Creative selling site Etsy has launched a new crowdfunding model that will allow its shop owners to crowdfund projects before launching new collections.
Fund on Etsy means sellers can appeal for funding to pay for things like machinery, materials and labour to help them make their items. When an investor pledges money to a campaign, they
Like on other crowdfunding platforms, if a seller doesn’t hit their goal, all campaign orders will be cancelled and those investing won’t be charged.
Joe Lallouz, product lead for Etsy’s Maker Innovation team wrote in a blog post: “Over the past few years, crowdfunding has emerged as a viable and friendly alternative to traditional financing channels for many creatives around the world.
“We believe that crowdfunding on Etsy is a natural way for sellers to forge even more resonant connections with their existing communities and customer bases and to grow in ways that may not have been possible before. Fund on Etsy can also expand the breadth of products buyers can find in our marketplace that they can’t find anywhere else.”
Fund on Etsy will become part of the company’s Etsy Economy, a people-powered economy with person-to-person communication. It’s about making people feel they’re shopping in a small one-off shop rather than a supermarket, with products only available on Etsy and in small batches.
“Over 10 years, we have learned how sellers work from beginning to end to bring products to market, and have developed products to serve their needs along the business spectrum, including tools to create and manage listings and payments, promote items, track orders and expand into new channels like wholesale,” Lallouz continued.
“Fund on Etsy is intended to address another need — financing and product development — and fits in seamlessly with sellers’ business lifecycles.”
However, the platform is only available in the United States at the moment and will only be used by a select number of sellers until August 16th.
