A business with over 40 million members clearly must be doing something right. Etsy is an online store that sells many homemade items and manufactured goods. However, until recently, Etsy only sold homemade goods. Now, the online store also sells manufactured goods from various venders. The addition of these new products shows that Etsy sellers can hire outside help and produce their merchandise on a larger scale.

Etsy currently employs 400 people. In 2013, the store’s sales reached 1.35 billion dollars, and are only increasing as of now. The store also has over 26 million items listed.

The people who sell homemade items on Etsy were immediately worried because people who were selling manufactured products had more outside help and better chances of succeeding. Some of the sellers protested, however, that the current policy should continue to stay in place.

After being asked if she prefers homemade items or manufactured items from Etsy, Jenna Simons (’17) said, “It’s cool to buy homemade things because you know you’re the only person who’s going to have that [item]. However, if you want something that you know is going to have good quality then you want to buy something that was machine made.”

Alli Pollack (’16) said that she ordered a necklace off of Etsy that was homemade and it ended up breaking. Pollack said, “I would rather buy something not homemade because it has less of a chance of breaking.”

The CEO of Etsy, Chad Dickerson, said that he wants Etsy to remain a creative community, but that could be difficult considering the fact that there are going to be hundreds of the same items on the website when manufactured goods are added daily.