ETSY DOWNTOWN TORONTO OFFICE – 2015

Custom painted mural
MaRS Discovery District, 101 College St, Toronto ON

Etsy wanted a vibrant hip colorful slogan painted on their wall right when you walk into the office. Their outlook is that they need creative cutting-edge thinking, having their signage hand painted kept with their mandate of handcrafted. They didn’t fall short with their slogan and design, their slogain being “take fun seriously”, the quirky expression gives you many different ideas. The colour choice and variations of shade on the letters also accentuate the hard working but creative essence.

The front area of the Etsy office has large windows. The large colorful sign can also be seen from other vantage points in the office building. Other people from different offices can see the hand painted sign when they pass by and hopefully will brighten up their day.

We painted this sign with the use of vinyl stencil paint mask. We used 2 scaffold to access the area and painted it mostly in the day. Etsy was doing a meeting the next day and was hoping to have it done soon so we stayed a few hours into the night in order to get it done on time for them.

The letters have a inner highlight area so when we paint the sign we have to plan out the way in which we paint it. Sometimes you have to free hand certain areas because of the design. When painting this stencil we had to be extra careful that we don’t bleed paint out of the stencil, because we didn’t have the touch up paint color of the wall we painting on. Some areas do bleed slightly and in order to fix this we use an exacto knife, meticulously removing the paint so as not to scratch off the wall paint below. Over the years we have perfected this technique and it works very well.

ETSY

Etsy is a peer to peer website that focuses on handmade and vintage items. It began in 2005 by a small company named Iospace that took two and a half months to initialize. The name Etsy is one of the founder’s choices who wanted a simple name that the brand can grow with from scratch.

After the site had started, it had gained considerable popularity in a year and gave sellers a platform to get popularity by adding new tools to the site. In 2007, Etsy had sales of over 1.7 million and anticipated a rise in the sales to 2 million by the end of the year. In November of 2007, Etsy had 300 000 items on sale, and they were all bought, and Etsy made 4.3 million.

In 2008, Etsy had a few dark times as the customers complained that Etsy did not handle client complaints well. It led to the C.E.O Robert ceding his position to Maria Thomas. In 2009, an Etsy promotion organized on Twitter which saw to the growth of Etsy. It attracted sales of $10 million, and Etsy grew to 60 employees.

Etsy mainly deals in photography, art, clothing, jewelry, beauty products, and even toys. Sellers who handcraft items also sell beads and jewelry tools via Etsy. Today, Etsy gives vendors a front to showcase their merchandise at a fee of $0.02 per item.

Etsy has over 54 million users who are registered members and has grown its employee capacity to over 685 employees by the year 2014. In the same year, Etsy gained a revenue of $195.6 million. The success of a small website started and grew from the ground up is evident from the story of Etsy. Etsy has been able to buy Blackbird Technologies that is a software for shopping.

MARS

In the year 2000, Mars, a non-profit corporation founded. It aims at commercializing publicly funded medical research. It helps create successful businesses across Canada and create jobs. In 2014, startups emerging from Mars had created over 4000 jobs and raised over$750 million in capital investments.

The name Mars comes from Medical and Related Science and has branched into fields such as engineering and communication. It is in Toronto’s Discovery District. The development program for Mars involves two phases. Phase one includes the heritage building, the atrium, the south tower and the Toronto medical discovery tower that were all designed by Adamson Associate Architects. The second phase two of the project was expected to be complete in 2013 but has faced criticism.