Not long ago, Etsy announced their acquisition of Depop. While most know Depop as one of the leaders in the massive second-hand clothing market (Poshmark and Thredup being some others), many don’t know that Depop has built a whole new type of creator and influencer on its platform. Olivia Rodrigo claims she’s the “biggest Depop girl” and one Depop x TikToker has been able to open their own IRL stores from their Depop success. It reminds us a little bit of the wave of VSCO girls that hover somewhere between influencer, fashionista, and aesthetic trend setter.
This got us thinking about platforms not normally in the creator economy limelight and which of them might actually become significant players. We think Etsy might be one of them. Some thoughts:
1) Etsy has been building a home base for independent earners for years now. Granted most are making jewelry or crafts but the potential for those independents to branch into more traditional creator channels is high.
2) Etsy has a budding digital goods section (see this search on people selling spreadsheets on Etsy). Lots of the digital goods companies in the creator economy would make excellent targets for Etsy to keep expanding their footprint, user base, and revenue. It’s might be less likely for Shopify to buy Gumroad than for Etsy in our view as Shopify has most of the functionality already).
3) In a survey of influence.co users, Etsy is in the top twenty sites that are added to their link in bio tools (above Soundcloud, Twitch, Patreon and OnlyFans).
4) As platform companies start to build out creator monetization adjacencies, Etsy has a strong relationship through commerce as a starting point. I’d bet it’s harder to get an Etsy seller to abandon ship for another commerce platform than it will be to get someone using one Membership product (e.g. Substack) to move to another.
5) As creator merch and DTC grows, Etsy has the perfect platform to accommodate this revenue stream.
6) Etsy has very strong creator discovery tools which is emerging a crucial to the success of some types of creators. Etsy already has built-in CPA based ad engines to help drive sales. While this might ruffle some feathers for physical goods sellers, it’s likely much less controversial and vastly more valuable for digital goods creators. As creator’s start to figure out their own sales unit economics, the more profitable ones will start to invest in user acquisition.
What other platforms do you think are sleepers in the creator economy? Shopify? eBay? Medium? Lets us know!
- Niel and Ryan