Reimagining manufacturing

In 2015 we built on our work to reimagine manufacturing and expand the Etsy Economy. This meant expanding our support for Etsy sellers who want to form responsible partnerships with manufacturers, as well as welcoming like-minded manufacturers into the Etsy community.

Fostering transparent supply chains

Etsy sellers who work with manufacturers share that information with their buyers as part of their shop. Partnerships between designers and manufacturers continue to grow locally on a global scale. We’ve approved applications from approximately 5,000 Etsy sellers in 66 countries. Eighty-five percent of these manufacturing partnerships are between sellers and partners in the same country. (Stats as of 9/30/2015.)

Etsy manufacturing

In addition to making existing manufacturing relationships more transparent, we are also striving to help sellers who are interested in finding manufacturing partners do so. The biggest update in 2015 was the launch of Etsy Manufacturing, a new marketplace that helps Etsy sellers and manufacturers find each other and build responsible partnerships. With Etsy Manufacturing, Etsy sellers can connect to US and Canadian manufacturers working in Apparel and Textile, Machining and Fabrication, Jewelry and Metalwork, and Printing, and manufacturers have a platform to share the people and processes behind their businesses.

With the goals of helping to humanize the production chain, prioritizing people and process and emphasizing the relationships among designers, manufacturers and buyers, we also grew our educational resources for manufacturers and sellers.

To learn more, check out this blog post.

Collaboration with industry

We held our second annual summit for changemakers in manufacturing in 2015 and continued to benefit from the collective expertise of industry experts on our Manufacturing Advisory Board. By bringing together a diverse group of industry stakeholders, we were able to inspire each other and generate new ideas that will invigorate the lives of independent designers, contract manufacturers, and the networks these creative businesses sustain around the world. Read more about our Reimagine Manufacturing Summit here.

Spotlight: Jahje Ives, Baby Jives Co, Philadelphia, PA

When children’s mobile designer Jahje Ives opened her Etsy shop, Baby Jives Co., in the summer of 2010, her one-woman shop operated exclusively out of her Pennsylvania home. When orders started pouring in, Jahje, a new mother with two babies at home, found herself overwhelmed by demand. “I was staying up all hours, but I couldn’t keep up,” she says. “I was at the point where I really wanted to grow the company, but I was stuck—it was just me, and I couldn’t even keep up with retail demand.” Partnering with a family owned and operated cut-and-sew manufacturer near her home in Philadelphia enabled Jahje to expand operations into wholesale, while maintaining her sanity. Today she has a booming wholesale business, and in July 2015, Jahje participated in Etsy’s Open Call event, landing a holiday wholesale order with Land of Nod. Manufacturing is a key ingredient to Jahje’s success—all the mobiles she sells wholesale are produced in partnership with her manufacturer.