At the end of the meeting, a few of us took the change to take a group picture. Starting from the left: Malam, Liz , Maria, (xxxxx), monamivie, TortillaGirl, and yours truly, LaCometaLab.Hello all, I'm back in Paris and, the Spring is definitely here to stay :)
This week has been wonderful due to one very special event: On
Wednesday, April 1 we were very luck to welcome in Paris
Maria Thomas, Etsy's CEO, and
Liz Wald, Director of international business development for Etsy. The meeting took place at the lovely
Petula Café, a restaurant next to St. Germain that I highly recommend visiting. It is actually owned by the husband of Etsy seller
monamivie (Gillian), who was actually kind enough to open it up just for us in order to host the meeting. Gillian, thanks so much!!!
First of all, let me say that this was an amazing opportunity to meet in "real" life, face-to-face, Maria, Liz, but also some wonderful people -amongst sellers, buyers and friends- of the Etsy community. As soon as the gathering started we realized what truly a international community we are: the range of nationalities was quite impressive, there were people from the US, Switzerland, Argentina, Norway or Spain, and some of them had come from different locations in France to be just there. As many of us exchanged cards, let me name a few of them:
MalamFée à BastilleTortillaGirlMatilouAnasousalespetiteschosesArtyTomArianelulukariusdepariusmonamiviecollectedorangeFascinatingHobbies and a great blogger:
http://mimostyle.webblogg.se/!
(please, if you were there and want to see your name added here, do contact me about it!)
The meeting started with a introduction from Maria and Liz, and then everyone presented themselves.
Maria and Liz explained that the the main reason of their trip to Europe was to enrich and further develope Etsy's goal to really become more global. They wanted to meet with as many of us as possible, hear our opinions, hear what we had to say about the various possibilities to improve the site, the buyers and sellers's experience, etc.
They started by acknowledged right away many of the problems and suggestions that many of us have been pointing out during the last months and which of course were again brought up on the meeting:
- The need to clarify that dollars on the Etsy site are US Dollars: apparently that will be dealt with very, very soon!
- The need to add more shipping options: The happy news here is that they announced that an European or UE category shipping option will become a reality in the next 3-4 months!!!!
- Inclusion of Euro or of a currency conversion tool
- Multi language support
- Metric/inch converter
Unfortunately, although we understood that these three last demands are also very important to Etsy and on top of their list of things-to-do, we learned that we will need to have a bit more patience, as it is still unspecified the timing for any changes here.
Liz and Maria were also very interested to hear what are the trends/blogs/magazines in Europe in which we thought Etsy could be focusing on in terms of marketing. Please, if you have any suggestions do not hesitate to contact them. They really welcome any feedback from us! They also made it very clear, and this is something many of the people attending did not know, that although marketing is something very important to Etsy, for the time being they do not have a PR or Agency for the media who works for them. We mentioned how in Europe this is something which really needs to be developed as, unfortunately, Etsy is still quite little known over here.
- Etsy will be exploring in the near future the possibilities of gathering support from National Arts Councils and institutions of the same sort. We all thought it was a very good idea.
In all, I think it was a very interesting meeting. Maria and Liz were fantastic and very open to discussion and positive criticism. They justified the slow step-by-step case problem solving that they have to go through due to the company being so young and still not making profit... Whether this seems a fair or not excuse to many, trying to make the most positive out of it, I believe that Etsy is still the only selling handmade site which can offer so much for so little. By coming to Europe they did give us a good signal that they DO think about us, and that WE ARE indeed in the company' strategy plan to continue growing up and developing.
On my side, it was also a fabulous experience to meet face-to-face with some of the Etsy community, buyers and sellers, including some of the great members of the
European Etsy Team and the
Etsy in Spanish Team! I hope we can all have a similar gathering not too long in the future.
To finalize this little report, here are a few pictures I took at the meeting. Excuse the poor lighting conditions and probably me being more concentrated in what was being discussed that in the results of this photo documenting!
On the far right, Matilou followed by TortillaGirl, monamivie and Maria, seen taking a snapshot.
Maria, starting the presentation, and very concentrated looking, Liz, Samantha and Mimo.
Sweetest Anasousa and her cutest smile :) .
And you can now take a peep at one of the newest additions to my Etsy shop.
Check out too her etsy shop in order to make some really cool discoveries or her fun and very cool Flickr group called The Devil Wears Etsy.
This images probably sums up well what the weather has been like in Paris during ALL WEEKEND.
I love fish and was curious to discover what was hiding under the Trocadero Square...
Last summer we spent a whole month in Panama...
A few days ago I was posting about our Sunday walk to La Villette. If the other day I posted a few pictures from "La Cité de la Musique" (where by the way, I forgot to mention, they currently have on show an exhibition on Serge Gainsbourg!) today I want to show you some more of the surrounding area, the park the La Villette and how we ended up in front of the MK2 movie theatre - I place I particularly love-: A movie theatre which is actually located in both the two sides of the Canal St. Martin (one of them shown in the picture above)!
There's also public art, like this fun Claes Oldenbourg piece which imitates a bike half buried on the sand.
Dedicated to:
See here.
See here.
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