How an Etsy founder feels about e-commerce platform as sellers strike

In this weekly series, CNBC takes a look at companies that made the inaugural Disruptor 50 list, 10 years later.

In 2005, Chris Maguire, Jared Tarbell, Rob Kalin and Haim Schoppik were sick of building websites for clients and wanted to build something of their own. Eventually they made a website for an online community called GetCrafty.com. 

“It was mostly women who were crafting and sharing their tips and how to make things. And we thought it was really fun” says Chris Maguire, co-founder of Etsy and current shareholder. “They kept saying on the [GetCrafty] forums at the time, ‘I wish there was a place to sell things that I made, like eBay’s too expensive and unwieldy. And there’s not really a whole lot out there that, you know, caters to just us,'” he recalls.

That was what led Maguire and his co-founders to say, “We could build that.”

Etsy has grown from that idea into one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world. Approximately 95 million people used Etsy in 2021 to buy or sell items, according to the company’s 2021 annual investor presentation. Maguire said it is surreal how common the name Etsy has become, and is not something he and other founders ever expected. 

But as Etsy has grown well beyond its original goal – to create a sustainable place for people to buy and sell the things they make – it has become more difficult to maintain its do–it-yourself ethos. Maguire says being emotionally involved with the crafting community made the founders want to build something that would suit their needs, and today, while Etsy still makes sure that there’s a buyer and seller connection that goes beyond a transaction, he has noticed that the company has become more like a machine for making sales.

“They had this playful aesthetic. And I don’t see that as much on Etsy now,” Maguire said. “It’s kind of more geared towards, ‘We’re selling stuff and we’re selling as much as possible, and that should be the driving goal.’ But it’s, you know, there’s not quite as much playfulness.” 

Nowhere has this tension become more apparent than during the current furor among sellers after Etsy announced plans to increase its seller fees by 30%, from a total of 5% to 6.5% as of April 11. 

The company’s management – which would only respond to requests for comment via email – has stressed the access it provides to over 95 million shoppers and says improvements it makes directly translate into more sales for its more than 5 million sellers. 

Sellers remain unconvinced, and in the past week, in a sign of how some feel about the company, they eyed forming a union and went on selling strike. An online petition that was created and outlined sellers demands has garnered over 80,000 signatures.

“We’re kind of navigating uncharted territory,” Kristi Cassidy, the strike’s lead organizer, told…