Once again, Etsy’s layoffs come as no surprise

Junkification and fierce competition paint a tough path ahead

Remember when we wrote that Spotify’s latest layoffs make sense? Well, we feel the same about Etsy’s announcement that it would lay off 11% of its workforce.

This is not us being callous with employees affected by these layoffs, or making excuses for what led the NASDAQ-listed marketplace to that point and what could perhaps have been prevented. We are just saying that this isn’t much of a surprise.

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The company’s fourth-quarter guidance was already a tell; it has now updated it further, telling investors to expect its “gross merchandise sales to decline between 1% and 2% during the period from the year-ago quarter and revenue to increase between 2% and 3%,” CNBC reported.

But more than quantitative, Etsy’s challenge is qualitative.