Etsy Crosses a New Milestone and Has its Best Year Ever

Speaking of big years, another app that got a boost during covid lockdowns is also having an amazing 2022 -- that app is (maybe) handmade goods marketplace Etsy.

If you've been using Etsy for long enough you know why I say "maybe".

Source of goods aside, Etsy's downloads have grown a lot since 2020. The first bump came as 20,000 sellers started selling hand-made masks weeks into lockdowns.

It then got into vintage shoes by acquiring Depop a year later, leading to weekly downloads more than doubling year-over-year.

As an Etsy user, I'm happy to report 2022 is going to be even bigger!

I went all the way back to 2018 to see where downloads started. Our estimates show weekly downloads in early 2018 of 100K. That's not a terrible number considering the market for handmade goods isn't really comparable to standard ecommerce.

Downloads remained similar for two whole years, or, until lockdowns started. That's when growth really started.

Etsy ended 2020 with 300K weekly downloads and 2021 with 400K downloads, according to our estimates. That's impressive considering the platform stayed pretty much the same throughout.

2022 hockeysticked - a made-up word to describe the change in speed of growth -- and one of the few instances where the chart actually looks like a hockey stick!

Etsy ended November with a million downloads in one week, its biggest week of downloads ever. Surely thanks to more in-person holiday celebrations and the desire to give something that didn't come from Amazon (or Temu), but also, a strong reminder of how much shopping has moved from the web to mobile and how important discovery on the App Store and Google Play is. The same exact reason Temu is spending heavily on Apple Search Ads.

I expect to see more marketplaces grow in 2023. If you run one of those, make sure you're investing in organic discovery (ASO) which takes a while to build but is free. Here's how.