International Women’s Day, March 8, is a day dedicated to celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. This year, online marketplace Etsy is once again showing its support for the 1.8 million women — or 87 percent of its sellers — who own and operate a business on Etsy.com.

Etsy was founded in 2005, and has since grown into the premier global marketplace for unique and creative goods that connects millions of buyers and sellers from around the world. The Etsy marketplace offers consumers more than 50 million unique items, all made with care by a diverse community of creative individuals. In fact, over 127,000 of the items featured on Etsy include some form of an empowering female message.

We had a chance to interview Etsy’s COO, Linda Kozlowski, on some of the new initiatives Etsy is is working on, her favorite part about retail and what the company has in-store for International Women’s Day.

Caitlin Sullivan: Etsy has gone through many changes over the years, and recently has seen quite a bit of success. What are some plans for Etsy in 2018?

Linda Kozlowski: We are excited to continue to make Etsy the best place to buy and sell unique, creative goods from around the world. Our focus is on making Etsy the destination for all things special.

For buyers, that means delivering inspiration on Etsy and helping them to surface the right products at the right times from our pool of over 50 million items.

We are also intensely focused on our 1.9 million sellers. They are the lifeblood of Etsy and when they succeed, we succeed. We plan to enhance existing seller tools in 2018 and creating more opportunities for sellers to grow their businesses in areas like marketing and brand-building. For example, late last year we rolled out a social media tool that makes it easier for them to share their listings to all their channels. We expect to iterate on this and roll out more tools to make running their business easier.

CS: How is Etsy supporting local retailers?

LK: At Etsy, we think it’s really important to provide tools and resources for creative entrepreneurs to start and grow businesses from wherever they are. In fact, almost a third of our sellers live in rural communities.

From shipping labels, to marketing tools like promoted listings and Google shopping ads, our goal is to make it easy for Etsy sellers to run global businesses so that they can focus more time on making.

CS: Linda, what is your favorite part about retail?

LK: What I love about Etsy is that you can interact directly with sellers and feel good knowing your purchase has an instant impact on their business. When I moved to New York, I had an Etsy seller custom make my dining room table. It’s extra long, and narrow enough to be Manhattan friendly. Because of the experience of working directly with the maker and getting the table exactly how I wanted it, it’s not only my favorite Etsy piece, but one of of my favorite purchases.

On the seller side, I love that Etsy has a sense of community unlike any other place I have worked. We have about 14,000 Etsy teams — which are self-organized groups of sellers who support each other by sharing business advice and running grassroots campaigns and events. Every time I meet with sellers and ask why they like Etsy, it almost always comes out that the strong community holds incredible value for them — and for me!

CS: March 8 is International Women’s Day, how is Etsy celebrating? What are some of the initiatives Etsy has in store?

LK: At Etsy, we feel like everyday is Women’s Day. We’re changing the face of entrepreneurship — about nine out of ten of our 1.9 million sellers identify as women. This International Women’s Day, we are celebrating women makers by amplifying their amazing work and stories through an integrated site experience, including:
A shoppable landing page focused on the women-made shops and female empowerment products available throughout the site;
Unique and exclusive content on Etsy’s blog featuring select female sellers and their shops;
Shareable International Women’s Day social media assets including stop motion video and other digital assets that bring women to the forefront of traditionally male ‘making’ terms such as craftwomanship and womanmade

Kudos to Etsy for embracing and celebrating the true meaning of International Women’s Day.