Limerick Meeting With Etsy Rep

(l-r) Ruth, Rebecca, Bernadette, Helen, Nicola, Orla

On Sunday just gone a few of us team members met up with the lovely Bernadette from the New York office of Etsy. It was kind of a late notice thing, so I contacted as many Limerick based sellers as I could and we met up at the Sunday craft Milk Market in Limerick.

Let me first say how lovely and down to earth Bernadette is, she told us all about her office and the work that they do in the customer care team that she works in. She is part of the 'support' team in Etsy, some of you may have emailed them with questions or reporting abuse etc.

Some of you may have heard the news in the Sunday Business post that Etsy are setting up an office in Ireland, which was part of the reason for her trip here; to scout out the situation. At present they are deciding between Dublin, Galway and Limerick, and are meeting with recruitment agencies and business folk in each of these cities. They will be setting up another customer support team here to deal with all the queries that come through at night in the US. Ireland is a very desirable venue to set up an office because of the tax breaks, because we speak English, and we have a highly skilled workforce. As yet they have not decided on what city they will be based in but Bernadette assured us that she would keep us all informed! She said that they prefer to hire Etsy users/sellers as they have a good knowledge of the site, so that's good news for any of you that are job hunting out there. She estimated that it would take approx. 6 months for this venture to get rolling, but it's still very exciting news.

We went on to discuss some of the new changes in Etsy, most notably the currency conversion and how it's affected us. All in all we were very relieved with being able to list in euro, and Bernadette said at Etsy they were delighted to be able to offer it at long last, saying that 30% of sales are from outside the US. We also chatted about the new 'copy' function for listing items, which has made managing a larger shop so much easier (you'll see this if you click on any of your items, after 'renew'). There was also talk of the new teams section and the discussion threads that are there. I did ask that a group convo tool be granted to team leaders as this can made team co-ordination so much easier and less time consuming; telling her of the days when I was sending 100 individual convos to team members.

There was general other meanderings into topics of the snow, surfing, Irish tourism etc, and it was lovely just to have an aul' natter! Here are some pieces from all the members who were at the meeting. (l-r)

The Letter Box Press,

Nice Day Designs,

Lucky Rainbow Designs,

Stained Glass Fayre,

Farapinalia

Also Bernadette gave us all one of these beautiful letterpress Etsy calenders, it's already hanging on the wall in my studio!