Etsy: Creating A New Type of Employee? Or Making Dreams Unravel?

Yookoo Gibran, in her Oatmeal Soopascarf, who according the article says she knits 13 hours a day, then works on business related things when she is done. The article likens her workload to a law associates. Photo courtesy of NyTimes.

I recently read this article in the NyTimes. Apparently, some people have had so much success with their online shops on Etsy, a purveyor of handmade goods, that they now are the owners of bonafide businesses. Some generate 6-figure incomes. However, all of this has not come without a cost. Some of the women in the article go through periods where they are working almost 24 hours a day making, and then shipping orders that their customers have placed. One interviewee said it was the hardest job she had ever done. Some have argued that the fact these women think they can turn a hobby into an income generator is all fantasy. Sara Mosle, a New Times Contributer wrote an essay on the topic, was quoted in the article as follows:

“What Etsy is really peddling isn’t only handicrafts...but also the feminist promise that you can have a family and create hip arts and crafts from home during flexible, reasonable hours while still having a respectable, fulfilling, and remunerative career.”

Ouch. Have we really created the antithesis of our feminist dreams? If you are working every waking hour, is that really woman's emancipation? Harumph. Designing takes a lot of work. In a start up business you execute every function that exists in company yourself. But in the end at least you can say you created a product you believe in. How many people can say that about where they work?