• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, December 5, 2024

 
Etsy's holiday ad campaign

Etsy is promoting Brad Minor to CMO and making other changes in the executive roster. Minor, who has been chief brand officer for the last two years, is replacing Raina Moskowitz, who is currently chief operations and marketing officer. Moskowitz is leaving to take the reins of the Knot Worldwide, where she will be CEO of the wedding-planning platform.

Etsy, based in Brooklyn, announced several shifts as well. Kruti Patel Goyal has been tapped as president and chief growth officer, a new position, from CEO of Etsy's fast-growing Depop subsidiary.

It has also hired Lanny Baker as CFO, from COO at Eventbrite, replacing the retiring Rachel Glaser. And Rachana Kumar, chief technology officer, is leaving but will remain as an advisor for several months.

Since 2022, Etsy says Minor has “led the evolution and execution of Etsy’s brand strategy, which amplifies the company’s commitment to keeping commerce human.”
That includes the brand’s first Super Bowl spot and the recent multichannel brand mission campaign.

Observers point out that while Etsy’s diverse offers make it stand out in the intensely competitive ecommerce landscape, that diversity also makes it harder to market effectively. Etsy’s “eponymous core marketplace is filled with artisanal crafts and customizable goods from predominately small, hobbyist sellers, with roughly 30% of products made to order,” writes Sean Dunlop, an analyst who follows Etsy for Morningstar, in a recent report. “While Etsy's unique inventory is a key differentiator and a point of strength, it has made marketing its fare broadly quite challenging.”

To address that, he notes that Etsy has worked on “marketing specific verticals like home decor through upper funnel marketing and website taxonomy changes; has encouraged mobile app downloads—a higher converting channel—with pop-ups targeting web users; and has rolled out a 'gift mode’ modality for surfacing gift ideas for various holidays.”

Dunlop is also optimistic about Etsy’s ongoing fine-tuning of Etsy Insider, the fledgling loyalty program, and the company’s moves to build trust with buyers and sellers. Those include increasing transparency with a Search Visibility tool and adding the Etsy Purchase Protection Program.

“Overall, we take a positive view of Etsy’s approach but note that its super-discretionary product suite leaves management with a limited assortment of levers to pull during a downturn in consumption spending,” he says. “That said, we believe that the current approach sets Etsy up extremely well to capture more than its fair share of growth when discretionary goods spending starts to recover in the fourth quarter of 2025.”