Cottage industry 2.0

The O'Reilly Solid Podcast: Amanda Peyton of Etsy on the rise of craft.

Our new episode of the Solid Podcast brings us to Etsy, where David and I spoke with Amanda Peyton, a serial entrepreneur and product manager at Etsy, about the company’s role as a macro-community of micro-communities.

The connection between Etsy and Solid might not be obvious at first. Etsy’s specialty is the ultra-analog: handmade crafts that represent a return to an earlier era of artisan design and manufacturing.

But Etsy is emblematic of how Web platforms have transformed the relationship between product creators and product consumers. It offers rapid feedback from the market, quick discovery of new trends, and access to a large and diverse enough customer base that even extraordinarily niche products can be viable.

The result is a community of distributed manufacturers that’s responsive and efficient. For goods that can be made without a large, well-capitalized factory (even some electronics now fall into this category), Etsy may be the future of manufacturing.

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If you enjoy this conversation, you’d certainly enjoy the O’Reilly Solid conference, where Amanda’s colleague Kuan Luo will lead a workshop on designing and developing the products of the future.

The Solid Podcast is hosted by Jon Bruner and David Cranor, and focuses on the people, ideas, and technology that we feature at the O’Reilly Solid Conference. Episodes are edited by Brian Burge, with closing music by Thaddeus Bromstrup.

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