Rice marketing expert available to discuss launch of Amazon’s Handmade

EXPERT ALERT

David Ruth
713-348-6327
david@rice.edu

Rice marketing expert available to discuss launch of Amazon’s Handmade

HOUSTON – (Oct. 8, 2015) – Amazon jumped into the artisan e-commerce arena today by launching Handmade. The new site will compete with existing popular sites Etsy and eBay.

According to Amazon, “All products available on Handmade are factory-free and must be made by hand.” The statement was surely meant to go after competitor Etsy. As reported in Fortune, Etsy went public in March but faced a backlash when it launched a program to introduce do-it-yourself sellers with manufacturers.

Utpal Dholakia, the George R. Brown Chair of Marketing and professor of management at Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business, has previously released e-commerce research and is quoted often by the media as an expert on the industry.

Dholakia said it’s no surprise that Amazon joined the marketplace.

“If we consider the handmade/bespoke/decorative-item industry, which is quite a broad range (everything from clothes to decorations to consumables like soap), it is growing strongly, especially with the growth of the economy after the recession,” Dholakia said. “For example, Etsy reported revenue growth of 44 part in the most recent quarter. Consumers are always looking for novel items for themselves and as gifts. That said, its overall size is rather small compared with the entire retail sector. Etsy only had annual revenues of $195 million in 2014; in comparison, Amazon had revenues of $89 billion.”

Dholakia said that while shares in Etsy and eBay were each down about 6 percent today, he doesn’t expect to see Handmade closing its competitors’ online doors. “In the long run, I think it won’t make much of an impact on Etsy’s popularity,” he said. “Etsy already has a loyal seller and customer base and is focused only on this sort of merchandise. Where it might make a difference is in lowering listing fees (which is one explanation for lower stock prices) and benefit individual shoppers and small businesses who use these sites to buy and sell things.”

To interview Dholakia, contact David Ruth, director of national and broadcast media at Rice, at david@rice.edu or 713-348-6327.

Rice University has a VideoLink ReadyCam TV interview studio. ReadyCam is capable of transmitting broadcast-quality standard-definition and high-definition video directly to all news media organizations around the world 24/7.

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Related materials:

Utpal Dholakia biography: http://business.rice.edu/Utpal_Dholakia/

Image courtesy: ThinkStockPhotos.com/Rice University

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