Amazon has launched Homemade, a new store for artisanal goods

Online retail giant Amazon has been stepping on a lot of toes lately. In July, it launched Home Services, providing professional help for home projects and challenging startups like TaskRabbit and home improvement stores such as Home Depot. On Thursday, Amazon launched its offensive against the online artisan bazaar Etsy by opening its own store called Handmade, selling an array of handcrafted goods from jewelry to furniture. Amazon’s announcement threw an instant and fleeting gut punch at Etsy’s stock prices early in the morning. Etsy, which went public in April, saw a 7 percent fall in its stock from when the market opened Thursday morning. With Etsy’s stock price about 55 percent down since debut price of $31 on April 16, Amazon pounced by putting its titanic weight behind its newest project. It opened with a catalog of more than 80,000 products from 5,000 sellers in over 60 countries. “We believe we are the best platform for creative entrepreneurs, empowering them to succeed on their own terms,” says Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson on Thursday. “Etsy has a decade of experience understanding the needs of artists and sellers and supporting them in ways that no other marketplace can.”