Etsy, the website which provides an online marketplace for artists and crafters to sell their handmade goods, has proved hugely popular since launching three years ago. It now boasts more than 1.3 million members and has even been touted as a potential successor to eBay.
But in an interview with the Guardian's Tech Weekly podcast, chief executive Maria Thomas said the company needs to focus on a number of challenges before it can reach its potential.
Among the problems she highlighted was fraud, which has been a growing concern for the site's buyers and sellers. In recent weeks there have been a number of accusations that unscrupulous vendors are passing off other people's handmade work as their own – an allegation that the site's community of artisans and crafters take very seriously.
"It's an important question and one that Etsy going to have to get smarter on," Thomas said. "We're still a relatively small enterprise – certainly compared to eBay – but that doesn't make the question less important."
Fraud has become a major issue the web's leading marketplace site, eBay, but Thomas – a former executive at Amazon and US radio broadcaster NPR – said that it was something that Etsy needed to understand properly before it became a far bigger problem.
"We have to learn from eBay and Amazon about planning for the long term. We're going to be investing and learning around the issue of fraud. Etsy will, as a venue, do the best we possibly can to prevent those things from happening."
Based in Brooklyn, New York, Etsy started in 2005 as the brainchild of college dropout Rob Kalin and friends. Early backing came from angel investors and the Manhattan-based Union Square Ventures, but earlier this year the company took part in a $27m funding round led by Accel Partners. Thomas joined shortly afterwards as chief operating officer and soon replaced Kalin as CEO.
She said that the company would continue bringing in new staff to boost its team, which also includes chief technology officer Chad Dickerson – a former Yahoo executive who spent three years working in the company's advanced products division.
"We need some people who have experience working with consumer-facing internet sites and building to scale," Thomas said. "Chad is among the first of what will probably be several hires."
Etsy makes money by charging for listings and taking a small commission on every sale. Its members have bought and sold $56m of goods so far this year.
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