German marketplace DaWanda closes its doors

After twelve years of operating in Germany and other European countries, online marketplace DaWanda will cease all business operations on the 30th of August. The marketplace also came to an agreement with Etsy, so current shop owners can continue selling their handmade products.

The company announced the news, saying they didn’t take the decision lightly. “We put a lot of time, energy, and dedication into DaWanda and, together with you, we turned do-it-yourself into a major force on the market in the past twelve years. Today, handmade products have become an integral part of ecommerce. We feel proud of this achievement”, DaWanda states.

Deal with Etsy.com

The company says it wasn’t able on a stand-alone basis to grow further and that’s why they’ve concluded an agreement with its US competitor, Etsy.com. Current shop owners can use an import tool to move their products to the Etsy platform, but they need to manually copy or add the description of their shop, banners, legal texts et cetera.

In April, DaWanda’s founder Claudia Helming emphasized that after a difficult reconstruction phase, things would go uphill again for the online marketplace. She also talked about plans for mobile commerce and personalization.

About DaWanda

DaWanda was founded by Claudia Helming and Michael Pütz in Berlin in 2006. The online marketplace quickly became one of the leading platforms for handmade products in Germany and Europe. According to the company, the portal sells over four million products, and last year around two million active buyers were in contact with more than 70,000 active sellers.