Amazon Challenges Etsy With Strictly Handmade Marketplace

Amazon stepped into the handcrafted-goods ring on Thursday, opening an arts-and-crafts bazaar online that squarely takes aim at a niche but growing market dominated by the Brooklyn-based Etsy.

The new marketplace, called Handmade at Amazon, went live at 3 a.m. Eastern time on Thursday with a lineup of over 80,000 items from about 5,000 sellers in 60 countries. The marketplace lets artisans peddle their handmade wares — think walnut cuff links and felt pennants — much as Etsy has done.

Since 2005, Etsy’s handicrafts marketplace has grown to $2 billion a year in sales, showing that a lucrative market exists for knitted socks, upscale pet furniture and a plethora of other quirky, handmade merchandise.

Now Amazon, an e-commerce giant with $75 billion in annual sales, is gunning for a piece of that market. Since May, Amazon has been sending out invitations to artisans, including those on Etsy, asking if they want to apply to sell on Handmade.

The new site, Amazon said, will have an entirely different feel from the rest of its empire.

“You can think of it as a factory-free zone, a mass-produced-free zone,” said Peter Faricy, the Amazon vice president who is overseeing Handmade.

“For the first time on Amazon, we’re going to have a picture of the artist, a little icon of what state they’re from, what country they’re from,” he said in an interview. “We’re going to launch with an experience that’s very different. Customers are going to see the difference.”