To say that Etsy (ETSY -1.11%) has been a strong performer would be a big understatement. The stock has increased by more than 300% over the past year alone, and has returned nearly 3,000% for investors who had the foresight to buy five years ago.
Despite the incredible performance, there could still be plenty of room to grow. In this Fool Live video clip from Dec. 14, 2020, Fool.com contributor Brian Withers explained to fellow contributors Matt Frankel, CFP, and Brian Feroldi why the recent numbers show that this growth story could still have more room to climb.
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Brian Feroldi: Mr. Withers, do you want to kick us off?
Brian Withers: Yeah, we just finished our holiday season. Although spending was up slightly about 3%, but more people spent online than ever before. It was up year-over-year over 37% by Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE) Analytics estimates. What I'm watching for not only just did e-commerce do well, and I'm sure the e-commerce stocks that the Foolish folks loves to follow will all put up pretty awesome quarters. I'm watching for something very specific out of these companies, and it's around customers, and attracting new customers, and retaining customers. Etsy has done a really good job of keeping track of this over the year because they've had a really big boom in selling of all things, coronavirus masks. I wanted to share a little bit with what they did last quarter to show you. Here we go. They spent a little bit of time letting folks know how they are attracting new customers and how these customers are doing. Active buyers, those that have made purchase once in the last 12 months, it went up 56%. That's a really good thing. But what's interesting is they also define repeat buyers which have two purchase days a year that went up 70%. Habitual buyers making six or more purchases on different days during the year went up 104%. Not only are they attracting new customers over here on the right, you can see their gross merchandise sales per active buyers going up as well. This is pretty impressive given that they've added tons of customers. Let me show you over the last couple of quarters what they've done there. Over the last few quarters, they've seen 21 million new buyers and 12 and half-million reactive buyers. Over here on the left, you can see these new buyers that are attracted in Q2 2020, already 12% of them have made four or more purchases across two different categories. Not only are they attracting new buyers, overall, they're spending more, and these buyers look like they're going to be here on the platform to stay. Then that's what I will be watching across the globe as well. JD.com (JD 0.20%) in China, MercadoLibre (MELI -0.95%) in Latin America. Looking forward to seeing more customers adopt e-commerce all around the globe.
Feroldi: Are either of you Etsy shoppers?
Matt Frankel: I am.
Withers: I have a little bit, but I haven't actually pulled the trigger and bought anything yet.
Frankel: My wife gets pretty much every decoration [laughs] for like kids birthday parties, whatever that all coming from Etsy.
Withers: She's one of those habitual buyers. That's awesome.
Frankel: She is. My wife's definitely a habitual Etsy buyer. [laughs]
Feroldi: I am a habitual Etsy buyer every time it's anniversary, birthday, whatever for my wife, in particular. My first shop, my first thing I do is Etsy for ideas.
Frankel: The first thing I ever bought on Etsy's platform. Our neighborhood asked us all to put up "no soliciting" signs on our door, and my wife didn't want some ugly looking Home Depot (NYSE: HD) plastic sign, so I found a really nice one on Etsy, and that's what converted to a customer. [laughs]
Withers: Very cool. That's awesome for you.
Feroldi: Is it working?
Frankel: It is. No one's knocked on the door in like a year now.
Withers: [laughs] There you go. You heard it here first from Matthew Frankel.
Feroldi: Mr. Withers is going to be watching the e-commerce sales. I think everybody is going to be watching e-commerce sales. I think that's a good trend.
