Australian craft marketplace madeit.com.au is undergoing a facelift as it seeks to find greater success at the same time that Amazon is launching down under and Etsy is undergoing a period of change.
The renewed website is expected to launch early this week and has ambitions to be an Australian equivalent to Etsy. It’s headed up by Louise McCauley.
She says of the marketplace’s distinctiveness: “The key difference is that we are only Australian, if you go on to Etsy you could be buying things from all over the world and also Etsy…aren’t exclusively handmade any more so they also have things like…small batch manufacturing. You’re buying a lot of stuff from China and stuff that says it’s handmade but isn’t necessarily. So I think that’s really our point of difference. We’re smaller so we have an easier time controlling the quality and making sure what is said to be handmade actually is.”
Speaking of the future, she says: “I want to offer more. I’d like it to be a hub for everything handmade. I want it to be a place where people can learn about crafts and can buy their craft supplies and can sell their craft and can collaborate with other artists and can really build on that sense of community.”
It’s always encouraging to learn about new marketplaces and the future is going to be a much more vibrant ecommerce ecosystem. And there is an appeal in national websites that seek exclusively to plug into local talent. It’s a positive way of creating a honed and specialist marketplace that really works for buyers and Sellers.
