There was a time in the early years of Etsy, when browsing the site felt a little like wandering through a strange yet wonderful world that you couldn’t quite predict.
On the homepage of Etsy they featured a daily rotating “treasury". A grid of handmade items curated by users. It wasn’t optimized or particularly strategic. It was just… interesting. Etsy chose the treasury to feature each day based a certain brand aesthetic, that people later referred to as a bit 'vanilla' in its flavor. But it was still always really interesting.
I can still remember the year I found Etsy, 2007, and opening the homepage each day just to see what was featured. For me it was the equivalent of a gallery or a really exclusive shop's window display. The kind of experience that left you with a little bit of awe.
Each day a new set of handmade pieces that made me pause:
“I never would have thought of that.”
“Who even thinks of making something like this?”
“Why do I suddenly want it?”
It felt exploratory. A little bizarre, sometimes. But distinctly human. Creativity at its best.
Over time, that feeling has shifted. Not disappeared entirely, but hidden. Less front page more back room. And it raises a question:
Are we still designing for people or are we designing for the systems that decide what people see?
If you spend any time researching how to succeed on Etsy (or Pinterest, or Instagram), the advice is remarkably consistent; find what’s already selling, study the keywords, make a variation that fits within that demand.
It’s not bad advice. In fact, it’s practical. Business like. It acknowledges that visibility matters, and that marketplaces reward patterns, clicks, conversions and familiarity. It makes good commercial sense.
So creators adapt.
They learn to read trends like signals. They pay attention to what’s ranking. They adjust their work to fit into spaces where they know buyers are already looking.
It’s not about a lack of creativity. It’s about responding to incentives.
But when everyone is responding to the same signals in the same way, something else starts to happen.
Spend a little time browsing certain categories, and patterns begin to emerge.
Similar color palettes. Similar layouts. Similar themes, repeated with slight variations.
What once felt expansively unique begins to narrow, not because people aren’t still creative, but because creativity is being filtered through the same lens of 'what works'.
If a particular style performs well others recreate it, en masse. The platform then promotes what converts. And so that style becomes dominant until it is replaced by a new 'trend'. And the cycle continues.
The result isn’t a lack of effort or originality on an individual level, rather, it’s a kind of collective convergence. A gradual blending of ideas into something safe, recognizable, and easy to categorize. Risk is removed as something to be avoided for the sake of a more guaranteed success mindset.
For creators, the costs are subtle but cumulative. Experimentation starts to feel risky. Ideas that don’t fit existing demand get set aside. Creative work can begin to feel repetitive.
There’s also a business paradox here: the more we cluster around proven ideas, the more crowded those spaces become. Standing out becomes harder, not easier, because 'other' gets hidden behind 'popular'.
But there’s a cost on the other side too, for buyers.
In some categories, the experience starts to feel less like discovering something handmade and more like browsing a big-box store. Interchangeable options. Familiar aesthetics. Products that blur together rather than stand apart.
When everything is optimized to appeal broadly, it can lose the very thing that made it appealing in the first place: a sense of personality, surprise, or statement.
That feeling of “I didn’t even know I needed this” becomes a little harder to come by.
“You’re not supposed to give people what they want, you’re supposed to give them what they don’t know they want yet.” Vogue editor Diana Vreeland
Let me be clear, none of this means the strategy itself is flawed. Understanding keywords is useful.
Paying attention to trends is smart. Learning from what sells is part of running a sustainable shop.
But these tools shouldn't replace creative direction or individuality in a hand made market.
Etsy was meant to be a place for exactly that. Instead, it's become a massive homogeneous blob of sameness. Only if you sift and look with intention can you find that original spark of distinctiveness from seller buried under the clutter.
So what's the answer? How do we navigate a consumer landscape that insists on delivering a one dimensional experience? What's the cure?
Ironically the answer goes back to the reason Etsy was created in the first place. For buyers to seek out connections with small creators or businesses that offer something different, personal, or of better quality.
It's just slightly harder to do that today. Not impossible though. It means becoming a more savvy shopper, understanding online shopping risks, being able to identify red flags for scams or misleading content.
It means shopping with more intention. With a more discerning mindset. Less trend hopper more authentic individuality. And clearly, shopping has become a treasure hunt.
My thoughts? Screw the algorithm. Reject the hype, dig deeper, find that treasure buried under the pile of monotony.
Shop with purpose. Reject the machine.
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