It's About DAM Time

After years of suggesting, campaigning, complaining, Etsy has been dragged kicking and screaming into the DAM light. That's right ladies and gentlemen, Dolls and Miniatures finally landed their own category.

HeyMichelle posted this afternoon that the Dolls and Miniatures category will be rolled out on October 6th and referred everyone to this Dorque article. She also went on to detail the category and it's sub, and sub-sub categories:

ART DOLL
- ooak
- Editions
- Fantasy
- Folk Art
- Horror
- Goth (or Gothic? please discuss.)
- Victorian (?)
- Primitive
- Ceramic
- Porcelain
- Polymer Clay
- Fabric (or cloth? or sewn?)
- Paper doll
- Needle felted
- Animal
- Anthropomorphic
- Assemblage
- Babies (wording may change)
- Children (wording may change)
- Altered Dolls
- bjd Ball Jointed Dolls
- Characters

AMIGURUMI
- Plant
- Food
- Animal
- Figure (or person, or human figure?)

PLUSH
- sewn (or sewn fabric? or fabric? or cloth?)
- felt
- food
- animal
- human (or human figure or person?)
- plant

CLOTHING FOR DOLLS
- Blythe (this could go to 2nd level)
- dress
- pants
- shorts
- skirt
- shirt
- blouse
- sweater
(considering for clothing for dolls, and accessories for dolls some style sub-subs: kawaii, historical, horror, fantasy, etc)


ACCESSORIES FOR DOLLS
- Blythe (this could go to 2nd level)
- Reborn
- hat
- scarf
- shoes
- jewelry
- purse
- socks
- (other types of items for clothing/accessories- may add now, or add later as people list.)

ARTIST BEARS
- jointed
- miniature
- real fur
- recycled fur
- mohair
- plush
- felted
- teddy bear friends (hmmm? not sure about this. What does this mean?)

MINIATURE
- Animal
- Figure (or person? or human figure? or Character?)
- Plant
- house
- Book
- Artwork
- Ceramic
- Wood (or wooden)
- Polymer Clay
- Felted
- Horror
- Fantasy
- Folk Art
- Primitive
- Victorian (?)
- Waldorf (?- may get mistagged. I'm hesitant because of that)
- Indie or cute (good idea? not sure about this)

DOLLHOUSE MINIATURE
- half scale
- quarter inch scale (or one 48th scale)
- eighth scale dollhouse miniature
- one 12th scale (is there a "name" for this?)
- Playscale one 6th
- pottery
- turnings
- furniture
- decor (?)- can we/should we get more specific here?
- food
- Artwork
- books
- plants
- Needlework
- flowers

DOLLHOUSES
- full sized dollhouse (can anyone suggest a better name?)
- roombox

SOFT SCULPTURE

REBORN

Good ol' Etsy! There's nothing like ignoring a group of sellers over, and over when they could have given them a simple "hold your panties, it's coming soon, we swear!" Kudos Etsy to finally making the category.

On an interesting side note when one buyer asked "Do you foresee this kind of restructuring of any other large categories in the future?" HeyMichelle had this tidbit in response: "yes, I do foresee things happening in the overall category system...alas, I can't give specifics right now..."
....tease

Sooooo close

Well, we really thought we had another kudos article on our hands. Etsy has finally unveiled the long-awaited, and much anticipated, vacation mode. But alas, after much discussion we have come to the conclusion that it sucks.

When you turn on vacation mode your shop disappears. Yes, if someone types in your address they'll find you, but searching will no longer find you or your items, no more exposure - at all. Now, Etsy knew this happens because this is from the Vacation Mode FAQ

When your shop is in Vacation Mode, your items will not appear in your shop. But if someone has bookmarked or Hearted a listing or reaches it from a link on an outside source like a blog, they will still be able to view the listing page. We'll show a notice at the top that you are away. The green "Add to Cart" button will be grayed-out until you return from Vacation Mode.

Nice, but why do we all renew so much if 'outside sources' are how the items are being found?

Let's take this example. You are going to a craft fair so you want your items deactivated. Well, the new batch deactivate/activate is very nice. To make it easier, you don't have to check all those boxes, now you can turn on vacation mode! But wait...you are no longer found in Shop Local, the very people you would want to be able to find your shop to read your announcement about where you'll be! And they can't browse your items! Nevermind losing EtsyMini that many sellers use on their main websites for sending people to their Etsy shop. Oh and that pesky grey box in favorites.

Other than the batch deactivate/activate and convo auto-reply (two things that should be available independent of vacation mode!), Etsy took none of the suggestions given in all those wonderful 'poll' threads.

Etsy was so close on this one, but they haven't yet learned to listen. And they definitely aren't yet in tune with the needs of their customers.

Quotables: Doublespeak

We'll look into it...

We know that a one-click vacation mode option is a much-desired feature for our sellers, especially those with lots of inventory. We agree that it would be super helpful!

We are hopeful that we will be able to provide a solution. However, I cannot promise a timeline or say with certainty how this feature would work. It's something we have researched (thanks in a big part to a lot of great community feedback from you all) and thought about a lot in recent months.

I said we'll look into it, now run along renew some stuff!

we have to figure out how features work best on Etsy. How other sites do things does not always provide a relevant solution for us. There's a lot of complex back-end work that needs to be considered for any change to the site, especially one as potentially complex as vacation mode. Plus there are a lot of other projects that took priority over this in the past 3 years. It's not quite that black and white.

There is a difference, Etsy

I've been meaning to type this up for a while, I hope you're taking notes.

There is a major definable difference between "hearing" and "listening".

Hearing is just that. You hear it. You don't feel moved to act, or engage. It's passive and one-sided.

Listening is understanding what the other person is saying. It's demonstrating empathy and consideration, it shows that you care about what you are being told. It requires engagement with the person talking and action at the end.

(And before you ask, no, moving your hands in a mock handpuppet jabbering way at the computer screen reading someone's desperate frustrated email or forum post is NOT listening.)