Personalized gifting drives Etsy’s strongest quarter in more than a year

Birthdays and weddings pulled Etsy back into gear, lifting the marketplace to its strongest quarter in more than a year as shoppers gravitated toward gifts that felt made for a person, not a population. First-quarter marketplace gross merchandise sales reached $2.5 billion, up 5.5% year over year, while revenue came in at $631 million and adjusted EBITDA totaled $185 million. Active buyers grew sequentially for the first time in two years, trailing 12-month active buyers rose to 86.6 million, and gross merchandise sales per active buyer climbed to $122, its first year-over-year increase since 2022.

That is the kind of spending jewelry sells best. Etsy said it is trying to reconnect buyers with items that feel “personal and relevant” and to build relationships that go beyond transactions, and the quarter showed how much that matters when shoppers are buying for a date on the calendar rather than a vague want. Birthdays were the fastest-growing gift segment, weddings posted solid gains, and Etsy’s own personalized-gifts pages point shoppers toward personalized wedding gifts and personalized kids’ gifts for birthday parties. In jewelry, the equivalent is not just customization for its own sake, but a piece that carries a name, a birthstone, a wedding date or a family story into daily wear.

The company’s results also pointed to healthier engagement beneath the headline numbers. Active sellers increased 3.3% to 5.6 million, mobile app gross merchandise sales accounted for 47% of total GMS, and Etsy said first-quarter indicators were in line with or ahead of outlook, with “early improvements” in customer behavior. The company returned $145 million to shareholders through repurchases and ended the quarter with $1.6 billion in cash, cash equivalents and investments.

Kruti Patel Goyal, who became chief executive on January 1, entered a marketplace that is narrowing its focus to the core business after a year of portfolio changes. Etsy sold Reverb on June 2, 2025, and agreed on February 15 to sell Depop to eBay for $1.2 billion. The Depop transaction has cleared regulators in the United States and Germany, with closing expected by the end of the third quarter.

Strip away the corporate reshuffling, and Etsy is still offering a clear read on consumer behavior: when spending gets selective, people pay for meaning. For jewelry brands, that makes the commercial path obvious. Custom engraving, milestone messaging and price points tuned to birthdays, weddings and other celebrations are not side strategies; they are the sale.