around the holidays. It’s just not ready to do everything yet.A third of people say they plan to use ChatGPT or some other generative AI while holiday shopping this year, according to a September analytics survey by Adobe. Those surveyed said they wanted AI to surface good deals, brand recommendations and gift alternatives.Copyright ©2023Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8…

I can’t help but imagine the words “study the blade” spoken in the most nasally, pre-teen voice possible, but when Gizmodo asked staff what kinds of gift guides they were interested in writing this year, I couldn’t help myself. I’m using this opportunity for those who want to study the blade to, ahem, do just that.Inspiration Behind the Reality-TV Style for The Hunger GamesI’ve been training with a group of fine folks in Historical European Martial Arts, or HEMA, for about two and a half years. They’re an eclectic bunch.…

Including the unusual, hard-to-find, totally new and strangely wonderful, we’ve got a selection of gifts and games that will be appreciated by both hardcore tabletop roleplayers and people who are curious about TTRPGs but might not know where to start. Most—if not all—of these products physically came out this year, which means that they’re less likely to be part of a collection already.What Will VR Solve, Anyway? Packed into this list is a mix of indie games, unique accessories, fun books, and gifts for the people who…