Name: Surviving post-pandemic life as a small business
Uploaded: 2023-11-16T15:57:59.094086+00:00
Duration: 1621 s
Channel: Adrian Hargrave
Description: The chief executive responsible for Etsy’s financial turnaround and ESG accountability talks about what’s next, what’s needed to help small businesses thrive, and how he continues to balance profit and mission—even in uncertain times.

Adrian Hargrave

The chief executive responsible for Etsy’s financial turnaround and ESG accountability talks about what’s next, what’s needed to help small businesses thrive, and how he continues to balance profit and mission—even in uncertain times.

<p>The chief executive responsible for Etsy’s financial turnaround and ESG accountability talks about what’s next, what’s needed to help small businesses thrive, and how he continues to balance profit and mission—even in uncertain times.</p>

2017 was a tough moment for Etsy

Strategy is sexy, but execution matters a ton

A diverse workforce is very important to us

Improving the customer experience

Redundancies to strip back to basics

https://d3ev5earl6dvd0.cloudfront.net/public-media/videos/005/910/005910/video_tyXhzzF.mp4

Etsy was spread far too thin in its financial execution. In terms of our civic engagement, we had 1000 employees doing 1000 different projects that added up to not much.

In my opinion, Etsy was spread far too thin in its financial execution. We were trying to do too many things at once with that. Therefore adding up to not much and we were spread far too thin. In terms of our civic engagement, we had 1000 employees doing 1000 different projects that added up to not much. And so what the company really needed was to focus, focus, focus.

Having a more diverse workforce we believe is very important to us, having more creative solutions and having more empathy for a broader spectrum of the consumer base, the customers that we want.

By the time the pandemic came in March of 2020 the customer experience on Etsy was just a whole lot better. It was easier to find things. And when you found things, they arrived much more reliably.

By the end of my fifth week, we laid off 250 people, which is heart-breaking and it's not something I would have wanted to do. But we looked at what are the fewest things we need to do and how do we fully resource the fewest things we need to do to succeed. And we started with a clean sheet of paper.