Etsy Business NEWS ANCHOR 1: So are you searching for a custom table? How about a Barry Manilow clock or a flamingo hat? If so, Etsy might be the spot you need to go to right now. It's an online marketplace for unique and handmade goods. After its launch in 2005, sales soared, reaching more than 1.3 billion dollars, that's with a "B," last year. [Bar graph showing Etsy annual transactions in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013: 180.6 million in 2009, 314.3 million in 2010, 525.6 million in 2011, 891.5 million in 2012, and 1.35 billion in 2013.] NEWS ANCHOR 1: Chad Dickerson is the CEO of Etsy and he joins us at the table, and not for nothing, he's a Duke grad. It's a very Duke-friendly place around here. CHAD DICKERSON: I am, thank you. Just like Charlie. NEWS ANCHOR 1: Yes, just like Charlie. Good to see you, Chad. So you don't like the word tchotchkes, you don't like the word knickknacks because you say it's unique, one of a kind. Why is that important to you? CHAD DICKERSON: Absolutely, I mean Etsy is a community of a million artisans and craftspeople and what they make is really beautiful and unique. So we really want to respect the artisanship and craft behind what's on the site. [Text on screen “Trending on Easy: Vintage Style Harry Potter Time Turner Necklace, Wooden Curve Test Tube Vase, Unicorn Lamp”] NEWS ANCHOR 1: Like your cufflinks, for instance, those stood out to me. CHAD DICKERSON: Oh yeah. NEWS ANCHOR 1: Those are very cool. CHAD DICKERSON: In fact, so I have these cufflinks that are made from vintage maps. CHARLIE ROSE: Oh yeah. CHAD DICKERSON: And here on my left is Berkeley, where I lived, Berkeley on the left. CHARLIE ROSE: Nice. CHAD DICKERSON: And Brooklyn on the right, where I live now. So these are -- you can pick your cities and the seller will make those for you. CHARLIE ROSE: And what did you bring with you? CHAD DICKERSON: So I brought with me three really beautiful items. The top categories on Etsy are jewelry, clothing, and housewares. So this is an example of a beautiful bracelet that you can buy on Etsy, and again, jewelry is the top category. You can find engagement rings that have the fingerprints of the two people getting married, amazing customized stuff, clothing, beautiful bow ties. CHARLIE ROSE: Yes. CHAD DICKERSON: Gorgeous. CHARLIE ROSE: And the next item? CHAD DICKERSON: Oh, the next item, this is a lamp. CHARLIE ROSE: Aww! NEWS ANCHOR 1: Now that's where you lost me. You lost me there, Chad. CHAD DICKERSON: This is a really beautiful lamp, and one of the things that's amazing about Etsy is, you know, we've lived in a world with big box retail where you go to a store and you pick something up off the shelf and it looks the same as everyone else. NEWS ANCHOR 1: But that is the beauty of Etsy. CHAD DICKERSON: And this is -- the beauty of Etsy is you can get something that no one else has. [Text on screen “Etsy’s Guidelines: All items must be handmade, vintage, or a craft supply, etsy shops are independent businesses, items must be accurately represented”] NEWS ANCHOR 2: I have to tell you. Three months ago for the first time -- I know you guys have been around for about nine years, started in Brooklyn -- I bought something from Etsy. And what I found was most interesting is that there was a personalized message in it. That whoever sold me the print that I wanted for my office actually put a note in it, and I thought this is so interesting because I think of online as being really impersonal, but this is not. CHAD DICKERSON: Right, it's not. That's the beautiful thing. CHARLIE ROSE: And how did you discover it? NEWS ANCHOR 2: So I found something and I wanted to buy it from a big box retailer and you guys had it unframed at a much cheaper cost, so I decided to go with Etsy. CHAD DICKERSON: And you got a personalized note, which I think is-- NEWS ANCHOR 2: Yeah, from the printing place that did it. CHAD DICKERSON: Right, so when you buy something on Etsy, it really is this personal relationship. It's a little more like, you know, it's a farmers' market versus a supermarket, and you do get these personal messages, and it feels really good to support an artisan. CHARLIE ROSE: So where's all this going? What's the future of Etsy? CHAD DICKERSON: As you saw, the numbers in Etsy's continuing to grow. You know, our goal is to reimagine commerce to build a more fulfilling and lasting world. And what do we mean by that? We mean really changing the way things are bought and sold in the world and making it more personal and more human. We've gotten a really good start here in the U.S., although there are sales in 200 countries, over a million sellers around the world, and we're continuing to expand around the world. [Text on screen “Most popular categories: Jewelry, clothing, housewares”] CHARLIE ROSE: So how do the craftspeople find you? CHAD DICKERSON: On Etsy? CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah. CHAD DICKERSON: Word of mouth. You know our best sort of sales force is our sellers. They have good experiences on Etsy, they tell their friends, tell their neighbors, and it's largely grown through word of mouth. [Text on screen “Etsy products: Bearded man magnets, wooden animal rings, doll arm earrings”] CHARLIE ROSE: And you get a percentage of every transaction? CHAD DICKERSON: Three and a half percent. The way we look at it is ninety-six and a half percent goes to the artisans, so it's very artist friendly, and it's very easy to get started. To get started on Etsy, you have to spend 20 cents to list an item, so you can literally start a business with 20 cents. NEWS ANCHOR 1: But you set a really good tone for the company that you run, because listen to this. He has blameless post-mortems. So if something goes wrong, you have a blameless post-mortem, talk about that. And you also give awards to people who make the most spectacular mistake. I love what that does for people. CHAD DICKERSON: Right, so blameless post-mortems are really about what we call just culture. If you have a culture and you punish mistakes, people tend to hide information and then they don't learn from those mistakes. So blameless post-mortems, we always feel awful when we make a mistake, but-- NEWS ANCHOR 1: And we know it. CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah, the idea here is not to be as scared of failure. CHAD DICKERSON: Absolutely, and you know we've given awards for failure because we want to make sure that people understand that when we make a mistake that they're not going to get punished. In our engineering team, for example, they have these things called public service announcements where people send out a narrative about the mistakes that they've made, and they say don't make the same mistake. NEWS ANCHOR 2: Right. Wonderful to see some Etsy sellers will soon be in -- what do we have here -- Nordstrom and West Elm too. Chad Dickerson, thank you so much. CHAD DICKERSON: Thank you very much.