Dive Brief:

• As anticipated, quirky Brooklyn, NY-based on-and-offline marketplace Etsy filed for an initial public offering, which the company announced Wednesday. The number of shares offered and the price range haven’t yet been determined. 

• In its filing, the company said it aims to raise $100 million.

• Founded in 2005, Etsy saw $195.6 million in sales last year, up 56% year over year.

Dive Insight:

Well before this IPO move, Etsy has struggled with growing pains as it’s shifted from its handmade and vintage purity to finding ways to make serious money. In many ways it has helped the small, sometimes hobbyist enterprises by giving them an otherwise unlikely opportunity to make money, but the site has also left many of its sellers feeling betrayed. 

“They fundamentally changed the purpose of Etsy,” crafts maker and writer Grace Dobush told Wired magazine. “To stay true to my handmade ethos, I had to move my business elsewhere.” 

But of course more than a million others have stayed.

“Many makers choose not to use Etsy for a whole host of reasons, and it’s awesome that they can make that choice now,” writes blogger Abby Glassenberg. “Yet over a million makers have stayed on Etsy, even if staying provokes them to persistently complain. Why stay? Because it works.”