footprint

A friend pointed me to Etsy, an amazingly cool site for picking up all things handmade (thanks Jessica!) and reestablishing that connection between producer and consumer.

Etsy was conceived by Rob Kalin - a painter, carpenter, and photographer - who found there was no viable marketplace to exhibit and sell his creations online.

Ever industrious, he, along with Chris Maguire and Haim Schoppik, designed the site, wrote the code, assembled the servers, spliced the cables, and launched Etsy on June 18th, 2005 after only three sleepless months.

Their intention is to offer viable alternatives to mass-produced objects in the world marketplace, and to encourage consumers to be aware of the social and environmental implications of their purchases.

Brooklyn-based Etsy now has 870,000 registered users, 160,000 of whom are individual artists selling more than 1.5 million of their handmade creations.

(Tip: one of the coolest things about the site is being able to search shops by location; there are hundreds across Canada alone)