Etsy is dwarfed by the biggest e-commerce sites in the world

Chart Of The Day

Etsy is dwarfed by the biggest e-commerce sites in the world  Etsy, the popular marketplace for independent artists that want to sell their crafts and handmade goods around the world, announced Wednesday it will go public, filing its S1 with the SEC. The company sold almost $2 billion worth of merchandise last year, but that's small fries compared to the bigger direct or consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce marketplaces out there, including eBay, and Alibaba's marketplaces Taobao and Tmall. Based on company data charted for us by BI Intelligence, Etsy's gross merchandise volume last year was dwarfed by Alibaba's two massive marketplaces, Taobao and Tmall, which sold $241 billion and $122 billion worth of merchandise, respectively. Even eBay sold $83 billion worth of goods. But Etsy's merchandise volume is considerably smaller simply because Etsy focuses squarely on a niche retail category, while the other sites sell almost anything you can think of.  Read »

Also On Tech Today: These dangerously overloaded delivery bikes in Shanghai defy the laws of physics This woman dropped out of Princeton at 19 to start a global nonprofit and it completely changed her outlook on education A whole lot of people are moving to Texas How Chinese investors are taking over the New York real estate market   A 24-year-old college dropout explains how he went from $10,000 in savings to $4 million in real estate   The one thing that will actually make you put down your phone