Etsy CEO says human touch gives e-commerce giant strong sense of purpose

Buyer beware: There aren’t many places online where a real person sells you something—let alone something they made. Blame automation and mass production.

The exception is Etsy, a global marketplace for handmade, vintage, and artisan products.

People want what it offers. CEO Josh Silverman tells me that since he took over in 2017, Etsy has grown from 2 million to 7 million sellers — and from 30 million to 90 million buyers.

Silverman sees it as a necessary service. “7 million sellers wake up every day and expect Etsy to bring its A-game to them,” says the former Skype and Shopping.com CEO.

And all those buyers of jewelry, clothing, household goods, and other works by independent creators? They “need choice in a world where there is so much commoditized, fast-moving, cheap junk that will end up in landfill just as quickly.”

This gives the platform a reason for existence that can be summed up in a short mission statement: to make commerce feel natural.

“Behind every item you buy on Etsy is a real person with a real human touch,” Silverman says. “That’s what sets Etsy apart.” That’s also consistent with a recent study that found two-thirds of consumers want more human interaction from online businesses.

Silverman predicts that people will begin to move away from products and toward experiences as they seek out things that have deeper meaning in their lives.

He believes Etsy is fulfilling that desire by creating human connections. After the war in Ukraine broke out, Silverman and his wife began ordering cutlery from sellers there. Other Etsy shoppers also bought Ukrainian goods—to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

“People feel really good about being able to support merchants who need it,” Silverman says, “and give Ukraine hard currency when it needs it.”

Buying on Etsy, she says, is a huge act of trust: “We’re asking you to reach into your pocket and spend some of your precious, hard-earned money to buy a product you’ve never seen, from a seller you’ve never met—and who probably wasn’t even made until you bought it.”

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While Etsy works to earn that trust by offering things like purchase protection, its sellers live out that mission by delivering delightful experiences, Silverman says: “We build a brand that stands for trust, and we lend that brand to our sellers so they can compete and win against so many other mass-produced competitors.”

Etsy just took steps to clarify what’s allowed on the site — with new “creativity standards” that emphasize the human element. In short, the item must be made, designed, hand-picked, or sourced by the seller. Those details now appear on listing pages.

Sellers must also disclose whether they created an item using AI, as using it to produce the kind of junk Silverman decries has sparked a backlash against Etsy.

“We think it’s important to be very transparent about the role the vendor played in all of this to build trust,” he says.

To send the message that this isn’t Amazon or Shein, Etsy has also launched an ad campaign that celebrates its sellers. Each all-hands meeting begins with a seller’s story, Silverman says: “We always start with a video of the seller showing us their life, where they work and what we mean to them.” For him, it’s about understanding Etsy’s responsibility to the people it serves.

“Making it very specific and very human is very helpful to our team,” Silverman says. “And by aligning our team around that mission, I think they communicate that better to both our sellers and our buyers.”

I buy it.

Nick Rockel
[email protected]

This story was originally published on Fortune.com