与Etsy通常的运作方式相比，新的改变需要耗费大量人力。但回报的丰厚也不可否认：今年4月，Etsy售出了1200万枚口罩，价值1.33亿美元，相当于其月度销售额的六分之一，而且西尔弗曼还说，预计这样的高需求水平可以持续保持。

此外，尽管4月历来都是婚礼主题礼物类产品的销售旺季，而今年因为疫情影响此类产品销售额有所降低，但Etsy网站上除口罩以外其他商品的销售额增长了79%。Etsy的整体业绩虽然没有暴涨，但依然取得了不错的成绩：2020年第一季度，Etsy卖家销售商品总价值达13.5亿美元，同比增长32.2％。

大量新增顾客

Etsy获得了宝贵的长期发展机会：仅在4月，Etsy新增顾客就超过400万，此外还吸引了250万名至少一年没有光顾的回头客重新访问网站。（2020年初，Etsy共有4640万活跃买家和270万卖家。）

Etsy已经引起华尔街的注意。3月16日，由于纽约等主要城市开始实施封锁，投资者担心即将发生经济衰退，股价创下52周新低。但在之后的两个月里，Etsy的股价上涨了157%，公司市值接近100亿美元。

西尔弗曼承认，他无法确定封锁开始后人们将会作何反应。但他认为，人们支持独立企业以及购买某种商品（至少是那些非批量生产商品）的意愿将在很大程度上帮助Etsy取得成功。

而新买家的涌入对Etsy来说是一次难得的机会，可以给新顾客留下良好的购物体验。西尔弗曼说：“这是一次很重要的体验。”

初步数据显示，许多买家并非一次性购物顾客：上个月在Etsy购买口罩的新顾客中，约32%在两周内再次购买。西尔弗曼说，准时发货统计数据和呼叫中心来电数量显示客户体验良好。

华尔街分析师似乎同意这样一种观点，即一旦封锁结束，其他零售商重新打开店门，Etsy依然能够继续留住新顾客。德意志银行（Deutsche Bank）的分析师库纳尔·马杜卡尔在一份研究报告中写道：“即便是对现有买家而言，他们也可能在Etsy上接触到更多的产品种类，拥有更多选择，这可能会吸引他们在一年以内多次光顾Etsy平台。”

自三年前西尔弗曼上任以来，他一直致力于对Etsy的旧货市场形象进行专业化改造。其中包括极大改善其搜索功能——考虑到Etsy随时可能卖掉6000万件特色商品，他说这项工作难度很大。有时，当涉及提高商家服务费，或者促使商家提供快速发货服务时，矛盾就会产生。

但是，当前eBay陷入困境，“零售业电子商务”网站不断增多，特别是在当前购物行为不断发生变化的背景之下，Etsy希望抓住一切机会吸引那些在购物平台选择上并不太在意的新客户。

西尔弗曼说：“对于很多人来说，无论想购买何种商品，都会习惯性地想到亚马逊。”他还说：“如果能让消费者停下来想一想：除了亚马逊，还能从哪里买到类似的东西呢？Etsy往往就会出现在他们的脑海里。”

现在，数以百万计的口罩买家至少对Etsy有了更多的了解。（财富中文网）

翻译：郝秀

审校：程晓田

In the early morning of April 2, as Josh Silverman started his workday, the Etsy chief executive was amazed to see a sudden surge in traffic to the handcraft e-commerce site on a run-of-the-mill Thursday.

One thing in particular was driving traffic: Searches for "face masks" rose 100-fold in a matter of hours that morning, hitting nine searches a second at one point.

While Etsy's sellers had been offering face masks for several weeks since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, media reports surfaced that morning suggesting that the U.S. government was going to change its stance and recommend Americans wear face masks in public settings to help contain the spread.

"It happened like an explosion. It was instant," Silverman tells Fortune. Some sellers were moving the entire previous month's orders in just an hour. But the surge in searches didn't come without challenges.

For one thing, he wanted to be sure that sellers could fill those orders, lest it lead to a bad experience for someone new to the site, losing Etsy a chance to make a good first impression.

What's more, when Silverman typed “face masks” into the search engine, results were yielding a lot of Halloween masks and other irrelevant products. "That’s not what anyone thinks of as face masks in this moment," he says.

By 8:30 a.m. that morning, he and his team were doing triage by hand of the top 5,000 top results, an immediate fixing of its algorithms. They placed vendors who really sold cloth face masks first in the ranking and redirected shoppers to the sites of sellers who confirmed they could handle the orders as a way to redistribute demand, thereby retraining its search engine.

Over the next 48 hours, Etsy recruited more sellers to make masks, helping them figure out how to get more fabric and set up their shops quickly. "In a short time, we stood up a midsize company within Etsy," says Silverman.

This was all much more labor intensive than how Etsy would normally operate. But the payoff was undeniable: In April, Etsy sold 12 million masks worth $133 million, or one-sixth of its monthly tally, and Silverman says demand is holding up well.

What's more, sales on the Etsy site of items other than masks rose 79% last month, despite a drop in wedding-themed gifts during what is normally a peak time for that category. Etsy was already doing well, though not quite that well: In the first quarter of 2020, sellers sold $1.35 billion worth of goods on its sites, up 32.2% from a year earlier.

A bonanza of new customers