Digital life Trends during the pandemic in Georgia

The new Coronavirus pandemic reshaped the world around us. It affected not only our daily habits but also the way we think. Isolation, social distancing, lockdowns, and in general lack of physical contact determined the way consumers and businesses interact on a daily basis. That’s why eCommerce became more important and extremely profitable. For example, according to Forbes, experts estimated that Amazon’s revenue would reach $75 billion in the second quarter of 2020.

Even though the digital markets are booming right now, a lot of countries, like Georgia found themselves in economic crises. Financial hardship forced a lot of businesses to look outside of the country for customers. Pandemic extremely affected small businesses, especially handmade production companies. These companies rely on human resources, and whose main marketing channel is based on physical interaction. That’s why a lot of businesses tried to adjust to the new situation and started using Etsy. Etsy is a crafts marketplace used as a platform for exporting products to the USA and other big markets.

We spoke with the owner of a small handmade leather bag production company – Talatini about changes that they faced due to the pandemic. As Giorgi told us restrictions that followed the coronavirus pandemic left a lot of people without jobs. In addition, most of the small companies were left without any income. Their team had to look for other markets to expand and the easiest ways to do that was through Etsy. This digital platform offers every business the possibility to reach millions of Americans in the easiest way possible.

Etsy – a craft marketplace

Etsy is one of the leading e-commerce companies in the USA. Unlike other digital platforms, Etsy is solely for handmade products and art that is authentic and original. This way the company makes sure that consumers are safe from fraud, scams of dropshipping and they can buy an only genuine piece of crafts and arts. Therefore, consumer behaviour on this platform is quite different than on its competitors. This is due to the fact that consumers are more likely to trust and purchase something on Etsy. In fact, according to the report from the company, more than 40% of consumers are likely to acquire more than 1 product during a day on Etsy.

These original characteristics give Etsy a possibility to reach even more consumers and attract even more sellers worldwide and pandemic definitely helps to boost the business.

According to Etsy’s Q2 2020 report, they reached eye-dropping $2.7 billion in gross merchandise sales. Sales of facemasks on the platform started to take off during the spring of the current year. After this, financial specialists at Etsy predicted to double sales from Q2 of 2019 in the second quarter of 2020. However, the actual sales growth was up to 146% over the same period in 2019. Pandemic helped drive more traffic to Etsy since they reached nearly 60.3 million active users in the spring of 2020. This is a 41% rise from the same period last year. More users of Etsy evidently attracted even more sellers and in the second quarter, active sellers on the platform went up to 3.1 million, 34.6% change from the last year.

That’s why this e-commerce platform became a source of income for a lot of people, especially, from developing countries and why Georgians started to actively monetize on it.

Georgian products on Etsy

In Georgi’s experience, it took quite a time to adjust to this new era. They had to learn how to succeed in the extremely competitive digital environment. Furthermore, they needed to meet the standards and needs of the previously unfamiliar market – the USA.

Even during these tough times, Georgian businesses tend to behave according to the local traditions. In these times of despair for most of the population, every businessperson tries to learn something new. They offer free seminars, workshops, or training to help others master the digital trends and get revenue from the world market as quickly as possible. That’s why as Giorgi tells us, business people and e-commerce specialists have created a lot of communities around different digital commercial platforms to help and support each other. Etsy Georgia is one of those kinds of communities where professionals and beginners share the experience, share the resources to give each other advantage over competitors, and try to introduce products that are made in Georgia to different countries.

In these uncertain times, when business professionals are confused and every choice of personal development or business decisions seem a huge gamble, the only thing that remains clear is that the digital world is covering more and more areas of our lives, and it stays the only safe environment for business operations. Different digital services are offering very unique ways of interaction and sales funnels. Companies around the world should expand and work on multi e-commerce channel strategies to achieve success in a competitive environment.