ty is the heart of what we’re doing, and in so many ways it’s almost our job to empower them and let them run,” she said. Five cities, including Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Melbourne will host the Christmas pop ups. The Sydney pop up will be at The Rocks over seven weekends as part of The Rocks Twilight Markets; Perth will be at Leederville Arena; Brisbane at BrisStyle’s headquarters at King George Square; with Adelaide and Melbourne still under negotiation. “It’s great how it’s community run and they each take a different form, which is the exciting thing, that the community is really empowered. We support it, but they are very much driving it,” she said. According to Souness, bringing the online market offline has driven strong results for Etsy’s community of sellers. “We have found wonderful results both in person with our sellers having the opportunity to grow their business, brands, and buyer audience, but also in later sales for these sellers and the impact generally of these offline and online stores – the bleed between the two. “I think you’ll see more of that next year, and we have lots of exciting things planned that I can’t talk about yet,” she said. Under the leadership of Souness, who was appointed MD in April, the business has seen incremental growth, following a successful partnership with West Elm in June, and the launch of an Australian first seller focused app in April. “It’s just fantastic that they (sellers) have full site functionality, can list things, and communicate with their customers from an app dedicated to sellers,” she said. In Australia, Etsy has been seeing growth both in listings and purchases, with one third of sales coming from businesses in regional areas. “It’s hard to say whether the app is the direct result, but all of the numbers through this year have been extremely positive.”