Women make up 86% of Etsy businesses according to a recent report released by the company.
[Related: How Self-Taught Handbag Designer Turned Hobby into Full-Time Business]
The e-commerce site has become the creative face of entrepreneurship and apparently women are taking the largest advantage of the small business platform.
The site is primarily used to sell crafty handmade items, and the median age of Etsy sellers is 39, with over a third being less than 35-years-old.
“When you think of an entrepreneur, who do you picture?†asks Althea Erickson, Etsy’s global policy director, in a blog post announcing the report. “I don’t immediately picture my neighbor, who sews baby quilts at her kitchen table on evenings and weekends, and drops off packages at the post office during her lunch break. Yet that last image is very much the picture of an Etsy entrepreneur.â€
The Etsy report surveyed 4,000 sellers from November 2014 to January 2015. The company says that there are 1.4 million active Etsy sellers around the world.
“Etsy has been a valuable tool and platform for us to test the market, advance our craft, hone our skills, evolve our brand, and make adjustments to our future plans, with very little overhead and risk,†said Andie Moore of Andie’s Specialty Sweets in an Etsy report testimonial.â€Etsy says the majority of entrepreneurs on the
platform start their creative businesses without any help. They weren’t in need of formal training or conventional financing to flourish their start up–83% of handmade sellers are self-taught in their craft, and of the 65% who needed some startup capital, 83% relied on their own savings. Only 1% of all sellers took out a loan.