Online crafts and vintage marketplace Etsy has announced that it will be eliminating the position of Chief Operating Officer and the current incumbent Linda Kozlowski will be leaving the company at the end of the year. She will be staying on until year end to ensure a seamless and successful transition of duties.
Linda’s contributions will leave a lasting mark on Etsy and its community. She has been instrumental in enabling Etsy to expand our global base of buyers, improve the shopping experience, and launch new products that make it easier for sellers to succeed. We wish her all the best in her future endeavors. We have a strong bench of talent, and I plan to devote more time to working directly with our product teams so that we can execute on our roadmap and drive growth.
– Josh Silverman, CEO, Etsy
Kozlowski came to Etsy in 2016 from Evernote. Her original role was to lead the International, Members & Community, Marketing, Brand Design, and Communications teams and she had previously been the Director of Global Marketing at Alibaba. There is no word on what she might possibly be doing next.
We don’t have any particular insight on the reason for this change other than the above statement but it does raise an important question: what is a Chief Operating Officer? And a little cursory research seems to suggest that’s a bigger question than can be answered in a single Tamebay article.
Etsy is changing and this would appear to be the latest in a series of reforms undertaken by CEO Josh Silverman, since he took the helm at Etsy last year. Other changes have included numerous redundancies, significant changes and investment in technology and also a new direction in marketing. The indications, if the financial results are the key signals, are clearly that Silverman’s new approach is proving to be effective.
