Not that kind of mask
Emailed on May 8th 2020 in The Friday Forward
As one might guess, Etsy had a good quarter. With so many folks tinkering at home, the e-commerce website focused on handmade or vintage items and craft supplies is experiencing a boom.
But in the words of CEO Joshua Silverman, "April was an extraordinary month and I mean it in the sense of extraordinary very, very big and extraordinary very unusual..."
After the CDC changed its guidelines to recommend Americans wear fabric face masks, Etsy saw a tremendous surge in demand.
"It was like waking up and discovering that it was Cyber Monday, except that everyone of the world wanted to just one product and that one product was an extremely limited supply."
An interesting consequence: One of the first things Etsy had to adjust to meet demand was to adjust search algorithms to point toward the correct kind of "mask." Historically, algorithms would've seen the keyword "mask" and pointed you to skin care. They needed to be re-trained.
"Previously when someone would search for masks, they would be thinking about Halloween masks or may be cream for their face. So the search engine needed to be retrained literally within hours to respond to that."
Etsy sold over 12 million face masks in the month of April alone. If face masks were a standalone category, it would have been the second biggest category on Etsy in the month of April.
